#324 Ray Power - Adapting Your Coaching Style to the Needs of the Team

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Sportsike Show. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm joined by Soccer Coach Ray Power. Ray, welcome. Thanks very much for having me. Really looking forward to this conversation. We have been trying to do this for such a long time. We've known each other for a long time. I've had the honour and delight to have done some work with you and on your platform, your Soccer Coaching platform. You are a coach of many parts. You love every aspect of the game. That's why we're having this conversation today because I know you have a passion for the mental side of the game. I know it's a big part of your role in your Soccer Coaching practice. Tell the audience about yourself. Give us some more details here. Thanks for getting us on it. Make this happen. We've had a couple of fours. Star it's happened. We were one thing or another. It's really cool as a full circle moment as well because we had our first connection, very brief. I think you had released a PDF or some sort of intro to psychology that I remember picking up one day. My mental toughness for soccer. You can get on my website. Three days one, I remember tweeting you and thinking, oh my God, I can author. It's sort of replied and to be in the same space and a few years later it would be different and subject matter around soccer. It was really cool and then to share publishers and all that sort of stuff. It's really cool to be on. The more I thought about it over the last few weeks as we sort of ticked all our way through this idea of doing this pod together, I was sort of trying because I'm not a psychologist. I know that's a bit of a departure from your normal guess. I do hope that your normal listeners do sort of bear with it. I'm not really a frameworks guy. I'm not a research guy. I'm the one who takes the stuff you guys find and put out there and kind of try to use it. I've been really trying to shape what I do and you know what, if I was to make a list and send it to you and say, Dan, this is the psych stuff I've done today. Let's talk about it on the pod. I'd be doing it over and over again. Just go to show you how present it is in every part you do. Absolutely. Where are you coaching at the moment? What part of the world are you in? You are a global coach. You're somewhere different. Every time we speak, you're somewhere different. I think you've been in location for the last few years. Where are you right now? I'm in Bangladesh now. I like to tell people it's what I call the Claire Fontaine of Bangladesh. People who may not know of Claire Fontaine, it's kind of wearing bat pay and on re and folk like that. It's run nationally in France so they bring the best players from all over France to Claire Fontaine and they work with them intensively. We do the same here. We have a residential academy at school. I'm a TD, technical director. So I only bore that role really across our three football centres across the country. I would like to say that it's got my fingerprints on it, even a small bit. You're right. I have gone around the world. It sounds exotic when you look back. It's all uncertain sometimes when you're moving forward through it. So yeah, you're a Bafrika now, now Southeast Asia. So, yeah, look every day you're in the thick of it, which is what I love you. Technical director. So, taking a helicopter viewpoint of each and every age group across your three centres, I can only but imagine psychology plays a huge role from a systemic perspective. Working with and through coaches on player psychology, there must be an enormous amount of psychology and psychosocial work that you do. What does, when I say this word psychology or maybe I say psychosocial, what does that mean to you as a coach? As you said, you're not a psychologist, but as I always say, you know, I think, whilst you can't necessarily suggest that coaches are psychologists per se, you do psychology in your role every single second. So, what does it mean to you, psychology, psychosocial? Yeah, I remember a few years ago, a coach, friend of mine, he used a term we discussed this before, he turned around to me one day and he said, he was talking about his coach and he said, I smell bored among people. And I think he was onto something even a little bit more than he probably realised at the time and that kind of idea of that empathetic idea of stepping into someone's shoes and I guess understanding the feelings of others. And it kind of resonated with me probably because a previous like the moment I had was when somebody was talking about empathy and saying, did you know that not everyone kind of feels someone else's feelings? I don't know if I'm explaining that exactly right. But I found that really unusual and I thought, well, maybe I do something or I feel something a little bit different than some other people do and all that. So I guess I've always been acutely aware of how people are feeling or try to be. I don't always get it right, I'm pretty sure of it. But I'm always searching for body language, I'm always searching for cues, whether I'm coaching on a pod with yourself or anyone else just to see what feed and I can extract. So with players, with coaches and even with players and coaches who are, when I say they're not on site, you know, some of our centres are seven hours on a good day. And so it's not a frequent sort of get around the place. And just trying to get into the shoes of people that you're responsible for and say, right, how do I make it better for them? How do I make it more progressive? It leads the right word, but how do I make it the best it can be for them? So to me, that's what psychology is. And you know, Dan, and we do. We've got a psychology roadmap, I would suggest. But you know, the more you work in the space, I think the more you realise that actually psychology is struggle to put it into like an insurgency, you know what I mean? That it's got to be felt daily, hourly, sometimes when you're working with other people. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's where it sits with me. It sounds to me like the experiences that both your players and your coaches have of coaching and practice of daily sessions of game day, the experiences they have are what's really important to you and that you as a coach, as a person as a human being, have the capability of standing in their shoes or being in their world. And their world is really important to you. Is that ever great? Yeah, they've got it there. Yeah, I suppose you have because it's a random job to get, you know, let's be honest. When I say to people, you know, when I go back to the UK or to Ireland and you meet someone you haven't met for years or maybe you meet someone on the plane or something, they say, "What do you do?" Well, actually, I'm a football coach, I'm a technical director, I'm working in Bangladesh. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue. But the only reason I'm here is to, they've imported something they don't have in the country, I would suggest. Or they may have, but they didn't go that way or whatever. But so I do feel responsibility for it, you know, and I do know that there forever is probably going to be here unless someone can really go in and affect that. But as you probably know really well that if you have ceilings, like natural ceilings, you go to a football country in Bangladesh and you know, you don't get players going from not like the Ivory Coast or Japan or something where the big move, you know, they sign 17, 18, they'll sign from one of the professional coach here. They'll contract by hour standards, by any standards in terms of a day job, but also, you know, contracts at my time up for five years and suddenly they're in the mid-20s and they're not going anywhere else. And suddenly the only ceilings they've ever known is the best level of Bangladesh player. If that makes sense. So recently, Chaudhury, I don't know if you remember the midfield player, you play for Lester, he's probably not alone, chef in the United, he's just declared for Bangladesh. So there's been a lot of commotion about that's from a kind of media standpoint. Oh, Premier League player is over here and all that. I'm most excited about the trail he could actually blaze and the steel and he could raise for players here, you know, when they watch him and go, okay, all right, that's what a Premier League player looks like. You know what I mean, that's what a Premier League player trains and that's where the compete's like or eats like or whatever it might be. Because, you know, I always have this feeling, I don't have any data, but I always have this feeling that once, once you do blaze that trail, once you do kind of create that pathway through the woods, people can more readily see it and follow it. So that's yeah, I guess I feel all that response to the world for players and the coaches. I think, Chaudhary, declaring himself a bang to Dessis, really interesting. I want to put a pin in that because we'll come back to that and that sort of socio-cultural influence that he might have and how that might change the landscape, even just a little bit, I think it's really interesting. Just staying with that notion of empathy. Have you always had that? And I want to emphasise it and I'd like to get your feedback on this, because you said something interesting in terms of you've actually defined empathy as being able to feel what others can feel. And I think it's interesting because Stephen Roenick, the founding father of motivational interviewing and motivational interviewing is a therapeutic approach in psychology that emphasises the importance of empathy, but Stephen Roenick would probably define it slightly different. It's not so much the capacity to feel what others feel. It's more suggesting that you have the capability to put yourself in their shoes and simply agree that what they're experiencing can be challenging. It's an agreement. It might be that you don't have compassion for it or that you don't experience what they're experiencing, but it's that you can hear them, you're listening to them. It's a, you described it as a listening statement. And actually, if I slightly correct myself, he's that, he actually says it's not so much that you're agreeing with them, it's just a listening statement. I hear you say this. I understand that you're saying this to me, that you're experiencing this right now in your world. So it would be interesting to get some thoughts on that. And within that, have you always been some of these who's empathic? And do you think every coach can be like that? Given that you manage coaches, do you think every coach has that ability? Although that is a skill that can be grown. A whole barrage of questions for you. I have to recount one or two of them. That really resonated with me actually, because it's probably what I've tried to be, I've tried to define in my head. Certainly recently, is just what exactly, like if I was to put this in a book, how would I explain it? How would I, you know, put it all in a bow? Have I always been like, I suppose, because I've, the more I've coached and the more I've probably grown older and all that sort of stuff, you, you become a little bit more authentic, I would suggest. And kind of war to know, I'm quite happy to put myself out there, whether it's online or whatever, and say, look, this is me, this is who I think, if I say something that's wrong, that's wrong, and that's what I did. And I just want to, yeah, want to be able to to feel those things more or certainly judge it better, if that makes sense. So it's, I think people, sorry, I'm going around the circuit a little bit, but that empathy is, maybe mischaracteriser, certainly I can feel people, as soon as you hear empathy, you think, oh, kindness and it's quite fluffy and it's quite, you know what I mean, you're pat on the back and all everything's going to be alright. And sometimes it's not like that at all. Sometimes it's like, I'll give you an example, we're the player who came back from, so Ramadan was probably came back from Ramadan, leave it a few weeks ago now. And he came back a few days late and he'd be quite a good prospect and this, that, and the other. So he's walking towards me and I sort of have a 40 yard head start, I'm him walking towards me. And I can see in his, you know, you're looking at him in his face, I already know because I've sort of pointed a few fingers at a few, a few others over the previous day, and he kind of knew he was in for something. And there's a major language barrier, right? Now, unfortunately, his, his, his basic English is reasonably good. So I'm relying on my body language and told him to sort of reinforce stuff. And I just had him walking towards me and thinking, how is he feeling? What's he thinking? Like, is he walking over here thinking, or I'm in trouble because I'm late? Or is he walking over here thinking? And he knows this that I raised him really, really highly, that he would be, it was a top segment of our academy. He'd be the top of the top, right? So it'd call him the best player if you want to. It's more complicated than that, but, and he knows that I've kind of tried to move things for him. And I think is he walking over here? Is he a little bit ashamed? Is he busy with your girls? You know, what? Where is he? And actually, I've got to tell him that if, you know what, if I'm going to help you move yourself on or rest through football, you're going to have to be better than this. You know what I mean? And I've got to be really quiet. There's no fluffiness needed now, especially in the second language, you know, it's straight to the point. It's, and I think it ended up with something like, you know, don't fail because you're invisible, you know, because you fail because you won't be good enough at some point along the journey or land somewhere because the next step you weren't able to go. And again, like you don't wake up that morning thinking, like, this is going to happen. Psychologically treat someone today. And as you well know, those one-half conversations might get a note. They might hit a note for 10 minutes once it walks away. Or it might be something that you remember forever and you know, between that and you go into the national team with Hamza in the football years maybe. And you see that side of it and you know, maybe it does cast a pull. Other coaches and empathy, you know, I think it's, I'll be proven wrong here. I really don't know. I think you bring yourself to coaching first and foremost, especially if you do the day in day out. You can, you can do one session or you know, a short period of time where you've got to say face but I think the mask comes off. So would I like coaches to be more of a better guy? I think it's I think it's a really, really good skill to have actually. You know, the kids that we have here from the age of 12, they're all away from home. And that carries baggage, no matter where you are. So yeah, I would like them to. I certainly like them to try to just open their senses and listen. Not just sort of where it's, but see if we can move the new. And is that a skill you try to develop in them? I'd love to say yes, but it's not something I've really sort of compounded and I wonder. I know you, you need to keep your cards close to your chest when you're on certain podcasts as well. So I'm going to try try to do that myself and not sort of don't ban you on the other side, throw anyone under the bus. But the rare days where you look at that and you look at some of the levels and you think, you know, it's this really what we're going to put in into. You know, the thing about I would suggest Bangladesh you children certainly here. And probably the culture of Bangladesh is quite higher article. So I could go to a bunch. I could take a hundred of our footballers out of their hostiles like on here. It's a nice. Bring them to the field, not tell them why. Make them stand there for an hour and a straight night. And they do not clear the thing. Right? But there's a certain there's a certain lack of pressure, I guess sometimes on coaches to bring their best face. Does that make sense? And you know, I don't, I wonder, I do wonder if the kids were slightly more, you know, sorry, I'm not kind of thinking and be able to do something like that. I do wish there were a little bit more like that, maybe it seems a system where people can be intentional a little bit more to the feelings of others in this situation. It's a difficult one, you know, it's a massive, massive part. If the socio cultural narrative in Bangladesh football may be within maybe as a consequence of the education system or wider societal norms, is that children or pupils tend to be quite subsistence? and leadership tends to be quite top down. Have you gone along with that and so create a coaching practice that is quite top down? Or do you push back against that and try to be more autonomy supportive and have your coaches be more autonomy supportive? Yeah, good question actually, because it's really, you know, there's pros and cons. I would say that first of all, so do you want them to be different? Yes, but that doesn't make them different. So you're starting point is where they are, not where you want them to be. Like I'll go into my session and, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes they bomb them because I'm asking a question. The question gets translated. They don't know the answers because they don't get asked enough questions and they are subservient, like you say. So then it comes with a wall of silence. So when a group of players can't answer a question, you rephrase the question. So they rephrase the question and gets translated potentially. And you know what I mean? You end up really bogged down and something and you end up going really, come on. You know, okay, well actually this is what I want you to do and this is why. I just because you want to be able to move it on or make it stick or maybe they just don't know the answer. Where are you coming in a different way? So that's always, I don't think there's a perfect for me. There's no perfection there because I am quite a Q&A sort of coach. You know, I want to, I want to tease what am I linked in about? And in my coach development, they always talk about light bulb moments, like inducer of light bulb moments. And whether that's with coaches or with players, I want. And again, maybe this is the listening part of the empathy part is I want to see. I browse go up or another head for someone who goes, yeah, I get up. I get it now when you say do that and I get it. You know, I want those. And sometimes you want the players to land there themselves with a Q&A, kind of, at a harm moment. So I think there's a middle ground to be found where I'm not exclusively right and I shouldn't come over here. You know, I'm 5,000 miles away from what I consider to be in normal day in my life, you know what I mean? So I don't feel like I should be able to come up here and report with social cultural script as you call it. Nor did I believe so when I went to Africa or anything else. But that doesn't mean we can't sort of put these under the microscope and have a good look at them. And maybe all of us as a group of coaches can move the needle somewhere. Ultimately to where I'm a big believer when you start where the players are. The player is, you know what I mean, rather than where you want them to be. So yeah, but I always think it's a working progress. I don't think there's a fine answer to get it right all the time. Do you think that those footballing cultures, those soccer cultures suffer as a consequence of that top down leadership if you think of. And I have now 20 years as a sports psychologist working heavily in soccer at all levels, but especially at the highest level and the more inculcated I become within the culture. The more I believe it to be a game of anticipation decision making it's not solely that obviously action capabilities important, but action selection is critical and that's an action execution. That's a lot to do with them using my terms here for how I've described it, but anticipation decision making and if if you come from a culture sporting culture where everything is quite top down your told things. And yet so much of a sport is about scanning searching, looking, seeing to be able to anticipate the opportunity opportunities to be able to anticipate the dangers. You know, when you're just told what to do, you know, you're missing a landscape of opportunities that are around you. I'm riffing a little bit here, but I think that it's just making me think of that. Is it not then so important for you to push that a little bit to push that barrier back a little bit around getting them to be students of the game and students of their game through your questions. By giving them opportunities to create their own tasks and so on and so forth, or do you just think it's that gentle push that's required. Yeah, look, I've gone, I've gone places before and I've given it the big push. And it doesn't necessarily work either because as you well know, you need buy in from from an environment, not just to sort of follow a lead. So we one of the great one of the words that I probably would have added to your riff there was was around instinct that you want to create a footballer's with instinct. And I would suggest that the footballer's here would see football as one event and then the next event and then the next event. It's with the awesome attack and the header and nothing kind of knits together. If you want to sell them, that's the feeling I get from them. So someone gives a ball away, basically or goal is to go and give some ball away, rather than the shape of the team or some overarching principle of play that you want to get down that if we can do this properly, actually that wouldn't happen in the first place. So the root causes and things like that. So when we've got a really robust training training program, we're training methodology here. So when I first came here and I had a look at it and it was COVID to the sample. So it's really quite small. We had one large group here that was in competition at the time, I'm preparing for competition and they back in 20. When he won, I think it was when I first came here. And drill coaching, which is probably the opposite of what you were trying to emphasize there. So on the grass, what you were saying comes to life in my world anyway, certainly as drill coaching versus more variable random type of coaching. So the whole you stand on that cone, you run over there, then you pass the ball there and then you come back to this part and then the next guy does it. So we've literally banned those types of practice. And we train a lot and those are people listed now be like, oh my god, very what are you doing? Like that's, you know, we've done it for for a hundred years in football and it's not this that or the other. It's something a, I believe quite firmly in not just in this environment, but anywhere around developing decision makers and players who can deal with random events. And all the variability that football is, like the core of football is chaos and variability. And I found that if we went drill based that you do it for half a session, that time you look at it and you think, oh my goodness, it's just dead. It's just really, really dead here in the almost half there. And this is where I think the ceiling comes into us, you know, of the level of football, then you can aspire to. We came off again a couple of days ago. It was half time we were winning the game 3 1 0 under 15 grip. We were an exception. I would say the dominant team and we're always going to be the dominant team in the game. We were always going to win the game. But everyone was really happy and I was really frustrated because of, like certain performance indicators, I'd call it. That weren't being messed, but everyone was happy because you three went off and you all that. If I don't speak to the coaches and say, look, we can't let this slide. We can't let the fact that the ball is all inside the post a couple of times more than them. We can't say whether it's been good or bad. So I'm probably seeing it a bit more than a taskmaster as well in terms of the, you know, pushing the ball forward, but I don't think that's a bad thing. People don't get on board in it now. There's probably a point. This is the empathy part as well, about not necessarily being fluffy. Maybe some of those players are like, really giving me a hard time when we're three went off and we're on our way to probably win quite well. But no, I am actually going to get on top of you because I want you to play in this senior national team in a few years. Not just that. I want you to go abroad. I'd love to see you go to Japan or Europe or something, you know. And I think you're capable. Those are the messages I want to send them, but you're going to have to move the envelope with me to do that. I'd like to talk more about that and we can link that back to the Leicester City player just to finish this piece of. I think that's a great way to get around anticipation decision making it. There feels like a little bit of attention for you and as much as your where from past experience about, you know, not pushing things too much, not pushing against the toys. of cultural norms too much because you can lose them and it sounds like the way you've done that is probably more to be insistent on session design. Maybe be more co- say, for example, games based where there's greater variability, there's fidelity of practice because you've got more the normal informational cues related to the game but with your coach's behaviour you might not be as questions you'd like to be. You might be a bit more instruction led than you'd like to be. So you're being autocratic in terms of, now we're going to have a session design here that is game like it's not going to be drill like, it's not going to be too linear if you want to describe that way but you're a little bit softer when it comes to coach behaviour. That's, it sounds to me unless I'm mistaken that's how you're kind of translating that tension. Yeah, look, it's, there is a tension there because you read the, you know, the reading and you go like, what? And there's very much a large group of coaches to get it and you, and a run ball or and you follow up everything with what, you know, probably another really noticeable thing culturally here that if I should get a WhatsApp message to say from someone in the office of directors and something like that, it would just be rank and equal to anything from the other. Alright, okay, yeah, Delets, you know, probably where, where, what we're used to is, rank and you go to the office, the report you did last month was, you know, we need to discuss whatever and you kind of get off and off you go. They don't necessarily feel like they need to do that, you know, and that's, that's quite a broad thing to say and to characterize a whole culture in a couple of sentences is for, but it's noticeable from where I am. So for my point of view, it's really important that if I'm going to come at them and I, I'm disruptive in terms of the coaches, right? In terms of what they, I used to what they want to do and the level they can do them too and I'm disruptive of that. So I always feel like I've got to read the room. So there's non-negotiable to do. So you constantly, constantly practice with the drill of base practices, they're simply, they're essentially banned, alright? And whether that's the right of wrong or whatever we can have that whole argument with someone else on the day, it was a drop down actually decision made for the benefit of players here, right? They catch them up on their players globally. And you know, somewhere right on board with it, somewhere come and watch your session and then just they're not quite sure. Like what does a football warm up or, you know, an introductory part with football session look like when you can't do it in line, you know what I mean? So what I do today, you'll see copy tomorrow, that sort of says. And when you first start coaching or when you're a novice or amateur coach, that's largely what you do. You know, you get some sort of validate, you see this on Twitter regularly, right? You get some sort of validating football session from the Guaradiola book or, you know, a website or whatever it is. And you say, well, I'm going to copy them exactly where you actually want it is, where coaches are going, but I don't need that project as much. I can take the principle out of it and that I do this whatever different way that I will do. So that's part of the journey, but it's slower than you think or some, you already be, because you know, they're lifetime in the game and suggest they don't think this is different. You know, this is the same. This is people are asking me to change. And as you well know, football can be, you know, an environment sometimes that doesn't want to change, it doesn't want to go over those sort of things. And put, you know what, Dan, the team I spoke about a few minutes ago, they came here preparing for competition on another centre and you can tell, I could tell by setting two that they were unfamiliar with more variable exercise, that they were actually unfamiliar with what you need for a match script and you need for sort of like the peace situations where you all have an individual piece of development going on within every session you do. And you look at that and then the roads do lead back to coaching. And that's probably drawn someone under the bus and it wasn't my intention, but it's really really evident. We're turning to Premier League player playing for Bangladesh, representing Bangladesh. Why would that make a difference? What is it that you see in these young, I mean, when we think of Bangladesh, I think in you might correct me if I'm wrong here with the national sport being cricket, probably. And plenty of young people aspiring to be an incredible cricket, probably wanting to beat neighbours, India. I would imagine this enormous support for football, but there's not necessarily that cultural landscape that has provided opportunities for young players to optimize their ability to go out there and as you've mentioned, you want players from your version of Clare Fontaine, your development centres to get out and compete in world football, in world soccer. So what do you feel that this former Premier League player is is going to come in and actually show how does that change mindsets for you in your opinion? Well, I've got a few things that you've said that I've put a pin in to bring up again. So if you ask most Bangladeshes, what football team do you support? They will tell you that they either support Brazil or Argentina, right? Yeah, I know. And I was kind of amazed that it's, and I would tease them, I would say, no, come on, your first answer has to be Bangladesh and then it can be Brazil or or Argentina. And sometimes it's Real Madrid sometimes, you know, but less frequently than you'd imagine. It tends to be Brazil or Argentina. The biggest game televised wise, they will riot when the games are on, like literally physically, as you can imagine, I don't know, Tenerife, England, play Germany or something, there's attention, there's attention in the city when Brazil plays Argentina and I suppose that can be traced back somewhere. With the Cricket idea, I'm not a Cricket guy, I know very, very little about Crickets. There was a World Cup, I believe in the 90s, maybe the Bangladesh did exceptionally well and maybe they broke out, maybe they even wanted, I'm not exactly sure. I think they got far in the tunnel, I don't think they won, I might be different from, but I don't think they, but yes, you're right, I think they got far. Yeah. But I always think those moments are culturally massive in the sport, you know what I mean? I'm being Irish, Italian 90 was for me. So 88, I was a little bit too young for 88 euros, but in 1990, painful. Painful. That's it, one nail right? How was it right? I was, I was, I'm going to say it, but yeah, it certainly was, yeah. And like I'll close, but like I don't feel like I can exactly because I don't remember risk that it was. But interestingly in Italian 90 we played it, we drew one all within the group and we also drew with Holland, we also drew with Egypt, we also drew with Romania when dependencies and eventually went out to Italy. But that was a moment for Irish soccer where you hang your hat on it, you know, and you go, it's a little bit like when everyone gets to tennis rackets out at Atmanland, you know, where it's just the case of being inspired by nationally, by they're just like me, like I'm one of them, they're just 20 years older than me, you know, with with Hamza, they call them, they play on Z as J here, so they often say Hamza here, with him, I think this is a potential to be, I don't want to pressure on the guy and say, well, you know, you're the equivalent of us when in the World Cup, what I'm saying is we can now see past our previous limitations. She, so Hamza's dad is Bangladesh, I think Hamza was born in the UK from what I'm saying, so the lineage is really quite close and I just feel like the players can find something bigger to look at. Okay, so the Bangladesh National team captain has played in Denmark the last few years, so you kind of head in the right direction, but it's just that visibility and just saying, you're like me, you're from that city I'm from, you're, you know, you've, speak the language I do, you look like me, you, whatever it might be, but you have a different set of experiences that you're bringing back to the group and he has the power just by being there, like he doesn't have the change anything he does, but he's responsible for that change to go, you know what, I'm going to bring the best version of what I've experienced to this environment and I'm going to show it to you and don't start implicitly make people better. For me, I actually think it makes a massive difference to people. You'll speak a lot about talent hot bets around the world, whether it's Kenyan runners, or Jamaican sprinters, or Cranian ice skaters, or whatever it might be. It would be Russian tennis players for a bit, there was a hotspot. The good book, "Gold Mine Effect" by Rasmussen Kusin, who now owns part-ones, South Hunters and Football Club randomly, but yeah, Rasmussen, gold mine effects, and South Korean women's golfers. Yeah, there's a sort of a multiplier effect across a culture, if one does well. Northern Irish golf doesn't quite count, I think, just because of the differences in ages between the golfers, Rory, Darren Clark, who's obviously Irish, Northern Irish, but yeah, it just doesn't quite work, but it's close. This is where we both claim Rory McElroy, isn't it? To be fair, after that, actually. Do you know what? I actually think. I'm not in order, but that will inspire there. Golfers are a little bit different because it can be economically a bit of a close shop on it, maybe when I'm in the game. But you are. Excuse me, to interject, but you are. Graham McDow was the golfer I was trying to think of there. Graham McDow, Rory McElroy, Darren Clark, Irish golfers, one major championship. I mean, Ireland do punch above their weight, if you talk about population in golf, they do very well. There's no. I don't. I said there's no question. It's probably in part. Because, you know, from a cultural perspective, this country has. You've achieved success. I would imagine, well, we absolutely will make people in Northern Ireland and across Ireland. Then, yeah, we can do this here. It's great golf courses as well, you know? Well, I tell you, like a real-life example was in. Oh, yeah, '92. Oh, I always tell them a couple of old men, don't you? In '92, at the Olympics, an Irish boxer called Michael Karuth, one gold. Barcelona. Yeah. I would have been. I would have seen the digits. But I remember it, you have an toy pair of boxing gloves and running around the house that day. Throw them punches. You know, and if there was a boxing club down the road, I would have joined. Because it just peaked your interest. You see it, you feel it. You get swept up in the enthusiasm of it. And all of those things are feelings. All of those things are, you've made me feel like this because I'm tied to you somehow. So I'm hoping with Hamja, I think the federation is starting to look abroad now for their heritage players, if that's the right word, to come in and there's an argument there about all that sort of stuff as well. But for the moment, beyond getting to a World Cup, or getting to an AFC, the women's team have had some success in South Asia to be fair. But there's just that ceiling. If we could just start breaking the glass of that ceiling, I think everyone potentially can go through it. Obviously the green ride is just at the top and all that sort of thing, but we can now come in. So I've got some of my ex-players here in the national team. I spoke to one of them after the last camp. They drew with India in India. You know, how was it training with Hamja Shedori? And he was really quite surface level over what's up. And so yeah, it was amazing. It was good. It was, you know, he's worked really hard and things like that. And I just thought, you know, I wonder what, you know, the stuff he can't articulate to me on what's up in English. He had that festive. And I'm probably tell I'm desperate for that sort of to bubble over in the next couple of years. Be a success not because of the way people are thinking. Like Hamja used to know we'll be playing India again soon here in Bangladesh. For example, it might not necessarily be about an amazing result, not necessarily. It might be, but it doesn't have to be or an amazing qualification or you get to the one round further than we've ever gone before in qualification, whatever. It might just be that it's just exposing people. Like, as you know, if you can expose 20 people to something, the next batch of 20 that come in, this is culture right? And they see those 20. And they go, okay, these guys, they're copying or they're doing or they're emulating what the level of Hamja would. And maybe the next 20 do and the next 20 do and then it becomes this is what all looks like here. I do think it has a massive ripple effect. I mean, it links very, very nicely with Albert Banger as self-efficacy theory. You know, self-efficacy being situated self-confident, but you know, he talked about simplifying confidence a great deal. But he talked about people become more confident doing what they do if they see others that they know it's a precarious experience when I see somebody else do it. I believe I can do it. And the closer you are to that person, you know, in age or race or gender or geographically, then of course it becomes really, really meaningful. So as you say, if there's a Bangladeshi player who has played Premier League or the least qualifies for the Bangladeshi national team and others get to see that person, then it does break down barriers. It breaks down those belief barriers. So I completely agree. I think it's an absolutely fascinating phenomenon. I'm sure there's other psychological, social psychological theories out there that encapsulate that. I mean, just one more question on that, you know, in your national senses, are you, and please excuse me if you've spoken to this already? Are you planning on leveraging that? You know, is Chadore's face going to be plastered across the walls? Is there, are you going to be so in footage of this? How are you going to utilize this if at all? Well, we weren't better than that actually because we had his, we had his father here just after he announced it was still a couple of weeks before they come. But his father came here, he spoke to the players. We kind of got on board with the excitement of it. And it was, it's something, I don't want to make promises about a visit, like a physical visit, but it's something that's kind of muted. And I really would hope it comes around. But if it doesn't, you pivot, don't you know what I mean? And it will be a case of, you know, we use the three players I spoke about. In fact, I used the centre back. We were centre back called Topu, who is playing the national team at the moment. We played in the back of the national team. He's only maybe 19, but he's starting to centre back in the national team, which is, regardless of your level, a massive achievement, such a key position of the pitch. We used him as a role model for one of our young centre backs here. So one of the things we do a lot is role modelling. Maybe there's a more high brow sort of title for that. But yeah, we do that a lot of me go, so what are you like in, you know, it's not your favourite player, it's your favourite, you are simply to model yourself on that in some way. And Topu just happened to post, actually, shared it on my LinkedIn a couple of days ago. He put a video on Twitter, like, the compilation video, him playing against the best team in the country, basically, the Champions League team, effectively running the show in all manner of ways in terms of his style, his confidence, playing ability. And it was a great way to say, look, here you go. Here's you in 10 years, if we can master some things like this, that might be in part of your IDP, individual development on a match. In my world, it's quite interchangeable when I hear you talk about match groups as well. So with Hamza, it's, yeah, we've got to find a way to put him front and centre, you know, it's obviously been in the championship now, it's different and all that sort of stuff as well. But it's certainly a phenomenon that you use the word phenomenon. And I think it is because it's not logical, is it? It's not logical to most people that I can get better because I see better. It doesn't really feel like it should work like that. But it absolutely does, and it's been shown over and over again. So I just want to capture that and I want to ride on the wave of that. And we're all the kids here. Our women's national team, actually our oldest girls are really close to the women's senior teams. age of them at the moment. So that I taught a late teenage age that I witnessed the senior women's national team has done very, very well over the last few years. So again, you want them to go and you want them to bring the best version of the next level back for the younger ones and for the day today. Players and coaches actually around the place are just opposite the level of everyone's time and again. To close things out today, some sort of, I say quick fire questions, but go crazy if you want to. I'm interested, because I know over the years you've hosted courses for soccer coaches and I've been on a privilege to be involved in that from time to time. So you know, you've helped coaches around the world on various aspects of the game. You've had wonderful people who have presented to your cohort of coaches. I'm sure there's an array of psychological aspects that coaches on your courses talk about as they're challenged. So let me throw a few words at you and I'll be interested to hear from you how you personally deal with these things. Can I interject really briefly? Yeah, sorry mate. Probably you talk about guests and invite people on across probably a hundred webinars I've delivered as part of coach education online. From people like yourself who work in a side social space like current meritor's actor that have played in their academy manager academy coaches, anyone with a niche expertise, probably the most used word has been relationships. Yeah, or so as a hundred and noticeably so. So you know, you go into coaching, thinking about accessing, and actually the thing that comes up with the most is about people and differing all the time relationships with people in the need zone, try them and what I feel as well. But I thought that was really telling from most to my programmes, probably 80% of my programmes are tech tech, I would say, for around 70% of the time that relationship still comes down on top at the time of local moments through the service. Well, okay, so what you've just said there has skewed me in a different direction to what I was going to ask, but just I suppose then to close things out. You know, what kind of ideas, conversations, solutions have been reported, discussed, reflected upon, you know, on your courses when it comes to relationships. What's your favourite pieces of advice or philosophical underpinnings for all those coaches listening in now? I mean, I'd love to get a sort of an overview of what your thoughts are having around relationships, having put on those courses. If frequently comes up, probably the standard one was actually per merch, so per merch, I'd see one of 100 caps for Germany, one of the World Cup, now Academy manager at Arsenal. And her is really, he doesn't have to do what he does, but he does it because he loves it. You know, he could be in the first team somewhere, he could be, probably on the beach somewhere, right? He certainly doesn't have to sort of rock up to my webinars to the level. So it just, it kind of speaks to the man as much as anything, what to hear him say and he would unequivocally say from the two times he's been numerous, that relationships are the most important part of football and developing your players, right? And he would go into, so at Arsenal they have what they call strong non-gunners, which is like a framework. It's effectively a four-corner framework, I would say, that has, that is a sort of mantra, using the right words. And he, he would talk about being tennis and Williams, and work, and more as smile, what's the phrase, where your smile was, which one, whatever it was, so that with instant war, it was such high standards of what he was talking about. You know, he would talk, for example, he would talk about a player and be able to say to a player, look, almost in a, I love you, but if you don't transition quicker, Michele's not going to have the university, and it's as simple as that. Arsenal had lost a couple of players, one in particular, his name, since my mind, that went to Tim and the United this summer. I was spoke with Welsh, or, I think I'm going to be allowed to go to the fuller. So we spoke about Williams, and everybody spoke about him as people first. No one had spoke about, you know, we made an offer to keep him, but not a financial offer, but like a holistic offer to keep him here, but he went there, and with, with, I guess, the role, as a case, in the move that's for pouring the decision. So there was no animosity, there was no kind of, you hear about Roy Keem and Kenny Douglas Mish falling out, because he didn't make that move to Blackburn all those years ago. And that kind of animosity, the traditional football might have set up in, and the answer was very much, you know, we'll do things our way, and we'll give people the best version of us. And if that's not good enough for them, and they need to go elsewhere, to whatever, then it's so weird. But he can talk about, you know, players that would mean taxis get there, you know, young players that might be disadvantaged, and all of you are whatever sort of way. But not putting the taxis on always be to see, and it'll be very grish to get there, and all that sort of stuff. So that's a standout moment. And, you know, there's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, just, we're leaving it sometime. I don't know, that was a great story, that, and, which, you need to be, you need to be, you need to, and these, I call them like, bold moments in our program, even if no one else remembers that, and then I was kind of thinking, you know, the story. But yeah, it's over and over again, there's that work. Yeah, I mean, I can't disagree at all. Those relationships are so so important. Right. What an awesome conversation. It just sounds like you've got sort of a wonderful challenge out there in Bangladesh, and doing a great job and looking forward to seeing Bangladesh become a, a power on the world. Socker, soccer scene. Really looking forward to that. So, as I've mentioned, you've got these courses, and also really important to mention, you've got a pile of books. I know you've got a, do you want to come out soon, but you've got a pile of books. So, how can people find you, follow you, keep track of your courses, purchase a book, yeah, tell us a little bit about all of that. Yeah, so X is probably the best place to find me, so I have power on the score rate. Don't really think I'm very good at marketing. I don't think I'm very good at selling stuff. What I do try to do is just put off then deeply good stuff out there for coaches that all levels to engage with. That's kind of the mantra, I suppose. Yeah, if you find me on X, you'll find the rest pretty soon afterwards. In terms of my books, just today, probably, I'm probably that last proof away from getting that book kind of done just through the system, onto the website, available to buy and all that sort of stuff. So it's coaching through superiors, which goes into tactical, tactical book, but also a workbook for coaches to actually frame these ideas around their own team. It's a bit different, but I like the kind of coaches that I angle with this. And yeah, my other book, "Praying the Warrobe, Penny and Kareny website" or Amazon, probably for more people. You'll find it all there. Hello. Brian, thank you so much for today. Well, thank you, Mason. Thank you for the plug as well. Well, everybody, I really enjoyed that episode and I hope you did too. If you do have any suggestions for me, please do get in touch by x or facebook or through my website, danabrahams.com to tell me what you think of the show and if you do have any suggestions, please do let me know. I'm already looking forward to next week's episode. Bye for now. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Lib Synads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Lib Synads. Go to Lib Synads.com that's L-I-B-S-Y-N ads.com today.