Mentality: Its Your Brain That Matters

In mentality section, we will discuss the brain part of the game. This is the hardest part to train since it requires a lot of understanding through practice and experience. But dont worry. That is why The FIFA Blog is here for you ^^




Normally we have the perception that those who can perform amazing movement such as Ronaldo dribbling skills or Lampard amazing long shot will win the game. Like for example if you can do "360" movement or unblockable crosses its consider as an amazing thing. But unfortunately football doesnt just revolve on 1 thing. It involves everything.




I learn this during WCG Grand Final 05 in Singapore. In the quarter final im going against Troll from Austria. He is very strong and he beat Gel (Malaysia No.1) in the group stage eventually top the group. Everyone regard him as the favourite of the tournament because his ability to do his crosses almost 100%.




During the quarter finals, i already had a plan in my mind to play mind games with him. Since i know he depends a lot in his crosses, i just let him come in the danger zone and just wait to block his crosses. Everytime i saw his ready to do his cross, i start my defensive movement to stop him. The 1st game prove that my strategies work when i beat him. But he was also unfortunate because i manage to injured his Henry accidentally. France without Henry is useless.



But in the 2nd game, his crosses still needs to be feared when he manage to trash me 5-1. Luckily it was best of 3 games. So the 3rd game was the decider. He was leading with 2 goals in the 1st half then an unfortunate event happen to me when my Joe Cole got send off for dangerous sliding. Yup im playing with 10 men now. But i've already practice playing with 10 men before in Malaysia because during that time i am well known to be so aggressive that i always get red card in a match.



So i still maintain the same way to defend his crosses thus making him not able to slot any more goals pass my goal. And i revert into an counter attacking tactic everytime he fail to do his crosses. This in the end put him under pressure and he started to do lots of mistakes in the end when i slot my 1st goal in the 2nd half. Then in the last min i manage to get an equalizer goal!



We continue into the extra time with silver goal ruling. From his play he is starting to get frustrated on the draw and start to commit lots of people to attack. And he keeps on doing the same crosses trick which i gladly anticipate to block. He keep on repeating the same cross on and on and on eventhough he know he cant score. It looks like he just had a mind block and i took full advantage of this when i slot the winning goal in extra time. Again i was playing with 10 men.




So as you can see it is not what you can do that matters. Its what your brain can do that matters. So when you play always remember that life dont always go to the strongest or fastest man, but often the man who win is the man who THINKS he can!



So play beautiful football ^^