Inside Pippo's head

Yeah, the new season is about to kick off and things dont look erm.......peachy! Make no mistake my fellow Milanista, this season will be hard on us all and for some I fear this may be the worst you will have ever experienced as the Mighty Lion of Football appears to be mortally wounded. Would it be safer to consider this coming season a complete washout before a ball has even been kicked?

Is it fair to write off any chance of having a good season based on what we have experienced so far considering we have managed to ship guys like Balo, Binho and Constant with Armero, Alex & Menez making up vacated spaces and a change in formation is on the horizon? Before you rush off to the Bayern or Real Madrid online shop don't forget the one main difference this term will be our new coach, yeah, my old friend Pippo Inzaghi is in charge now but it's ok......you can call him MISTER!

I dont like to mention it really but I've met Pippo once and we go waaaaay back and I'm sure he wont mind me telling you that when Pippo was studying for his coaching badge he had to submit a football thesis and thought I would let you in on what goes on inside that beautifully groomed head of his.

As we will all have witnessed recently, a coach such as Athleti's Simone or Costa Rica's Pinto can compensate for a squads overall lack of uber talent and have them punching above their weight via an understanding of football, the correct application of ideas and translating these to the field of play which is why I have high hopes that once the season kicks off our best addition this mercato (read Pippo) will help carry this team as a coach in the same manner he once did as a player.

You want to know what the title of his thesis was? A Mentality For Being A Winner. Yeah, you read that right, this is Pippo Inzaghi after all, I mean think about it, what else would Pippo write about apart from the unstoppable force and constant desire to keep going and carry on until you get the result you want to achieve!? He sure as sh#t wasn't going to write  about the merit of Vanishing Spray (but I wouldnt have marked you down if you had suggested The Art of Beating the Offside Trap). So what does he talk about?

Well in the 1st part he talk about Experience, Philosophies and Theories which cover such things as the right characteristics of a manager such as:

Know: Have culture, knowledge of limits, sense and scope of activities that he undertakes.

Know How To Do: He'll know how to translate knowledge and culture into practice.

Know How To Give: In all environments of interpersonal human relations, in an exchange of information, in the ability to transmit and the essential capacity of 'knowing how to give attention' and 'knowing how to be in the moment.'

Value: To have personality and values to transmit. The manager is an example for the entire team and coaching staff. And above all, he'll be able to influence, in a special way, behaviour.

He also goes onto define The Psychology of Success where Pippo sums up a discussion based on concepts from various psychologists and shows a link between success and psychology and establishing that the two are inherently interlinked. He dismisses luck going as far as saying "Our 'luck' is the development of our abilities and relationships to the maximum extent as is possible" i.e he wasn't "lucky" all those times he broke an opposition's offside trap, he was just that bloody good!

He even goes into discussing what he believes is the The mechanism of success where he talks quite positively by stating Everything that happens in life offers the possibility to be considered as a winner and goes onto say that making mistakes themselves is ok and is in fact part of the learning process It is possible to learn from every experience by using past experiences in order to obtain a pattern of growth. He takes it even deeper by getting into topics such as the the Locus of Control where he outlines how persons with a positive outlook on life tend to feel like that they are in control and the opposite leads to A life permeated by a sense of victimization and impotence that degenerates into self-defeat - Why always me indeed!

In a following section he discusses how some of these theories can be implemented in day to day scenarios by detailing his beliefs in motivation and related processes of self motivation and self confidence. Victory is noble only if it is shared. I also particularly liked the following insight:

He goes onto detail his belief in developing a winning mentality and the concepts of fair play and training methods where he states I have always kept players under pressure during workouts with rhythms of engagement almost identical to, or higher than, match situations.

I really dont think we should underestimate what Pippo brings to the table and feel that if he can apply half of his work above I genuinely believe we can do better than our mercato would have us believe is possible. The guy is a champion through and through and a natural born winner and I'm pretty sure he can transmit that to guys like SES and the rest of the squad to finally wake them out of their slumber.

A big big big thank you to Steve Amoia at the Soccer Translator for doing the actual translation and permission to quote from his original article which can be found in full here.