Soccer quotes to think about this holiday season

If you know IQ Football, you know we are passionate about fact-based brain-centred training.  This holiday season will be well-spent if soccer players set their minds on thoughts that will benefit their performance in the new year.

The science behind it

Our brain is incredibly powerful. Our mind can direct our reality. Unfortunately, these kinds of statements have been used in marketing and emotional appeals, often promoting false promises. Even though this is the case, the impact of one’s thoughts on their physical and perceptual reality is well documented by scientific evidence.

As said by Ralph Lewis, M.D., an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, “Thoughts are not ethereal. They are representations of matter and are encoded in matter. They have shape and weight.”

“Our mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around. Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we can control our reactions.” – Dr. Caroline Leaf, communication pathologist and clinical neuroscientist specializing in psychoneurobiology.

“‘Here’s the key: the brain has no access to the world outside. Sealed within the dark, silent chamber of your skull, your brain has never directly experienced the external world, and it never will. Instead, there’s only one way that information from out there gets into the brain. Everything you experience — every sight, sound, smell — rather than being a direct experience, is an electrochemical rendition in a dark theater.’” – The Brain: The Story of You, David Eagleman, neuroscientist, author, and science communicator.

Your brain deciphers the meaning to the electrical signals it receives through your senses. The interpretations come from your subconscious. We interpret the world subjectively from our experiences, things we learned as children, and beliefs about subjects, including ourselves, others, and the world around us. One such example is well documented in the experiments conducted by Frederic Brochet in 2001 at the University of Bordeaux.

“What these wine experiments illuminate is the omnipresence of subjectivity….Our human brain has been designed to believe itself, wired so that prejudices feel like facts, and opinions are indistinguishable from the actual sensations. If we think the wine is cheap, it will taste cheap. And if we think we are tasting a Grand Cru, then we will taste a Grand Cru.” – Jonah Lehrer’s book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist

You can read more about the brain in our three-part blog series: How to unlock the power of your brain, and ignite your Reticular Activating System for football.

This holiday season, enjoy reading through these soccer quotes.

“You have to change from a doubter to a believer. We have to start together now and then we will see what will happen this year.” – Jurgen Klopp

“The most important quality a player can have is not skill, but mentality.” – Jose Mourinho

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice, and most of all, love of what you are doing.” – Pelé

“Confidence is a massive part of success in football. If you believe in yourself and your team, you can achieve anything.” – Rio Ferdinand

 “You can have all the ability in the world, but if you don’t have the right attitude, you’ll never be a great player.” – Dwight Yorke

“Keep working, even when no one is watching” – Alex Morgan

“I’d rather fail while trying to be brilliant, than succeed being mediocre.” – Samuel Eto’o.

“Success is not permanent and failure is not fatal.” – Sir Alex Ferguson

 “Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.” – Johan Cruyff

“To be a good soccer player, you need to be able to see the game in slow motion. You need to be able to see the spaces and be two steps ahead of your opponents.” – Gerd Muller

“You can learn a lot from losing. You can learn how to handle disappointment and come back stronger the next time.” – Marco Van Basten

“I always believed in myself and in my qualities, even when others didn’t.” – Luka Modric

“You can’t win every game, but you can always learn from your losses and improve.” – Carlo Ancelotti

“I always believed in pushing myself to be the best I could be, and that hard work and determination would pay off. I learned that success in football is not just about talent, but also about putting in the effort to improve every day.” – Thierry Henry

“I have only one understanding of development and of making success, and that’s by going step by step.” – Jurgen Klopp

“It needs time. Nobody wants to hear it, but that’s the truth: if you want to have success in the future, you have to be ready to work now.” – Jurgen Klopp

“I’ve never scored a goal in my life without getting a pass from someone else.” – Abby Wambach

“You’re going to make mistakes in life. It’s what you do after the mistakes that counts.” – Brandi Chastain

References

https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/finding-purpose/201902/what-actually-is-a-thought-and-how-is-information-physical#:~:text=Thoughts%20are%20not%20ethereal.,from%20more%20concrete%20sensory%20representations.

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Frederic-Brochet-2029425754