There are two kinds of feedback. Process feedback where the current process returns to a previous step and behavioral change feedback. Both kinds of feedback are important to football, although feedback as a way of changing behavior is the most well known within football. Feedback has first been introduced in cybernetics in forties. Any system…

To be blunt: formations do not exist. Why would formations not exist? Everyone is using the concept of formations in football. So at least formations seems to exist. And in a simple way formations do exist. Formations exist as a word, a term used in football and as a concept. But concepts are abstractions. Concepts…

Fooled by Randomness is a famous book by Nassim Taleb. As it turns out it is quite difficult for humans to overcome their tendency to see patterns and not get fooled by randomness. In a player report created by a consultancy agency explained how a defender in de Premier League had a 0.11 goal scored…

Hypnosis in sport has not been an unequivocal success. Research is inconclusive. For some participants hypnosis doesn’t work and for others it works very well. So well in fact that the performance of certain individuals rises so much that statistical analysis is pointless and that it seems as if these people gain superpowers. (The Oxford…

Instrumental learning is one of the three ways the brain learns. The other two being imprinting and associative learning. Whereas your brain creates a probabilistic relation between two experiences with associative learning, with instrumental learning your brain creates a probabilistic relationship between your behavior and what your behavior gets you. In football excellent associative learning…

Intentionality is not a real existing thing. Intentionality is an abstract concept that has very little use and a lot of downside. The concept of intentionality has been thought up by Brentano. Intentionality is about the aboutness of our mental states. The problem with this concept is that there are no mental states and our…

Motivation doesn’t exist as a real thing. Motivation is an abstract concept. And as with all abstract concepts, one has to consider whether its use has any value. The concept of motivation is a double edged sword. When used correctly the concept of motivation can help you a lot to motivate players. If used wrongly,…

There is no such thing as objectivity. Everything, except for math and formal logic, is subjective. Nevertheless, this is one of the most difficult things to grasp for people as everyone is raised in a society that praises objectivity so much. So please bear with me. It is going to be a wild ride. Yet,…