PSYCHOLOGY IN FOOTBALL

I love betting on live events. I watch the first 10 minutes to get the psychology of the teams and the trends of their performances. Often they can be seen through. Psychology in football is, I believe, one of the most important aspects. I always bring the example of the World Champions' performance at Euro 2008. Italy had a squad as strong as two years ago. The coach was one of the strategically competent professionals in the country, who, in my opinion, did not make any serious mistakes. But all went wrong, however. The team was too weak psychologically.

To understand the psychology in football, you should analyze, analyze and analyze everything you see.

Try the following test.

Pick up a team. Watch the first 10 minutes of their match. And when I say watch, I mean watch registering all of the small details down (the right midfielder is only passing the ball back, the captain yells at players, the coach is not confident, etc.) Then write your conclusions down and name the result you expect. Go on watching the match till the end, writing notes about the milestones. Compare the final outcome and its development with your expectations. What's up?

Now! 1. Did you see the trends through? Then find random occurrences in the match (like a team hitting the post 10 times, an own-goal of a rare stupidity, etc.). Analyze the impact of these occurrences. What if they would not happen? Try to find at least 3 arguments to prove that your expectations were close to fail.

2. If your result did not match with the outcome, analyze the trends of the match. Build a picture of the trends. How did it go? What were the milestones? Then compare them with your expectations. Where did it go wrong? Were your expectations possible to happen AT ALL? Then analyze the impact of random occurrences. How did they affect the outcome.

Isn't life getting more interesting? Then invite me to watch/discuss a match together!

You will actually know everything about the psychology in a given team, if you watch 10 performances of them in a row. After such a study I normally see the trend of a match in 8-9 cases out of 10. An example. There was a period of time I was interested in one of the Belgian League clubs. Before the match started I noticed that there is only one defender sitting on the bench for this team that day. Huh, strange! After just 5 minutes the right defender had already made a couple of serious mistakes. It was so obvious that the guy was not having his best day, that he got substituted after 22 minutes. Substituted by a midfielder, who apparently was not used to play in this position. For 90 minutes the whole team was running back and forth to help their troubled right flank out. Whoever had not become nervous after the early substitution, were already confused after an hour of play. This resulted into a red card. It turned to be one of the worst performances by otherwise a pretty solid team. The opponents kept on crashing and tearing this defense down during the whole match. This was an example of how a small detail in the beginning of a match can become a trend and make its impact on the match overall. I, of course, threw all of my money on the opponent's win.

Another example of how at least 1 result out of 10 is never possible to be seen through. There was a period of time when I was interested in one of the Belgian League clubs. Before the match started I noticed that there is only one defender sitting on the bench for this team that day. Huh, strange! After just 5 minutes the right defender had already made a couple of serious mistakes. It was so obvious that the guy was not having his best day, that he got substituted after 22 minutes. Substituted by a midfielder, who apparently was not used to play in this position. For 90 minutes the whole team was running back and forth to help their troubled right flank out. Whoever had not become nervous after the early substitution, were already confused after an hour of play. This resulted into a red card. It turned to be one of the worst performances by otherwise a pretty solid team. The opponents kept on crashing and tearing this defense down during the whole match. They hit the post for at least 6-7 times, missed a penalty and despite having the extra player advantage never came to celebrate a successful attack. This match ended 0:0.

You are always welcome to suggest me follow some matches together!

And don't bet when your favorite team is playing. Sit back and enjoy the game.

Sincerely,
Love2bet

You probably watched Arsenal-AC Milan yesterday, right? A pure example of psychological weakness from the Italian side. So, as we see, too much confidence/underestimation can also be a psychological weakness in such a match.
Thanks for the reply.
Love2bet

You may also have noticed that the home team were three goals up after about 40 minutes and then failed to score in the remaining 50 minutes of the game. That would suggest that they were too psychologically feeble to capitalise on their initial superiority would it?

Your theory all sounds very clever but it's pretty useless I reckon. I'll be happy for you to prove it to me by analysing the first ten minutes of any game and then telling me how it's going to pan out. How many times do we see games where a team is well on top at the start, hits the woodwork, has a couple of shots saved and it only seems a matter of time before they score. The captain is yelling, the coach is not confident. Ten minutes later the team under the cosh go and score. They even have a term for it, it's called "against the run of play".

This is my subjective opinion on Arsenal vs AC Milan match: the Italians were simply NOT in the mood to play a match. After 10 minutes I could see Milan getting really close to fiasko. Look at the bench, where two (!) goalies are waiting for their chance, look at Mesbah, totally lost in his debut and finally look at the chaos happening in Milan's penalty area right before the first goal. Is this team going to show us a Champions' League masterpiece?

And now take Arsenal before the game: you don't have anything to lose. Just play for the loyal fans, still beleiving in miracle. And then suddenly this trouble happening to them - the break-time coming when the score is 3:0. I knew Arsenal was not going to advance (always easy to confess after the match), because now they already had something to lose. Acknowledgement of this fact makes people cautious. So what Wenger told them during the break was probably to calm down and the 4th goal was going to come on its own. And now you have the outcome: a single dangerous attack in 45 minutes. Milan was still the same rubbish Milan as in the first half. At least during the third quarter, so Arsenal could not be in a better position to go on and score again and again.

Back to the "10 minutes' theory". As I played football professionally, I know that the first minutes decide really lot. Before the match all those 11 opponents are just figures. But the as soon as you get to meet them, you notice that these are absolutely normal human beings, not giants or robots, they smell and bleed. Or the opposite - "ow, this one is stronger than me" and "wow, this one knows how to shoot".

I knew my team. After 10 minutes of play I would already say what would happen. Once we played in a small village away from home and won 7:1. A month later the whole villlage was there. They threw stones on us and booed from the first moment of the match. Everybody was totally scared and so we lost 0:4 that day.

Now I know my favourite team. I watched Juventus' every single match this season. So every time I watch broadcasts from the begginning, I am able to forecast the outcome, at least in 80% of cases. So except from tactics and physical abilities, I am a strong beleiver in psychology, statistics and luck. The last one is exactly what they call "against the run of play", but according to theory of probability, we are not witnessing this very often.

You can find my blogs under the same name in blogger websites.
Love2bet

it's easy enough to prove, just come on this site after ten minutes of any live TV GAME give us your thoughts and predictions.

Simple.

By the way, I'm less than impressed with your claim to be an ex professional footballer. There are ex pro footballers on our tv screens every day of the week. most if them talk utter shit. I get a weekend racing paper ever week and Tim Sherwood gives his tips every week - gives me a right laugh.

Mark Lawrensen gives his predictions for the Bbc every week. Last week he was beaten in a head to hea with Tynchy Stryder (sp?) and. Russell Grant has a higher average score than him with his predictions .

not even making this shit up. These two players have won the toughest league in the world which, I'm guessing, you probably haven't.

@Onedunme: The point of my thread is just opening a discussion and sharing some of my ideas. I don't say I can foresee the future or I am the quickest detail-finder. More, I just want to say, after my example, anybody can be able to forecast at least the approximate outcome of almost every match. That's it. In addition, I have a blog, where I share with my readers the ways I bet and what I think about this and that event. So again, the point is not to show how cool I am, or earn money or whatever the goal could be.

In my initial post I suggest (and I still do) you and everybody else to invite me watch a match together, share the pictures we see and try to build a theory of how the match is going to end. I think we can have lots of fun.

@slick: you can never deny the cycles. It's even normal to have those cycles as a part of tactics for a particular match.

And of course, the idea is brilliant. Sign me up for Serie A!

See you here on Saturday 1245 for the Bolton QPR game.

Let's do it

Well I really wish u were here for this game Love2bet because it is a prime example of what garbage your theory is. Bolton pissed all over Qpr for the first ten minutes plus only for QPR to take control after about fifteen minutes and hit the bar and have a perfectly good goal not given .

With 25 minutes gone the game has now settled back into an even affair which is what Slick is saying about games going in cycles. Nobody could possibly predict how this game will end based on the first ten, twenty or twenty five minutes of the game.

And I once won an egg and spoon race at infants school.

36 mins gone, 1-0 Bolton.

I've never been a pro footballer either. But, my sports teacher did once take me aside to tell me I could be if I wasn't lacking ability, pace, strength, tactical understanding and the mental will to win. I did get to play for the school team though when they couldn't find anyone else to go in goal.

Talking about psychology, the ref and linesmen know that they've fucked up. What's the chances of them "evening up" that fuck up with a pen or sending off eh?

Well that didn't take long QPR level with an offside goal.

In fairness, I like Gary Neville's analysis but I didn't think the decision was as clear cut as he's making it out to be.

Hi guys,

I see I missed a pretty interesting match there. Unfortunately I only have the chance to watch some of the Premier League matches every week.

But let's get back to slick's idea. How many of you are interested? Any suggestions how to develop the idea?

And Gerrard has scored top tipping Treath