In 2004, FC Midtjylland in Denmark set out to establish Scandinavia’s first youth soccer academy. As a new club, it did not have the pick of the litter of Danish soccer talent, which went to bigger, far more established clubs. And as the coaches put together their first team, they were short one player. With…
The recent news out of Texas, where a 16 year old driver was only given probation for driving drunk and killing four innocent bystanders, popularized a new psychological term in the process. Apparently, parents raising children in wealthy suburbs with little oversight, few rules, and utter indifference to their behavior are causing “affluenza,” a supposed…
Now that I get to make my living as a writer and a speaker, I have many perks. Perhaps my favorite is that I get to write off all of my book purchases as a business expense, research for past and future writing! In 2013, I read a ton of great books, but here are…
Many youth sports coaches claim to be great talent identifiers, and point to the results of their 11 year all star team as proof. Yet they are not talent identifiers. They are talent selectors. The difference could not be more striking, or more damaging to our country’s future talent pool in many sports. Talent selection…
If you have coached long enough, you have probably said this about a player: “He’s got a lot of talent, but he is just missing something.” I have written on similar subjects in the past, and there has been academic research in this area. In all likelihood, that missing ingredient was often the inner drive…