The Gaze Through Psychology: Learn How to Create Learning Environments for Your Football Teams

These pages contain more than 20 years of practical psychology experience in Spanish elite football. During those years, psychologist María Ruiz de Ona has become an expert in developing the potential of the player by developing the potential of the coach through their education and talents. Doing so by travelling a road less travelled during her own educational journey in her role with professional club Athletic Bilbao that expanded over two decades. It is not just another development book, but it invites the reader to break with certain teaching paradigms that are often found in coach and player development and the common means in which these paradigms are imparted by the coach to the player. Here is an opportunity to follow a real living journey of psychology being moulded through time that span over 20 years of experience in football at the highest level. This can become a compass for a coach or a club in their learning that allows them to broaden their spectrum by becoming educators to their players. During this exploration, a thorough analysis of psychology and the trends of psychology within football development will show how the roles of the coach and the psychologist have changed: This work now expands to be able to generate conscious footballers who are participants in their own learning.

"The great evolution that has been achieved through the psychology training of professionals in Lezama (Athletic Bilbao’s Academy), has been to give courage and competence to the many coaches, players, educators and scholars that have and continue to pass through here in their development and doing so by making them excited about their self-learning journey and how this type of psychology can evolve their advancement in their wonderful and important role within a club, this has been one of the many essential themes and principles implemented by María Ruiz de Ona"

In the world of football that is full of uncertainty, pressure and the need to adapt to change, it is essential that coaches foster a culture of learning where a challenging environment is created to develop competitive players. María Ruiz de Oña, a psychologist with 21 years of experience at Athletic Club Bilbao, where she was responsible for the Psychology and Learning Education for coaches and players. This was the beginning of a new learning step for the Club and was in conjunction with her studies and research in Psychology from the University of Deusto. Founding member of AIPAF (International Association of Psychology Applied to Football), currently, María is working in Aspire Academy in Doha, Qatar as the Lead Psychologist for the Football Development & Performance Department. Her main activity in this role is the mentoring-training of the coaches in a project with a philosophy focused on the development of the player while also educating coaches and players on what it is to develop a competitive player in high performance football. María, promotes vital learning to achieve a harmonious, integral and balanced development of the person and the teams through self-knowledge, listening, understanding the words we use, sensitivity, intuition and promoting the valuable learning gained from educating and understanding the gaze through psychology. Her speciality is in group learning as an agent of change and innovation for football clubs and other organisations. In more than 20 years of her experience, María has managed to collaborate professionally with some of the following Clubs and Federations: América de México, Bayer Leverkusen, Rubin Kazan, Villareal, New York City, Premier League, Chilean Football Federation, Italian Federation of Football and Zenit of Saint Petersburg. María has also collaborated in the development of professionals from the management world: Global Zurich, Euskaltel, Forum Manager, Expo Coaching, European University of Madrid, Florida University of Valencia and Victory University (Australia) among others. María, understands that many times 'Everybody wants to change everybody, but they don't want to change themselves, and that change must first happen in ourselves'.

A Sport Psychologist who is from and currently based in Ireland. Since 2015, John has been travelling to Athletic Club Bilbao learning about their Psychology and the Personal Development methods they implement with their coaches and players. That was the first year that John and María started to collaborate, learn, and share psychology concepts and projects with each other in elite football. From such learning opportunities, John was able to apply his Psychology MSc Dissertation to Athletic Club Bilbao's unique approach to developing home-grown players within La Liga. With both María and John having an aligned outlook on development and what this actually means for each person and organisation, it has been a very interesting mentoring relationship in understanding the psychology needed for the development of coaches and players in high performance football. This includes having a strong belief with each other in understanding the function of vulnerability within the player, coach, team and club, and how can it be used to promote learning. While also seeing the importance in helping coaches to face their own fears and blind spots before helping the players to do likewise. This is especially important when María's and John's objective of psychology for a club is to develop the potential of the player through the development of the coach. Over the last number of years, John has been on collaborative learning spaces professionally with some of the following Clubs and Organisations; Arsenal Football Club, Manchester City, Manchester United, Leeds United, Nike Football Academy and FC Bayern Munich. After completing his undergrad degree in Sport & Exercise Science, John completed an MSc in Sport, Exercise & Performance Psychology with both programmes completed at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Currently, John is undertaking a PhD with the Psychology Department at Mary Immaculate College, Ireland where he is investigating what can be achieved when we allow vulnerability to lead and coach us in the learning context of the group as problem-solving on a one-to-one basis may not solve a problem group-wide. This can often be the case in football development when a player gets broken up into different departments and data within a club, meaning there is a chance the player will break. Understanding the vulnerability within these relationships is one of the main pillars of work that María and John collaborate closely on in order to achieve a more concrete and applied framework of research that makes a development impact especially within elite football.