Track Record
We have walked into dressing rooms in freefall.
13 professional clubs, more than 800 athletes, over a decade on the ground.
A week at the club, individual interviews with everyone, a diagnosis with names and causes, and daily work with whoever is blocked. The coach leaves knowing exactly what to say, to whom and why.
Not one hour of this week is spent in a room motivating people. This is the real calendar.
No group meeting. The first day is individual, because in a crisis nobody says in a full dressing room what they say alone in a room.
This is where a crisis stops being a feeling and becomes a diagnosis with names, dates and causes.
We don't stop the technical staff's work. We go in through it.
An intervention that leaves a club dependent on us has failed. The point is to leave method behind.
Everything this week produces was built to be used the following Monday, by the people who are there every day.
Who is in decline, since when and why. Per athlete, with the concrete cause identified, not a general impression.
Technical staffWho the group actually follows, which affinities exist, where the latent tensions are and who pulls whom.
Staff and boardWhat works and what blocks with each one: which approach to use, in what tone, and what to avoid saying.
Head coachWhat the staff says to the group and to each individual, on each day of the match week.
Technical staffThe 3 to 5 athletes where the return is immediate, so effort isn't spread across twenty-five people at once.
Head coachWhat happens after we leave, week by week, with criteria for knowing whether it is working.
ClubThe motivational talk fails because it speaks to the group as if it were one person, doesn't identify who is blocked or why, and ends before any change sets in.
Five straight defeats, poor body language, the feeling that the coach had lost the dressing room. The internal reading was a lack of attitude, and the decision on the table was to change coach.
Nine players mentioned, without being asked about it, the same meeting six weeks earlier. Two of them, neither wearing the armband, had stopped believing in the plan that day, and they were the ones the group followed.
Neither was an attitude problem. One needed to know why before executing, and that meeting had given orders without reasons. The other needed recognition and had been corrected in front of the group on the same day.
Daily individual work with both across the week, and a conversation between them and the coach prepared with us sentence by sentence: the why explained to one, the recognition given privately to the other. Zero talks to the squad.
The coach's effort stopped being spread across twenty-five people and gained two concrete targets. Shifting those two pulled the group, because they were the ones the group listened to.
13 professional clubs, more than 800 athletes, over a decade on the ground.
The earlier we come in, the more games are left. Tell us in two lines what is happening and we'll tell you whether an intervention makes sense.