Pochettino confirms the Spurs problem and solution
No excuses, we lost, we have to learn from it. That is how you improve in all walks of life. Football, indeed all professional sport, is about mentally, the team who mentally prepares for the game the best wins.
Each player has to be individually motivated and lasting motivation comes from within, a player motivates themselves. The key is knowing what motivates you, most people don't even though they genuinely think they do. Your true motivation will drive you to succeed, it will be a compulsion, not something that is hit and miss, not something you can dip in and out of, true motivation is a part of you, but it doesn't reveal it's full extent unless you keep feeding it. Simply walking onto a playing surface will trigger a percentage of it, but to trigger it all you have to determine how that game relates to your goal. Do that and you'll get an improved performance because it matters more to that individual.
Of course, what you need is every player buying into how that particular game relates to their personal motivation. If a head coach has a list of what truly motivates a player and not what he or the player thinks motivates them, then he has the ammunition to make his side the best they can be, if he doesn't, then he can't.
Ask many a person what motivates them and they will say money, but that is rubbish. That is what they think motivates them, but if it were they would do everything to get it, do whatever it took, make any sacrifice to achieve the goal of their motivation. They don't though. A salesman, for instance, doesn't sit there night after night studying why they didn't close a sale or how to improve the next day. They are motivated to an extent, but not to its fullest extent, they are not truly motivated.
That is the difference between what people think is motivation and what actually is true motivation. Ronaldo and Gareth Bale are two prime examples of players who found their true motivation and worked every single day to get better to achieve their goal. The question is how many Spurs players have that drive? We have signed young and hungry players partly because thy have a drive, we need to harness it by learning what really motivates them, which is the domain of a sports psychologist.
If you see an inconsistent player then you know he doesn't know what his true motivation is, the head coach or the player, perhaps in conjunction with the sports psychologist, hasn't tied that game to his personal goal and shown how it helps them achieve it.
Motivation isn't about what the team needs, that is a by-product, it's about what the individual needs. You have to make that connection for all the players involved each and every game or they are not as motivated as they can be and thus produce inconsistent performances. I will say it again, Tottenham Hotspur needs to become world leaders at this 'brain training' in football. It is prevalent in individual sports, but not yet harnessed in team sports.
It is a cheap way to improve and gives us an edge over the competition. Mauricio Pochettino revealed it wasn't there in his after game interview when he said we lost focus. If each player knew how that game related to their own goal and thus had motivated themselves they wouldn't lose focus.
"We started the game very well. After 10 minutes, we scored, we created two or three chances more and when you concede the chance to the opponent to get back into the game the way we did, the dynamic changes. We lost our focus and, after 10 minutes, changed the game completely. This was our problem and we need to learn. We are young, but if you are the best team on the pitch after 10 minutes and you believe you can win the game, you need to win the game. We lost our focus."Without the true motivation a player who deems something as easy or an opponent as inferior will take their foot off the gas whether intentionally or not. A player then can't find that true motivation during a game as he doesn't have time for the mental exercise, his only opportunity is at half-time. It's why when you see a team start slow you know they are not sufficiently motivated and thus they struggle to find it, a game can be lost in that time.
"I am angry, frustrated, disappointed. I don't know which word to describe me. We need to be focused for 90 min, 95 min. Football is like this. We are under pressure now. We have to win, but I am happy about that. We need to feel the pressure. Because if not, after 10 minutes it seemed like it was an easy game and we have lost."
We have thrown away many points this season when the solution is relatively cheap and easy. Pochettino clearly knows what he wants and mentality is big with him, I just feel he should find a way to harness it better through greater use of professionals. An individual may not want a head coach to know what his true motivation is, it may not be for the club he is at, but that is where a sports psychologist and a player can work together.
Tottenham should embrace 'To Dare Is To Do'.
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1 comment
No width, slow build up, predictable and lacking in quality.
The problem is an Average Manager with a number of players not suited to his system and a Chairman that wont buy players of the level/quality/positions we need.