Marc Sagal | The Psychology of Sven's England

Giving The Game Away

Not many people can say they’ve worked with Microsoft, the US Army, Manchester City and the England football team. Marc Sagal, a sports psychology consultant, has worked with all these organisations, plus many more.

Sport psychology is a developing field and it has come a long way since Marc began his career. Initially, Marc was met by scepticism; players and managers were reluctant to speak with a psychologist, but nowadays, more emphasis is placed on the mental side of sport and people like Marc are hired by elite professional sports teams across the world.

One of Marc’s most notable clients was Sven-Göran Eriksson, who enlisted Marc’s help in improving the mental state of his players at Manchester City, Leicester City and the England national team. In 2006, Marc received a call from Sven who asked him to advise his team on taking penalties at the World Cup in Germany. Marc was given just 48 hours to help the team psychologically prepare for a quarter-final against Portugal and ultimately, England lost the match in a shoot-out. Marc believes that, given more time, he could have improved the mental strength of that England team, and improve their chances of being successful at penalties.

In this session, Marc delves into other psychological obstacles in sport, and how he works with players to overcome them. He explains how the resumption of football, behind-closed-doors, provides several interesting psychological challenges for players and tells us what can be done to create the optimal mental state for an athlete.

We believe that the mental side of sport is incredibly important, and it doesn’t receive as much attention and coverage as it deserves, so we enjoyed speaking to someone with such expertise in this field, in session 7.