Dan Abrahams interview — Scott Skinner

This is an interview with sports psychologist Dan Abrahams from 2014 for the first issue of Eleven magazine

Dan Abrahams, one of the UK’s leading sports psychologist, combines his time as lead psychologist for England Golf with helping managers and players tackle the mental side of football. Here, he discusses helping Carlton Cole go from West Ham's reserves to the England squad, the techniques that help players consistently find their ‘ideal performance state’ and the mental strength of Luis Suarez

Scott Skinner: What drew you to sports psychology?

Dan Abrahams: I was a professional golfer and played the mini tours around Europe. One of the things that let me down was the mental aspects of the game, thinking under pressure, my ability to focus and deal with distractions and to develop confidence and self-belief within the game. When I finished playing I started coaching and started becoming more interested in the psychology of the game. So, I went to university and did a degree in psychology and a Masters in sports psychology and then, about a decade ago, I decided to specialise in sports psychology. I moved away from golf coaching and into football, and it has taken off from there.

SS: Was the shift from the psychology of golf to football a difficult one?

DA: Not really. There are two sides to it. There’s the off-course/off pitch and then there’s the on course/on pitch. Football is a very psychological sport – on and off the pitch depending on the level you’re competing at. At all levels it’s very psychological on the pitch. When people say, how can football be psychological because it’s a very instinctive sport, that’s a misunderstanding of the structure and function of the brain.

I always say at workshops and presentations that football works in seconds, but the brain works in milliseconds. The brain trumps football for speed every single time, so whenever you’re watching your favourite team compete, those players are constantly judging their situation. Their brains are throwing out thoughts and feelings as they compete, so if they go a goal down, or make a mistake, or there’s a refereeing decision they don’t like, they react to that in the moment. That makes a difference to how they feel and subsequently how they perform.

“Football works in seconds, but the brain works in milliseconds. The brain trumps football for speed every single time”

The game is very psychological and what a lot of people don’t appreciate in professional football is that your career is very much out of your control. Your face might not fit or your manager might play a certain system that doesn’t suit your style of game. For example, you might have a manager come in who plays a very direct style of football that bypasses the midfield. If you’re a midfield playmaker your days are pretty much numbered. I also deal a lot with young footballers. You’ve got 16-21 year olds who have a great deal of ability but feel quite helpless because they look up at the first team and say, 'well, how do I make it'? It becomes a very psychological situation.

Clearly, in a sport like golf, on the course there’s more time to think and there’s a great psychological aspect there – you’re out on your own and can’t depend on teammates. But as a golfer you don’t have to become a great communicator. You don’t have to have great interpersonal skills – and a lot of them don’t – so leadership becomes less of a factor. So, there’s a whole range of social intelligence that doesn’t need to be there in golf. And in golf, by and large, you pay your entrance fees and go play.

As a professional golfer you can find a tour to go and play on – it might be on a lower level than the European and US tour but you can go play. So, every sport has its different psychological challenges and every sportsperson – no matter their level – has their different psychological challenges, so it really is relevant across all sports and all levels.

SS: How important a part of your work is helping players with their confidence levels?

DA: It’s one factor. I’m helping players to compete in what we might call their ideal performance state. I split it into two really. I may have the player who comes to me and says they have a problem. It might be an off-pitch problem; it might be an on-pitch problem.

You might also have other players who are happy with their performances and are quite good mentally but want to improve. You might be dealing with psychological constructs such as confidence or focus or helping players play more consistently in their ‘ideal performance state’, their ‘zone’ or ‘sweet spot’.

You also might help a player structure their training better or organise themselves better and set themselves performance and developmental goals. It’s very important not to define sports psychology in a narrow range. That’s one of the burdens you have as a sports psychologist. You have some coaches and managers that will consider themselves the sports psychologist. They absolutely will do psychology within their role but that’s a very narrow definition of psychology – it’s a very wide-ranging subject area from basic performance skills all the way through to leadership, team building and organisational challenges within football clubs.

“It’s very important not to define sports psychology in a narrow range”

SS: Some of your more public success stories have been with players like Carlton Cole and Anthony Stokes…

DA: Yeah. Those are quite old case studies now. The challenge you have as a sports psychologist is that you work with a lot of high-profile sportspeople but more often than not it’s under a confidentiality agreement. But sometimes you have players who permit you to share details.

I suppose my most famous case study would be Carlton Cole. I started working with Coley back in August 2007 when he was languishing in the West Ham reserve team. He had made his way from the Chelsea Academy to West Ham, and I think West Ham were about to get rid of him. The people around him said to me, can you help this guy? Can you help him develop his mental skills so his performances become better and more consistent? After 18 months of hard work on his mental skills he got a call from Fabio Capello and was called into the England side.

I suppose a more up-to-date case study would be Yannick Bolasie who plays for Crystal Palace on the wing. He hit the headlines at the end of last season with some sensational performances, particularly against Liverpool. He was the real instigator in the side that came back from 3-0 with 12 minutes to play to draw 3-3. He was a real catalyst for that performance. He also had great games against Manchester City and Chelsea and other high-profile matches.

At the beginning of last season I was asked by people around Yannick to help him. It was his first year as a Premiership player and they asked, can you help this very skilful player develop a Premier League mentality? So we worked hard together and continue to work hard to develop his mindset when he is competing on a Premier League pitch. And it really all came together in those games.

A big thing for Yannick was that the big games made him feel tight and tense – he needed help to relax. So we worked on some things and helped him achieve a high-performance at the end of last season. And he’s started okay this season as well. It’s something that all footballers should be addressing.

SS: How responsive have clubs really been to address the mental side of football?

DA: Clubs are slow to address it. There are now a few clubs working in this area but hopefully more will start to deliver because footballers really do need it. Managers and coaches use psychology within their role, but they are not sports psychologists per se. In League 1, League 2 and non-league they have some support, but it’s often psychologists giving away their expertise for free because there’s not a lot of finance there. There are an awful lot of young psychologists who start out thinking, 'I’ll give it away for free and it’ll be a stepping stone to greatness in the Premier League', and never really works that way.

But the bigger clubs are starting to pay attention. People like myself having some success and writing books [which has raised the profile of sports psychology] and made it simple for coaches, managers and players to understand. Obviously, you’ve got Dr Steve Peters, who’s become the most high-profile person out there. And Brendan Rodgers bringing it in [has also helped]. I’ve got a lot of time for Rodgers because he said, look I do this psychology, I am a psychologist within my role but I know where my limitations are and know that I don’t know everything that my players will need some of the.

“Clubs are slow to address it. There are now a few clubs working in this area but hopefully more will start to deliver because footballers really do need it. Managers and coaches use psychology within their role, but they are not sports psychologists per se”

At Liverpool at the moment you’ve got Daniel Sturridge, Joe Allen, Jordan Henderson, Raheem Sterling and Steven Gerrard who have said that, from time-to-time, they see Steve and it helps. It’s good to have somebody who can help me with your football but doesn’t necessarily sit there and judge you.

The thing a lot of managers and coaches forget is that they’re key decision makers. How many players are going to go to a key decision maker and say ‘gaffer I’m not very confident right now’. Clearly they’re not going to do it. The dynamic is there to have more sports psychologists involved. But also from my perspective, it does require sports psychologists to know how to deliver this stuff. And quite often sports psychologists don’t often know how to speak the language of football. So we need to be better at doing that.

I know Swansea have someone full time now. Sam Allardyce had somebody part time at West Ham. So it’s getting bigger and football is opening up its mind. And it has to if we are really going to start producing better players.

E: How do you approach about your work with managers – focusing on the psychological side of their job?

DA: My second book Soccer Brain very much targeted managers and coaches. The dynamic between player and coach, player and manager and coach and staff is a very psychological one. For coaches and managers it’s about setting up a culture of high performance. And again going back to Brendan Rodgers, that’s one thing he does. He has produced a culture of high performance – a culture where players can deliver under pressure.

In Soccer Brain I talk about developing a culture of creativity, a culture of confidence, a culture of competitiveness and a culture of cohesion. And all of those elements are really important. The coaching qualifications and badges are a start, but then it’s about bringing in expertise around you to be able to develop your coaching culture. So we help coaches communicate with their players, put the right processes in place and help players develop as individuals. All that stuff is very important and good managers have good people around them that help them do that.

SS: Can you give an example of the types of mental exercises you give players as you approach match day?

DA: The one thing I could pinpoint would be developing what I call a ‘match script’. When you speak to players and ask them what they are trying to achieve, strikers usually say they are trying to score and goalkeepers are trying to keep a clean sheet. And generally you hear, ‘I’m trying to win’. The problem with all of those things is that they’re uncontrollable and they do tend to tap the brain’s stress response. So, I’m a striker and my main goal is to score a hat-trick, and after 75 minutes without scoring I start to get anxious and stressed. Or I’m a goalkeeper and my goal is to keep a clean sheet and I go one-nil down. The last thing I want as a coach is for my goalkeeper to get stressed because he’s gone a goal down and his goal was to keep a clean sheet. As a team as a whole you can go one or two goals down but still win the game.

What we have to do is scaffold down our objectives in any game. So, yes have an objective to win, or to score, or keep a clean sheet, but it’s very much asking yourself a question of how – how do I do that? That’s where I help players develop a match script. For a striker a match script might be threefold. Number one might be constant movement.

“What we have to do is scaffold down our objectives in any game. So, yes have an objective to win, or to score, or keep a clean sheet, but it’s very much asking yourself a question of how – how do I do that? ”

Number two might be terrorising the six-yard area – always looking to get into that area. A third one might be always looking for space. It sounds exceptionally obvious and you might be thinking, well don’t most footballers do this already, but they genuinely don’t. They just go into a game with an objective of trying to win. And what we’re trying to do as psychologists is to ask what are the controllables? What are the tangible things you can do? By doing that you help players manage their emotions and help a striker stay focused. If a striker misses a great chance and starts to have thoughts like,' it’s not going to happen for me today, I’m having a nightmare, I’m going to get hauled off'. We say, 'stop, keep constantly moving, keep looking for space, keep terrorising the six-yard area'.

That’s why I call it a match script – it’s a script that you want a player to stick to no matter what. If a striker has a world-class defender that is constantly on him and not giving him any space he’s got a choice. He can start thinking negatively or he can start speaking to himself about what he should be doing. And say to himself come on, keep working, keep looking for that space, keep going to the final whistle.

Again, it sounds very obvious but under pressure when you’ve got to perform well and you have 50,000 people in the stadium looking at you and judging you, you need that match script to come back to. People are very quick to judge footballers and boo them for their performances. It’s a very oppressive atmosphere and that’s where people like myself come along and give players strategies like a match script that helps calm their mind, helps relax their body, helps them focus on the controllables and helps them deal with the stresses, strains and anxieties that come to the fore during a match.

“People are very quick to judge footballers and boo them for their performances. It’s a very oppressive atmosphere and that’s where people like myself come along”

SS: In many ways the crowds themselves could do with some coaching to understand the negative effect they can have on players. Some players can cope with that pressure but others suffer…

DA: Quite often players have a great deal of ability but they don’t necessarily have the soft skills to deal with it. They have the hard skills but they don’t have the soft skills and that’s what a lot of coaches – particularly in the academies – don’t appreciate. They are becoming more open minded now but it was once believed that you couldn’t develop that mental toughness. But that’s so far from the truth it’s unbelievable.

The question is how much of it can you get. Can you take a player that is really susceptible to pressure and help him or her become very mentally tough? That requires a lot of skill on the sports psychologist’s part and depends on how much exposure you get and the willingness of the footballer to learn. In terms of the crowds' my attitude is two-fold. I would say to supporters that you do make an impact and you do make a difference.

And don’t think for one minute that the players don’t hear you. I’ve dealt with players who have played in front of big crowds. Actually, funnily enough it’s in League 1 and League 2 where they hear it more because of the smaller crowds and smaller stadiums – you are hearing individual voices. But in the big stadiums they do still hear the fans. The techniques we work on are about ignoring the boos or derogatory chants and shifting thoughts back to your own game.

I won’t mention clubs and names but there is a consultancy that worked with a Premier League club back in the mid-1990s and they went on the tannoy before the game and said: ‘The manager and coaching staff are working on something new with their team with a new formation and today is going to be a challenge bedding it in. What we need from you the supporters is your incredible support irrespective of what happens.’ What this guy said to me was that the police basically holding the on-off switch of the tannoy in case he said something insightful, which obviously he did but it’s purely about sports psychology.

Maybe clubs in the future might use match day programme as a medium to get across certain messages to fans. I don’t think clubs use supporters or communicate with fans well enough. I think if clubs communicated their long-term vision with supporters and broke that down into five-year, three-year and annual plans we’d see sustainability within management and I think we’d see supporters get on side.

SS: You work a lot with players’ body language. How does making a conscious shift in your body language affect your performance?

DA: Scientific research in the last five years has come out to suggest that as much as your psychology affects your physiology, so your physiology affects your psychology. There’s been some great research out of Harvard University that’s demonstrated that people who demonstrate great body language for a period of time – say two minutes – manage their hormones which mediates their performance. So, if I hold a certain pose for two minutes called a power pose, I’ll start to release testosterone and dopamine and performance chemicals that make a difference to my ability to perform.

It stands to reason that you can take this research and spread it into football. If a player starts performing poorly they start to become very flat footed, they don’t open their shoulders as much so they’re not getting a 360 degree picture around them and are not going to anticipate as quickly. They don’t know where to move into, they don’t know the movement of their teammates and the opposition. They’re flat footed and are not going to move into space. This works on a very subtle level. They don’t quite get into position and are just that half-second or half a yard slower but it can be invisible to the naked eye.

Body language for me is a non-negotiable with my clients. They have to work on their body language every single day. I think it’s a great strength of my consultancy and I work on it hard with every client. I'm very confident that you could give me any player in England and I could help them develop their body language and they would improve as a player. I’m not saying I could turn every player into Lionel Messi but you can improve them by a few per cent. In Soccer Brain I talk about a technique I call ‘BAM’, an acronym for ‘Body Action Move’. If a footballer makes a mistake – BAM – Body. Action. Move. Get your body language right. Take action and move into a different position or jump up and down – just do something, get on your toes. This is something that works so well. Body language is huge.

“Body language for me is a non-negotiable with my clients. They have to work on their body language every single day”

SS: The negative side of body language was apparent when Sunderland were recently beaten 8-0 by Southampton. You could see, even at three or four nil, that some Sunderland players had already given up. Their shoulders dropped, they weren’t chasing after loose balls…

DA: The big problem you’ve got there is that Sunderland may go down on goal difference. Nowadays when you’ve got an amount of money depending on where you finish in the league, Sunderland might finish 11th instead of 10th by two goals and they’ve lost half a million pounds or whatever it is – money that could be spent on the Academy. I get worked up while I’m talking about it. I find it incredibly short sighted when clubs think this stuff works at too subtle a level or they can’t be bothered to address it. Or think that players know it anyway or the coach thinks he’s such a goddamn expert in sports psychology.

I’m sorry but I think it’s a pretty poor show that that’s what the Sunderland players did – I’m not affiliated to a club so I can say what I damn well like. It’s a poor reflection on the coaching staff and the manager. If he (Gus Poyet) doesn’t understand what’s happening at a subtle level then he’s not good enough at what he does.

SS: At 3-0, 4-0 you’ve got to keep fighting because a humiliating and demoralising 8-0 defeat can set a team back months. It must be incredibly difficult to recover from that and could affect the team for rest of the season.

DA: But it’s very difficult to maintain positive body language on the pitch when you go three, four, five nil down. The maxim I use in sports psychology is very much in line with simple and easy. When I work with someone I say to them that everything we’re going to talk about is really simple – good body language, good self talk, match script etc. It’s simple but it’s not always easy to apply. But the guys who are champions are the ones who apply it quickly, at the right time, in the right moment and under pressure. And that’s the difference.

SS: Success can often breed a confidence – or even arrogance – that spreads throughout the team and makes them extremely difficult to beat. Within British football it was a huge part of the Liverpool teams of the 1980s, Manchester United under Alex Ferguson or Rangers in the late 1980s and 1990s. These teams, even when they didn’t play well, were incredibly difficult to beat. A supreme confidence seemed to carry them through. That must be a difficult to dynamic to create.

DA: The best sports people win ugly. I’m currently at a meeting with England’s golfers and we were talking today about winning ugly. I was asking if golfers play 60 competitive rounds a year how many times will they bring their A-game out, how many rounds will they have their B-game, their C and their D. And the answer is there is a whole pile of Cs and Ds, but you have to deal with it. It’s the same with footballers.

In a season of 38 league games how many games are going to be A-games when the team is absolutely on song? How many are B, How many are C? How many are D? The best teams are the ones who when they are on their D-game are going to lose narrowly or draw. C they’re going to draw or win, B they’re going to draw or win and A they’re going to win. It’s taking care of the C and D games – that requires a great structure and culture.

The obvious person to mention here is Sir Alex Ferguson who whether by accident or design created an incredible culture of high performance and a winning mentality. That is a complex thing in itself. That was also happening for many years at Ibrox, whether under Graeme Souness or those who came in after him. That permeates for a period of time. That is why it’s going to be fascinating to watch what happens at Manchester United because it’s arguable that Sir Alex [should have] had a year with David Moyes under him so he kept the same type of culture. It will be interesting to see, irrespective of the tactical might that Louis van Gaal brings to the table. Club culture is so important. When you have people like Eric Steele the goalkeeping coach who learned Spanish to deal with David de Gea, Rene Meulensteen, one of the best skills coaches on the planet, Mike Phelan who had been there for years – you had a culture of success, a culture of continuity, a feeling of this is how we do it, this is Manchester United. That all changed as soon as Moyes took the helm.

Now, Van Gaal might come in and it might work, it might be brilliant. Tactical nous is one thing but it’s not the whole picture, especially in British football that tends to be a little bit naïve and ignorant when it comes to tactics and a little bit more muscle and brute and puff. So it’ll be very interesting.

SS: How would you tackle the problem of the dreaded subject of penalty shootout? Have you helped teams address this?

DA: Absolutely and as lead psychologist for England Golf and having been a pro golfer myself I’m something of a dead ball specialist. Every shot in gold is a dead-ball shot, where players are working every single day on their routine. Because it’s your routine that holds up under pressure. What you do with a footballer is to try and establish a pre-penalty routine.

If it's in the World Cup and you’re having to walk from the halfway line, it starts with your walk, your body language, picking your target and knowing exactly what you are going to do. The problem comes when players are in two minds and fall into the wrong state [of mind]. And that makes a difference to how well they strike the ball, the way they direct the penalty, the power of the penalty and the direction, It causes havoc. England have Steve Peters to help them in general.

But quite why it has taken people years to [use psychological techniques] is just beyond me because [England’s penalty record] has been so appalling. Again it’s simple and easy. It would be simple to execute on the training ground. Would it be easy for them to do in the heat of battle? It would be easier for some than others. But very relevant to what we as psychologists do.

SS: Who are the players that look like they have the mental side of the game sorted? Who approaches the game in the correct manner?

DA: It’s very difficult to say. Rule number one in psychology is never assume somebody’s mind-set. It would be obvious for me to say people like Sergio Aguero and Diego Costa – guys who are currently on song [but] the best players don’t always have the best mentality. Costa has come along and it’s working for him right now. It’ll be interesting to see what he does when he goes on a barren run.

You can look at Luis Suarez and say how horrendous he was mentally, but in many ways [you can say] how brilliant he was mentally. He has a slight affliction in a certain area of his game but in many respects he was brilliant mentally. So I could sit here and say how good was Suarez mentally? He was just relentless on the pitch. He defended from the front, he was a nuisance for defenders and he could score. He was skilful and he could score so you could say mentally he was good – to be relentless in the pitch is hard. But he had that maladaptive way of thinking that led to his biting.

There’s probably a whole list of players who are mentally strong who have reached their level - they’re never going to be a Gareth Bale. Mindset is multi-dimensional and it’s very interesting to be able to say Suarez had his problems but boy on the pitch, in many respects, what a great mentality. It was just that one flaw. Costa looks the same – he moves defenders and defends from the front. He could easily say, bugger this for a game of soldiers, I’m going to stroll around a bit, score my goal and that’s it. But he’s got the whole thing – and that’s hard to do mentally.

“Mindset is multi-dimensional and it’s very interesting to be able to say Suarez had his problems but boy on the pitch, in many respects, what a great mentality”

I think there’s been so many players in the Premiership that probably have had quite limited ability but they get the most from their ability because they are tough and focused and deal with distractions quickly. Some of the most mentally tough players I’ve dealt with play in League 2.

SS: Do you help players integrate into new teams. I guess for some players the dressing room can be an intimidating place.

DA: Absolutely. I’ve been asked to help with that. It’s something that clubs have to continue to address. Sometimes I question whether clubs have the right people in place to do that. They have welfare officers – people who get them settled in. But I think there’s a lot of aftercare that doesn’t go on that needs to. What a lot of clubs have become keen on doing over the years has been trying to identify talent but they don't necessarily help players maintain their talent. Just because someone plays very well on the pitches in Brazil or in La Liga or wherever, they come to England and it's a new location, a new language, a new life, a change of food, all kinds of things. Even from a football perspective, it’s a different pace, a different mentality, different stadia. I have systems where I can help clubs help players take the game they had at their old club and bring it into their new environment.

SS: Are clubs across world and European football ahead of Britain in terms of understanding the psychological side of the game?

DA: The popular answer would be yes we lag behind, but it’s very mixed. I think it’s quite mixed across the board. I do quite a lot of work in Turkey and they’ve got hardly anything out there. They do use various people but the quality of the psychology is poor. I’m off to Spain in a couple of weeks and a lot of the clubs out there use a psychologist at Academy and first-team level. Sports psychology is a young and growing discipline and globally clubs, coaches, managers, players are started to become more acquainted in this area.