The Mind Game

Liverpool FC, you just can’t stop winning, can you.  You just can’t stop winning those football matches.  It’s getting to a point now where I may actually begin to suspect you don’t accept anything else.  ‘Consistency’ used to be a strange and unfamiliar concept to you, but now you seem to have assimilated it into your system exactly when you needed to.  When we needed you to.  You have set your mind to something – you have found your direction and purpose – and we love you for it.

We’re approaching the middle of March and Liverpool FC are yet to lose a league game this year.  Seven wins and two draws.  I know absolutely nothing about being a professional footballer, but I suspect being on a winning streak or an undefeated streak does the same thing for professionals as it does for non-professionals.  Every game that passes removes them from the immediate feeling of losing – the feeling of failure.

The only time I’ve experienced something similar as a footballer was when playing for my local youth team.  Right from when we were kids we were good, but as the years went by we became really good – up to the point where we were arguably the best team in the region.  Winning games became a habit.  It got to the point where we never spoke about whether we’d win or lose, or whether or not our opponents were any good.  It was always ‘How much do you reckon we’ll win by today? This lot look useless, I’m bagging at least three today’.

Little by little, game by game, you develop an aura of invincibility.  You forget what losing feels like; it transforms from a niggling fear to an absurd idea you don’t even entertain.  You laugh at it.  Right from the moment you meet up with your teammates, you just see it on everyone.  The collective sense of calm, the confidence balancing on the verge of arrogance.

I hope the Liverpool players feel the same way now as I did back then.  As we did back then.  The complete confidence in your teammates to do their job and the genuine belief that we are the better team, no matter who is standing in the opposite half before the whistle is blown.

It allows them to focus solely on their job, which is the state of mind every professional athlete strives for.  Being ‘in the zone’ is about eliminating factors that take your mind off what matters: the job.  Remove the doubts and the fear – remove the concern you have about your opponent – and you’re left with a pure focus that allows you to just be there and do your thing.

What Liverpool have done since the back-to-back losses against Manchester City and Chelsea is to fill up those reserves of confidence and self-belief, hopefully up to a point where the fear of losing has been exterminated.  Bogey teams have been eliminated, potential losses or draws have been turned to victories.  Players and manager have faced adversity and come out on top.

We’re down to the final ten games now.  There’s not much more football coaching to be done – it’s all about managing the mentality of the players now.  If Brendan Rodgers can keep his squad in this collective state of mind from now and until the rest of the season, the improbable can be done.