Goal Setting

Usually at the start of the new season players jump into the goal setting process, identifying some key objectives that they would like to achieve in the next stage of their career. Such a process often takes a few hours, if not minutes! Yes, the goals set in this manner are position specific, seem individualised and realistic, and focus on specific aspects of performance. However, based on my experience of working with professional players, I would argue that the process just outlined only scratches the surface. Therefore, I always advise players to take a step back when engaging in a goal setting process. More specifically, I challenge them if they have the required skills and abilities to set effective goals in the first place, or if that is the first item on their agenda ahead of the new season.

Reflective practice is one of such areas that should play a key role in any goal setting process. While striving to enhance their performance, players should strive to understand their experiences to gain new insights into the self and one’s behaviour. Therefore, players should recall experiences and reprocess them critically to gain a new understanding and potentially improve future practice. By establishing the critical links between emotions, thoughts, and actions, players are better able to embrace a shift in mindset as self-awareness increases, and allow that shift to impact behaviours. Indeed, increased self-awareness is the key component for facilitating behaviour change in players by allowing them to recognise what to change and why.

However, what does all of that have to do with goal setting? Well, players striving towards a goal, such as performing more successful dribbles, need to understand the key performance indicators and focus on the process of goal achievement. A capacity to attend to, recognise and examine one’s thoughts, physiological sensations, emotions, and behavioural reactions, either as they occur or retrospectively, is a vital component of high performance. Therefore, I always encourage players to take a step back from the technical and tactical aspects of their performance and pay greater attention to the mental aspects of the game.

Improving Psychological Functioning

The internal and external analysis provides an effective framework for identifying and formulating goals, helping players make more informed and strategic decisions regarding their professional development. It allows players to gather resources and actions in their strengths and most opportunities, making the goal setting process strategically clearer. Also, players who engage in such a process are more likely to achieve cognitive and emotional control, including clarity and control of thoughts. This, in turn, leads to a greater number of positive indicators of well-being and fewer negative indicators of ill-being, as such players are more likely to sustain and improve psychological functioning. Only in such a mental state players can maintain and progress towards improving performance and achieving goals.

Achieving a competitive advantage

Overall, at the start of a new season, players typically set goals to motivate themselves and direct their focus toward goal-related actions. However, such a process is often overly simplistic and focused only on the outcome goals (i.e., number of assists). As a result, players lack clear strategies that would allow them to achieve the desired objectives. Also, players often fail to recognise a range of different factors that they can or cannot control during the pursuit of performance enhancement. As such, with the start of competitive matches, players either tend to quickly forget about the goals they have set or pay little attention to them. Instead, the whole attention is shifted towards winning or keeping a place in the starting lineup and winning football matches. Therefore, players are encouraged to take a step back from the technical, tactical, and physical aspects of their performance and engage in an ongoing process of internal and external analysis. At the start of the season, players should engage in a sense-making process of their past experiences to better understand themselves and their reactions to encountered contextual situations. Such sense-making, in turn, should form the basis of the goal setting process, where players identify their mental strengths and areas for development. Therefore, paying attention to the inner world should form the basis of every goal setting programme. Such an approach holds the potential for enhancing players' ability to pay attention, on purpose, in the present moment to thought, emotions, and physiological sensations. As a result, players are better equipped to evaluate the performance outcomes and increase their chance of achieving a competitive advantage.

Performance Psychologist

INTERVIEW

Adam Bracey

While the integration of sport psychology services within football has traditionally lagged behind a focus on tactical, technical, and physical aspects, in recent years we could observe an increasing recognition and acceptance. Indeed, a greater number of clubs started to employ sport psychologists at an academy and firstteam level. Also, a significant group of players seeks additional support outside of their club setting. Despite such an increased presence of sport psychology within football, however, it remains unclear what sport psychologists do and how they utilise their skills to support the players. While uniform content or standard of delivery is difficult to achieve, the objective of the present article is to outline to the readers some of the key aspects of sport psychology support. To achieve this I spoke with Adam Bracey who is a British Psychological Society (BPS) accredited sport psychologist. In the last ten years of his career, Adam worked at several clubs within the Premier League and Championship.

Coaches as the key source of support

A coach is often the first person that players look to for advice, guidance, and support when they are experiencing difficulty. Indeed, coaches are still considered a key source of support, who are often the “first line of defense” in dealing with psychological concerns. Also, due to their extensive experience, coaches are often well placed to provide unique insights into the psychological characteristics required for a player to succeed. Therefore, coaches often play a key role in supporting players to enhance their performance and well-being. However, while coaches should play an important role in enhancing players' psychological capabilities, Adam Bracey recognised some of the challenges and key differences between a coach and sport psychologists:

“There are coaches that are very good at building strong and positive relationships with players, but we need to remember about these different power dynamics that are within that. So, they are “the selector” and someone who is ultimately holding players careers in their hands. The coach holds so much responsibility for selecting the team and making sure that this team is winning football matches. Because of this power dynamics, the player might not be able to be completely open and be vulnerable about different aspects of their career.”

Therefore, while acknowledging the positive impact that coaches may have on players' psychological development, we also need to be aware of the power dynamics within the coach-player relationships. Also, due to the nature of the game and challenges within it, we cannot expect coaches to constantly assess situations through a psychological lens. As such, while striving to understand the role of sport psychologists in football, we can assume that they are best positioned to provide support for both players and coaches, helping them overcome the demands of the professional game. Also, accordingly to Adam “a sport psychologist is best placed to provide a safe and secure space for people to express their emotions and how they perceive certain situations.”