Edge: Leadership Secrets from Footballs’s Top Thinkers. Ben Lyttleton
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Название: Edge: Leadership Secrets from Footballs’s Top Thinkers

Автор: Ben Lyttleton

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Спорт, фитнес

Серия:

isbn: 9780008225889

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ d="u70149708-c71f-5c74-8829-abee75744f6e">

      

       COPYRIGHT

      HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

      SECOND EDITION

      © Ben Lyttleton 2017

      Cover layout design by Steve Leard

      Cover photograph © Shutterstock

      Athletic Club de Bilbao plaque poem © Kirmen Uribe

      Exploratory Behaviour Frequency charts © G. Jordet, J. Bloomfield & J. Heijmerikx

      A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

      Ben Lyttleton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

       www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

      Source ISBN: 9780008226398

      Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008225889

      Version: 2018-02-05

       DEDICATION

      To ABC, with love

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       Prologue

       1 Cohesion

       2 Adaptability

       3 Decision-Making

       4 Resilience

       5 Creativity

       Epilogue

       Notes

       Bibliography

       Acknowledgements

       Index

       About the Author

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      As soon as I took the call, I knew it was a great idea. It was summer 2014 and I had just spoken to Marcus Christenson, Football Editor at the Guardian newspaper. His plan was to tap into the football expertise of his global network and publish a piece called ‘Next Generation’. It would identify the top 60 players around the world aged 17 or below.

      The feature would run every year, and readers would be able to track previously listed players and check on their progress. It was also quite brave, because if, in three years, say, 55 of the 60 players named had dropped out of football, no one would look too clever.

      He asked me to come up with two players who were based in France. I have always been enchanted by French football and have written extensively about the game there. But I did not know all that much about the next generation, and when it came to that age group, it was more like the generation after next.

      I called up some of my contacts in the French game and they helped me draw up a shortlist of five names. I had to narrow it down. I looked at video footage of the players but that didn’t help; they all played in different positions anyway. So I went back to Marcus and asked what he wanted. Was it the most talented players? Or the ones most likely to make it? He wanted both: basically, a feature that would become an annual celebration of the Guardian’s football knowledge pool. ‘We just want to get it right,’ he said.

      This made me think. Would the most talented players be the ones most likely to make it? I asked a friend, a Premier League scout whose speciality was spotting youth-team players in northern France. ‘Not at all,’ he replied. He was looking for players who influence games, whatever their position. This is not just a matter of technique or skill; it’s about working off the ball, and how they react to losing the ball.

      So what is he looking for? ‘Resilience,’ he said. Most scouts focus on the six seconds after a player loses the ball to check for reaction, but my friend keeps an eye on them for ten minutes. One youngster СКАЧАТЬ