Paul McVeigh is a former Premier League football player who has become a performance psychologist who has used visualization to take him to the top of both professions. But he still believes that the mental side of the game is overlooked far too much.
“I would say that although there is more consciousness now, I don't think there is more interest,” McVeigh tells Sky Sports. “Very few players actually do it. Only a few of them actually really buy in favor of the psychology of mental performance.
It could be assumed that in a multi-billion pound industry such as football, every lead is being investigated. But McVeigh, an international in Noord -Ireland that played and scored in the Premier League for Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City, says that that is not the case.
“How many players consciously improve the mental side of their game? Very few in my experience.”
And that experience is huge. After his retirement, he spent years to players in clubs, invited to discuss the importance of psychology for their performance. Many players were not interested. “They were just tapping a box,” he explains.
“Those seven years who did that were really difficult because you almost had to sell the subject of sports psychology to top athletes, which is crazy. With some you could literally give them the winning lottery numbers and they would not be interested.”
Others embraced it. “There were always four or five who thought of it. They wanted to learn and improve.” McVeigh mentions Jacob Murphy, Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Tyrick Mitchell, now all performing in the Premier League, as examples of those who took it on board.
McVeigh realized rather than most of the fact that having his head in the right space was an impact. He remembers a conversation with his father obsessed by Golf when he was only 17 who opened his eyes for the visualization forces. “I called home,” he explains.
“My father was a big Golffan and he told me that Jack Nicklaus would always visualize where he wanted the photos to go. He actually sent me a tape to learn this process of visualization, and got myself in what is now known as the zone, or a power status.
“I was just open to it. I started to do it when I was a child and visualized the goals I wanted to score every morning and every night.
But what is this visualization? Everyone has imagined to score the winning goal in the World Cup Final, right? Well, kind of. But McVeigh breaks up in many details. “It is essentially about making a movie in your mind that you want to happen,” he says.
“Visualize, for example, picking up the ball somewhere between the middle circle and the edge of the 18-yard box. Then visualize it to the side to receive the ball, dribble along someone and shoot out in the top corner from 25 meters.
“Now, keep playing it again and again. But add more details. Think of the colors around you, the body shape of the opposition, whether they are big or small, the sound of the crowd, whatever it is needed to really make the entire scenario in your own mind.”
The goal is to make all this feel automatic. “You just try to create a neural path with the aim of becoming unknowingly competent.” This is the final phase of competence, when a person is able to perform a task without thinking about it.
McVeigh offers the example of what happens when a player runs on a goal in a one-on-one situation. “You often hear commentators say that the player had too much time. It's because that neural path is not ingrained. They think about it.”
It is the mind, not the body, mentality instead of technology, that is often the key factor. McVeigh mentions Cole Palmer, who scored 28 goals in his first 37 Premier League matches for Chelsea before starting a point of 18 performances without scoring.
“One of the best players suddenly goes without scoring for three months? It's all because of the state of mind.” What about Mohamed Salah? “He doesn't think if he will score in games, he thinks of how much. That's a real difference in mindset.”
He speaks about remembering the need to control the controllables, aimed at the things you can change as a player – what your own performance is instead of those around you. “You can't even control your teammate and try to help you.”
McVeigh continues: “I really think this is where players struggle if they don't have the strategies. If they don't have the experience to deal with themselves and place themselves in the pressure situations, it can be very difficult.
“The players who learn and continue to learn the fastest are those who continue.” Two former teammates stand out. “People like Teddy Sherdingham. People like Sol Campbell who moved to Center Halkte and just kept learning to be a better and better center of center.”
McVeigh does not want to romantize the past because he has viewed the games. “It is actually embarrassing. I would like to have a kind of defense for my entire generation, but I have seen too many images. The ball is like a hot potato.”
He laughs at “players who are room in 20 meters and just launch it” and remembers that he went against Spain for Noord -Irland. “Carles Puyol or whoever would just ruin it, give it to Xavi and we would not see the ball for 10 minutes.”
He does not agree with the statement of Sky Sports Pundit Gary Neville that the modern game is boring because players are now like robots. “You can't be a robot because the game changes every fraction of a second and you constantly respond to the game,” he says.
“So, I'm not even about the reduced part of the freedom. Where I agree with him is the amount of information they get. Now you may have nine different coaches who want to tell the player all. I don't think that's useful.
“Arsene Wenger gave that Arsenal team three points before a competition. Psychology Research tells us that the maximum amount of information we can handle is seven bits information. Wenger wanted to reduce it to three things.”
A clear mind helps, preferably that is free from negative thoughts. McVeigh still remembers, in the prime of his career at Norwich and a sports psychologist who pointed out that all the information they received was framed negatively.
“Everything we were talking about, the language that was used was all about what we didn't want to do. You may think that this is not a big problem, it is only language. But do not focus psychologically on the non -part – that is aimed at the negative.”
Now 47, the career of McVeigh has evolved from talking to football players to speaking with figures from the entire sport and the business world. He leaned on the same lessons, taught him for the first time by his father as a teenager – with the help of Jack Nicklaus.
“I had never spoken publicly before, but I always have to do it in the work I do now. So I started visualizing on these phases for Microsoft and Rolls-Royce and KPMG.” He is fresh from speaking on the Women in Sport Conference in London.
He still works with players, but only those who want to improve. “We don't deliver group sessions now.” Those who want to embrace it are those who find a lead. Because McVeigh is more convinced than ever. “It all comes down to psychology.”