PlayerData’s new FIFA-approved GPS and LPS units are a hit across the world of soccer and can be used by athletes in the offseason.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Other strategic investors in the Techstars-backed company include Pentland Ventures, Accelerate Ventures, Hiro Capital, and angels who previously invested in Strava and Revolut.
PlayerData’s new product, the Edge Air Tracker, is about half the size of competitors, and it combines GPS and LPS tracking, the latter an indoor alternative when satellite coverage is not available. The LPS system uses portable beacons that the company says can be set up in less than an hour. The Edge Air Tracker received the higher-standard FIFA Quality certification this summer.
“We had to build it in a PlayerData way: easy to use, fits in a backpack, mobile and affordable,” said CCO Jess Brodsky. “What gets us going is we get to give something to people that is just as elite quality — we don’t sacrifice on data quality — but to everybody.”
PlayerData’s Edge Air Tracker combines GPS and LPS tracking, the latter an indoor alternative when satellite coverage is not available. (Image: PlayerData)
The founding story is that, a decade ago, University of Edinburgh student Roy Hotrabhavanon had fashioned his own training tech to compete in archery by taking parts from consumer box retailers. Realizing there was little business upside in a niche sport, he sought to build for soccer instead, discovering there was a market gap particularly for grassroots, academy, university and women’s clubs who didn’t have the budget for an incumbent system such as Catapult or StatSports.
PlayerData is ubiquitous in the UK, where it records data from 94% of the country’s soccer pitches, Brodsky said, noting that the total includes the Premier League because its officials wear the monitoring devices during matches. The startup moved into the US market about two years ago, and Brodsky said the company has doubled or tripled its ARR (annual recurring revenue) in each of the past five years, building up to about 60,000 sensors in the market.
One of the biggest recent additions to the client roster is IMG Academy, where nearly 1,000 student-athletes will use the technology. The soccer program will install solar-powered beacons around all 15 soccer fields, and PlayerData and IMG will collaborate on developing and soft-launching sport-specific experiences in the app for volleyball and softball.
Abi Goldberg, an assistant strength and conditioning coach at Rutgers, supports the men’s and women’s soccer program whose seasons are concurrent, meaning she is balancing the training needs of both with little overlap. The use of PlayerData with both teams, Goldberg said, is helpful because the hardware and software systems are “incredibly user-friendly,” allowing her to review the data and communicate it the coaches even if it’s just a short window between their practices.
Often, each team’s director of operations will be tasked with overseeing PlayerData use at road games, but Goldberg said the tech doesn’t require an S&C professional to manage. She has even loaned devices to a few of the athletes for use in the offseason.
“Most GPS systems are in a big heavy briefcase-looking thing — I think there’s some been security nightmares in the airport — but these are way more compact,” she said. “They can put it in their backpack.”
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
Artificial Intelligence could be making key calls in your sport.
Main Photo: Getty Images
Current automation: NASCAR’s Optical Scanning Station maps the exterior of cars to ensure they comply with the rules. Bolt6 cameras also inspect the underbody of cars and operate the Pit Road Officiating system to flag violations.
Possible on the horizon? NASCAR intends to upgrade existing tech.
Current automation: The automated ball-strike challenge system is used throughout minor league baseball. A full ABS system is used by the KBO.
Possible on the horizon? MLB is likely to adopt the ABS challenge system for the 2026 season. It is also in the early stages of low-minors testing whether checked-swing calls can be automated.
Current automation: The NBA provides enhanced replays augmented with tracking data to assist with goaltending and basket interference calls.
Possible on the horizon? Determining who last touched the ball out-of-bounds and whether a shooter was behind the three-point line are under development, as are shot clock and other timed-based violations. The tech will start in the NBA, but it already is being investigated for the WNBA, too.
Current automation: The NFL will measure for first downs with Hawk-Eye cameras this season and contribute to calls about where punts fly out of bounds.
Possible on the horizon? The NFL and its innovation-minded collaborator, the UFL, are looking into whether the ball can be spotted after each play using technology, as well as making determinations on whether the quarterback is in the pocket (for intentional grounding and roughing the passer calls) or whether there are too many men on the field.
Current automation: The AI-powered Judging Support System is used as one input in the total score.
Possible on the horizon? There has been no report to date that gymnastics would consider full automation of scoring.
Current automation: None
Possible on the horizon? The NHL could use tech to determine offside, goal or no goal or whether a player high-sticked the puck.
Current automation: Rugby balls with embedded Sportable sensors were trialed at international youth tournaments to determine whether a ball was thrown forward, where a ball exited the pitch, whether a ball was touched in flight, whether the ball has reached the try-line and whether a lineout throw was straight. A Touchfinder feature helps Six Nations make boundary and ball spotting calls.
Possible on the horizon? Conversations around possible expansion of the tech are ongoing.
Current automation: Goal-line technology determines whether a goal is scored, and enhanced semi-automated offside technology makes all but the closest calls automatically.
Possible on the horizon? FIFA is researching whether technology can identify the player who last touched a ball before it went out of bounds. Detecting hand balls is also possible.
Current automation: All line calls can be called electronically.
Possible on the horizon? Technology could help determine whether there was a second bounce or a let serve. Electronic line calling will continue to move downstream into college and juniors tennis.
Current automation: AI judging will be one input in the total score beginning with the January 2026 X Games.
Possible on the horizon? Full automation of scoring might be possible.
This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.
In the first part of a miniseries exploring complexity in sport, Everton’s Head of Sport Science Jack Nayler explains how a watershed moment transformed his approach to his work.
However, in a truly complex manner, it was the combination of my lived experience to that point, my educational background and the reading I was doing in my own time around the subject that led to my appreciation of complexity and its implications for those concerned with sporting performance.
Over the course of four articles, I want to explain how I see the world of elite sport, the complex system at its heart, and the most effective way I currently see of managing performance within that context.
I will delve into the implications for sports and the operations within teams before outlining what this all means for leaders in this space.
But first, I want define what a complex system actually is and set out its characteristics.
Learning from failure
My real understanding came, inevitably, in learning from failure.
The white paper by the late Dr Richard Cook of the university of Chicago entitled How Complex Systems Fail was instrumental in helping me to understand the ramifications of complexity on the undertaking of performance in a sports setting.
Dr Cook was an anaesthetist and simultaneously and internationally respected researcher. His short treatise is regarded as one of the most influential works in the field of patient medical safety. It was this understanding of how systems fail that brought together everything else I had seen and learnt and began to change the way I saw performance management in professional sports.
Around this time, I was challenged by a friend in the industry to put together my thoughts on building a performance department for a sports team. I found it challenging just to make an org chart and list positions without giving the background and rationale for why and how the department existed in that structure as well as its philosophical construct. This exercise of transferring ideas from my head on to paper forced me to critically confront my assumptions and crystallised my thoughts on how I believe we need to operate in the complex environment of elite professional team sports (specifically football as this has been my professional experience).
So, what do we mean by complex?
Dave Snowden is a researcher in the field of knowledge management and is the creator of the Cynefin Framework that helps us to make sense of the different types of environments in which we operate.
‘Cynefin’, which is pronounced ‘ku-nev-in’, is a Welsh word explaining there are multiple factors in our environment and our experience that influence us in ways we can never understand.
The model contains five domains, all of which can exist at any given moment, and we move between them:
Source: HBR
The clear domain has obvious cause and effect and well-established best practice. There are many examples of this in elite sports, for instance, data hygiene when downloading and analysing GPS data or packing medical equipment for an away match.
In the complicated domain, there are correct answers to problems, but they may take some expertise or understanding to deliver and there are governing constraints within which the answer will lie.
An example from sport would be developing a fuelling strategy for a player in a match. We need learned expertise in nutrition and we need to do some analysis on the demands that player faces in match play, as well as understand how their physiology responds to those demands. There are then governing constraints (carbohydrate is the main fuel source in performance) but within those constraints, the solution will be different depending on the sport and the athlete, but the solution can be determined.
I find the easiest way to consider the difference between a complicated and a complex environment is by using the analogy of a car.
A car is an extremely complicated piece of technology. The first practical automobile was invented by Karl Benz in 1885 and had several hundred components. The modern family car by comparison contains over 30,000 parts on average.
Despite this huge number of component parts, should one of them fail and the car stop working, the defective component can be replaced and the performance of the car restored. The performance of the car in this case is its ability to move with you on board and there is a linear process from depressing your foot on the accelerator to make that car move. A skilled technician should be able to completely take the car apart, rebuild it and restore its performance.
Take that same car and ask it to transport you across a city such as London and it enters a complex system where the performance of the car (the time it takes to transport you from point A to point B) is no longer determined by the car itself (it would make little difference if you drove a Ferrari or a Fiat), but in the interaction of the inter-connected parts that make up the complex system. These include the status of the driver (in how much of a hurry they are and their relative stress level), the other cars and their respective drivers, traffic signals, roadworks, cyclists, pedestrians, emergency services, major events going on that day, the time of day and the weather etc. There are many other potential components to the system, not all of which are obvious when sat in the car itself.
The performance of the car (how quickly it reaches its destination) will emerge from the interaction of all these components and each one is concurrently performing at the centre of their own complex system.
So, the first thing to know is that in a complex environment, performance emerges from between the components an in inter-dependent manner, and not from the summation of the performance of each component in isolation.
The next part to understand about complexity is that it is fractal. Fractals are geometric shapes that contain the same detailed structure at ever smaller scales. This means that complex systems exist at smaller and larger scales and nest within one another. They simultaneously are affected by the scale below and affect the scale above.
Below the scale of our car, the driver is their own complex system, and their performance is determined by (amongst other things) their genetics, upbringing, education, wellbeing, as well as how well they have slept last night, what they had for breakfast and whether they are running late or not.
At a larger scale, the performance of the traffic system designed by city planners is affected by the performance of all the cars on the roads.
The person closest to the action in the complex system has the greatest chance to affect it at any given moment, in this example it is the driver of the car. Each decision they make will create a new reality and alter the course of the complex system (for reference see the film Sliding Doors). The decision to put your foot down to get through an amber light rather than braking in anticipation of a red light will affect the course of the complex system and other components within it.
This person closest to the action may have the greatest chance to influence the performance of the system, but they also have the narrowest focus and least ability to see the big picture. This is where external information can help inform their decision (SatNav, Waze or radio traffic reports). Ultimately though, it remains their decision.
Because performance emerges in real time as we navigate through the city and react to what we encounter in front of us, we cannot with complete accuracy predict what will happen in the future as we set out on the journey, or how good our performance (the journey time) will be.
All decisions taken by the driver therefore contain an element of risk and are (hopefully educated) gambles. These decisions are being made on a moment-by-moment basis are determined in part by what has already happened and will influence what is to come.
As all the components in the system are simultaneously operating in their own individual complex system, agreement between them isn’t perfect. Thus, complex systems are never perfect, they operate in a sub-optimal mode. No route across London provides a perfect path where you will be able to drive without braking or even coming to a stop. The challenge is that we cannot know exactly where the imperfections will lie.
Once we have finished our journey and the performance is determined, the impact of all our decisions is laid bare. With hindsight our choices take on a sequential profile and we can fall victim to a narrative fallacy, where each decision makes sense in context of what came after it. What we need to remember is that at the time we made each decision, we were blind to the future and couldn’t know exactly the outcome. That left turn that led to roadworks suddenly becomes a disaster that caused all our problems, whilst the decision to cut through the backstreets, a moment of genius. However, we will never know the alternate realities of the other options we could have selected.
The last part of complex systems I wish to convey is that the more we try to control the system, the more we leave ourselves open to system errors adversely affecting our progress in the long-term.
By control I mean to attempt to force or determine an outcome. The decision to jump a red light or speed along a section of road can lead to being pulled over by the police, which will cause a delay that greatly outweighs the seconds saved through our actions. The right way to operate in the system will emerge by experimentation, trying different routes, times of day or even modes of transport to complete the journey.
To bring us out of an over-extended analogy and back into the real world I want to emphasise that we should not be fatalistic about complexity. I don’t want to come across like the system will determine the outcome, regardless of what we do to affect it. I believe we are an integral component in any system with the chance to affect its direction and outcomes (just remember they might not be perfect).
If we are also able to step back and appreciate the interaction between systems at larger and smaller scales than that in which we are currently operating, we can be very powerful.
Chaos and Confusion
The final two domains in the Cynefin framework are Chaos and Confusion. Chaos is where there are no clear rules or cause and effect at all, even with hindsight, and it is better to act now and think later, shooting more from the hip.
Confusion is the dark centre of the framework, when you aren’t sure which of the other four domains you are currently in.
Most of the time in elite sports I believe we deal with complexity and thus I think it is the most important to try and understand. In the next two parts I will go on to discuss the implications of operating in this domain for sporting organisations, and what that means for leaders in this space.
Summary
References
Cook, R.I., 2000. How Complex Systems Fail. [online] Available at: https://how.complexsystems.fail/ [Accessed 29 September 2025]
The Cynefin Company (n.d.) The Cynefin Framework. The Cynefin Co. Available at: https://thecynefin.co/about-us/about-cynefin-framework/ (Accessed: 1 October 2025)
The Nxt Level Group’s David Clancy explores how the Dublin-based League of Ireland club seeks to build long-term success through reasserting its culture, defining a clear purpose, and engendering a sense of belonging in its players and supporters alike.
Main Image: courtesy of David Clancy
The murals around their home ground Dalymount Park (which is to be renovated in the coming years), the ‘home of Irish football’, speak of solidarity, diversity and inclusion; the terraces hum with the sound of supporters who are not just fans. They are owners of this proud club. The Gypsies. Bohs. The home where Bob Marley and Thin Lizzy played concerts years ago. A team rich in history, rich in story.
Different, rather than better
In a football economy dominated by multi-club groups, billionaires, private equity firms, and global TV rights, Bohs are a club who stand apart. They’ve become a story about what sport can be when it roots itself not just in performance, but in people that care about the team. Their budget isn’t as large as some other clubs’, so they are creative and intentional with what they do in the football market and community.
They offer something different and offer a surprising strategic case study. They show how sustainability and a long-term engagement advantage can emerge from fan ownership, cultural clarity, and humble leadership. They play differently off the pitch. They are a fan-owned club that has survived 135 years, not through scale or capital, but rather through culture, purpose, and belonging.
They recently commissioned and sold jerseys with ‘Oasis’ emblazoned on the front (building on the hype around the band’s August gigs at the Croke Park stadium). Half of the proceeds from sales supported Bohemian FC’s football and community projects, while the other half was split between Music Generation Ireland, which helps young people across Ireland access music, and Irish Community Care Manchester, who work with the Irish community (from which brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher hail) in that city.
This club truly embodies what category design means. They have effectively practised category design and owning a niche by positioning themselves not just as a football club, but as a cultural and social movement, blending sport with music, art, and activism. By creating and owning this unique space of ‘community-powered club’, they’ve differentiated themselves in the growing League of Ireland, attracting fans from Ireland and abroad, plus partners who share those values – rather than competing solely on wins and losses in the league table.
For leaders in leagues like the NBA, NFL, AFL, and Premier League, ‘Dublin’s Originals’ could be more than just a curiosity. A relative outlier, they offer an example of a model of sustainability for a team, one that challenges the dominant logic of growth in more unorthodox ways. Their underlying structure of fan ownership is worth studying. They are a collective of supporters who refuse to separate themselves from the team. Here, sustainability isn’t a corporate ESG initiative, it’s survival, identity, and continuity.
Alignment over expansion
Bohemians filter every strategic decision through a simple lens. They ask: ‘does this strengthen our bond with the community?’ This clarity allows them to stay relevant without necessarily chasing expansion, although supporter clubs are sprouting up across other continents. These fans want the team’s special edition away jersey featuring Dublin band Fontaines DC, which was released in support of the homeless charity Focus Ireland, or their Guinness-sponsored range of merch, the proceeds of which support Refugee and Migrant Solidarity Ireland.
Purpose alignment can be a sharper competitive edge than market dominance. Bohs remind us that sustainability doesn’t come from infinite growth, but from a cycle of reinvestment. Money goes back into facilities, players, and fan experiences, not siphoned off to distant investors. Fan-owned. Fan-run. Fan-driven.
Bohs pioneered blind football, amputee football and walking football in Ireland, and, in 2021, launched their Disability Supporters Association. They were the first League of Ireland team to take part in the Dublin Pride festival. They have teams and run events for young adults with intellectual impairments. They give back because it’s important for them.
For a team still seeking its identity in some shape and form, here are some inflection points from this club study. Replace relative transactional sponsorships with partnerships tied to a community identity (e.g., environmental groups protecting a part of a region). Give players structured time each season for community immersion, not as ‘charity golf appearances’ but as integral to the team’s ethos.
One could measure impact not just in brand impressions but in school programmes launched, parks built, and neighbourhoods revitalised, for instance. This piece of nurturing culture is not for decoration; it could be for leverage. Fans want their teams to win, but also to stand for something. To build something.
NBA franchises could issue community bonds or micro-shares, giving fans a symbolic stake and reinvesting proceeds into grassroots basketball. The result? Loyalty that outlasts market cycles. Premier League clubs could implement ‘golden share’ protections, ensuring fans safeguard cultural assets such as club colours, logos or stadium names. Food for thought.
Culture and ethos
Since the 2010s, Bohs, bohemian by nature, have adopted a left-wing political identity, which one can see in their club branding, language, public messaging and community initiatives. This resembles the philosophy and ideology of the Hamburg-based Bundesliga side St Pauli.
Daniel Lambert, their Chief Operating Officer, has positioned Bohs in support of causes such as Palestinian nationalism, anti-racism, anti-fascism, LGBTQ rights, refugee and homelessness advocacy. Jerseys carry messages from Amnesty International and the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland. This alignment further builds loyalty and that sense of belonging to something, a movement. When fans and supporters are engaged, they likely will spend more on team merchandise too.
The club doesn’t shy away from social concerns and makes a stance. Volunteers run matchdays. Players show up at community events because it’s expected, not mandated and instructed. This is the culture, and these are not just PR moves but deliberate signals. These micro-behaviours strengthen loyalty and differentiate Bohs in a crowded and competitive sports market.
AFL clubs, many still member-owned, could guard against creeping commercialisation by doubling down on symbolic choices that reflect local identity. Of course, one must look at a P&L and the revenue statements, but this is worth contemplating. NFL franchises could reposition sponsorships not merely as transactions but as cultural alignments (health, education, inclusion, etc.).
A team could link sponsorships to civic identity – environmental causes, education initiatives, small business partnerships. Instead of buying attention, they earn trust. In an attention economy, values may outperform advertising in some peoples’ marks.
Imagine if a big franchise used its platform not just for commercial sponsorship, but as a megaphone for the causes their community cares about most. The return on emotional equity might dwarf the return on traditional marketing.
Fans as stakeholders
Bohemians’ ownership model turns belonging into structure. According to the club’s Social Impact report, as of 2023 they had over 3,100 members, up from just over 900 in 2018. There is a ‘one member, one vote’ rule. Membership is open to anyone and everyone, although there are limited season ticket and membership numbers; between seasons if a member does not renew their membership, it is sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. As well as match access, a member can attend and vote at the club’s AGMs and EGMs.
Once a member has hit three years of consecutive service, they are permitted to run for a board position. Thus, there is no outside control. Clear, values-driven, long-term thinking is encouraged over short-term profits; and growing the club and the community always remains the priority. Fans are shareholders; players feel the weight of representing not a brand, but a people. The ethos at the club is that belonging is the bottom line.
Could a Premier League club, say, recapture that intimacy? Could the NBA, with its superstar ‘big player’ economy rediscover the power of collective belonging? Bohs show us it’s possible, although the scale of operation is, of course, different. A team could give fans voting rights on heritage roundel designs or community projects. When supporters are allowed to co-create, membership renewal becomes almost automatic.
Stewardship, not ego
At Bohemians, leadership is custodianship. Senior management, coaches, and volunteers alike work with humility. The aim is not public visibility but leaving the club better than they found it.
Picture a club, now acquired by a new ownership group, flush with new wealth. They could embed ‘custodianship leadership’ programmes for academy coaches and staff, thereby reinforcing the idea that the club belongs to the city, not just its new owners.
Reframing success: The Bohs Scorecard
Bohs prove that success can be measured differently, and how one can rethink what success is. Yes, they want to win games. Qualify for Europe. Fill the stands. But they care about community impact, inclusivity, and the stories they leave behind.
In the NBA or NFL, where victory is often measured in ring counts, marquee signings or franchise valuations, this can sound quaint. But consider the long arc – which clubs will still matter when television deals shrink, when fans demand authenticity, when climate and social pressures force a rejig of what ‘sport’ contributes to society? Bohemians have already answered that question. They matter because they belong to their people.
This scorecard which, for the record, is not affiliated with Bohemian FC in any way, could unpack:
Potential examples of cases in point: cross-league applications
The 4-step Sustainability Playbook for leaders in sport
Why this matters
Front offices, director boards and ownership groups are under scrutiny and pressure: escalating player salaries, volatile media rights, and restless fan bases.
Bohs offer a reminder. Sustainability in sport is not just financial. It can also be cultural. The clubs that flourish in the next era will be those that treat belonging as an asset, culture as leverage, and leadership as stewardship.
David Clancy is the CEO of The Nxt Level Group and host of Essential Skills 2.
One for your diaries
Seán McCabe, the Head of Performance & Sustainability at Bohemian FC, will speak at Essential Skills II at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin on 28 October as part of a lineup of speakers across high performance sport, business and healthcare.
Tickets are available here.
In the first session of our latest three-part Learning Series, Darren Devaney of Ulster and Daniel Ransom of Manchester United discuss the steps psychologists can take to ensure their smoother – and smarter – integration in a sporting environment.
An article brought to you in partnership with
More than 80 per cent of respondents feel that psychology is ‘very important’ in the enhancement of human performance, yet 43 per cent also feel that psychology is the most ‘underserved’ area of human performance.
The discrepancy chimed with Darren Devaney. “It’s like people know they want it, but they’re not quite sure how to make it happen,” said the Lead Performance Psychologist at Ulster Rugby.
Devaney was co-presenting at the first session of a three-part Leaders Virtual Roundtable Learning Series in partnership with the Chartered Association of Sport & Exercise Science.
The series is entitled ‘How Do we Enhance the Impact of Psychology in Performance Environments?’
His co-presenter Daniel Ransom, the Head of Psychology and Performance Lifestyle at the Manchester United Academy, offered his analysis of the report’s findings.
“What it perhaps highlights is the gap between research and application, as well as the immaturity of psychology as an applied discipline,” he said while also noting the appetite in the sports performance community for psychological services.
When session attendees, many of whom had a background in psychology, were invited to rate their own effectiveness, most answers were grouped in the middle.
“It probably just reflects that it’s not fixed,” said Ransom of the results. “That level of effectiveness will change throughout seasons or cycles, and, I guess we’re hoping to be at the top end but we know at times it’s going to move up and down a little bit.”
Over the course of an hour, the duo discussed the role of the psychologist and the ways they can develop and sustain their work in sporting environments.
The requirements of the psychologist
Together, Devaney and Ransom drew up a list of requisites for a practising psychologist in sport:
They then homed in on a selection:
Zooming in and out
According to Devaney, the psychologist must “get away from the assumption that we work with the individual athlete only”. Instead, they should ask themselves “is my intervention best targeted at an individual or is this more systemic? And if I’m going to be here for the next five or six years, what’s the most useful way of spending one or two hours on this? Is it working with a head coach? Is it working with all the staff? Is it working with a group of players, or is it the one-to-one with the athlete?”
Vertical and horizontal influencing skills
Psychology is not just the work of the psychologist. “An hour spent with one individual athlete is very well spent,” said Devaney, “but an hour spent with somebody that upskills or shapes them”, such as a coach, brings your work into “exponential territory”. He continued: “it changes how they do their work with 20 or 25 people over the course of the week”.
Ransom added: “If we really want to embed and integrate psychology what we require is other people to take on our ideas and work in ways that are psychologically-informed.”
Skilful proactivity
“We can’t sit still and wait for work to walk in the door,” said Devaney. “I’ve often reflected that this organisation functioned for decades without me in the building, so if I’m not here, this place can keep going. I need to recognise the fact that it might not be every day the main thing that everybody’s thinking about, so how can I do that in a way that doesn’t produce scepticism or kickback?” Nevertheless, “you must be proactive in trying to have an impact.”
Ransom has advice for anyone encountering scepticism. “If people are ready for more in-depth and focused work, then let’s meet them there. If they’re not, and they’re at that sceptical end, how do we try and offer them something which is appropriate to the needs of what they might be open to? If we pitch that wrong and we try and go too hard or move too quickly with those people, I think you can get caught in a potential tug of war where we don’t really make much progress and people hold their position.” With skilful guidance, people can “see the value that other people have, and that can be a way of opening a few windows and doors to them.”
The foundations
Devaney and Ransom set out four foundations:
Devaney argued that in professional sport at least, a psychologist’s job can be harder if the head coach is not one of those key stakeholders. “They can really shape what the role can be,” he said. “Like whose priorities do I need to be trying to align with? If I’m running into time demands, and we’re trying to figure out where and when I’m going to do work, who actually has the best steer on that?”
Whether you’re preparing for success today or down the line, the priority needs to be clear. But that’s not always the case. “It sounds pretty straightforward, but you’d be surprised how often those ideas can be misaligned,” said Ransom. “It makes it really difficult for you to work in an integrated, embedded way, with a long-term focus if other people are perhaps expecting immediate impact on individuals when you have a more systemic, broader focus.”
A psychologist’s positioning is not fixed. Ransom argued they must be “prepared to renegotiate the position time and time again”. He has had to “go through a process of having to establish, clarify and communicate boundaries in terms of what my role is.”
“The need to renegotiate is just so consistent,” added Devaney, “and I think there’s a bit of me sometimes that thinks that there’s an arrogance that if I’ve explained it once, everybody will get it and know it all the time and keep it at the forefront of their mind.”
The duo’s point about intentionally stepping away from being part of an MDT, to not be “boxed in”, raised a concern from one attendee about the potential negative impact on the sport psychologists as the conduit into clinical psychology. Ransom and Devaney took the point.
Ransom, who clarified that it was more about not being aligned to a single department of the MDT than not being a member per se. “As practitioners, we have to be flexible,” he said. “So there’d be times where, in my role, I would be positioned as part of an MDT. There’s times where I’d be positioned closer to some of the coaching staff.”
This takes skill, as Devaney said: “If I’m going to sit somewhat outside of the MDT and start to bring suggestions to them about how I can be supportive of their process, I’m going to have to do so very delicately and skilfully to get the impact that I want.”
Keep building
Both men had some advice for the table:
In reflecting, Devaney spoke of a personal experience: “The best question I’ve ever been asked by a head coach that I worked with was ‘what rooms and meetings do you need to be in to be able to be more effective in your job? Tell me, and I’ll make it happen’. That’s such an empowering position.
“He was basically offering an open invite to integrate what psychology is into the different practices of the organisation.”
Devaney also spoke about the importance of maintaining a shared lexicon, particularly in sports with regular athlete and staff turnover.
The finishing touches
Of the finishing touches, Ransom said: “If we think about the foundations through to the building blocks, which were more around the processes, the ways of working, the frameworks, then this bit is more around the actual skills of the practitioner and the key relationships that they have.”
“Here,” Ransom continued, “we’re talking about the importance of having skills beyond the classic ability to do individual one-to-one work, which people might associate with psychologists. So we have the ability to carry out discussions among teams of staff and hold those types of collaborative conversations, which is a skill in and of itself. Do we have the confidence and competence to sit with a team of experts and navigate a conversation in a way, which is encouraging different people to contribute, which is embedding or weaving in some psychology input into that without dominating that conversation?”
Session 2 of ‘How Do We Enhance the Impact of Psychology in Performance Environments?’ is on 2 October. You can sign up to be part of this Learning Series here.
As Jamie Taylor tells us, the Premier League-sponsored Coaching Expertise Project is challenging assumptions and establishing new standards.
Main Image: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
Yes, a head coach could be an expert, but that team might also be blessed with a highly expert foundation phase coach or an expert professional development phase coach. Each faces different demands and their work as coaches is inevitably different, but each can be expert.
My colleagues and I have been influenced by the adaptive skill model of Paul Ward and his colleagues. We see coaching expertise as the ability for someone to form intentions in their coaching practice and then flexibly and adaptively work towards those intentions – or change those intentions based on the changing context.
This idea is at the heart of the Coaching Expertise Project, which is an ongoing collaboration between the Premier League and Dublin City University and Insight Foundation Ireland. The project was launched in 2023 as part of the Premier League’s efforts to cement its reputation as world-leading in coach development practice.
Most of our data was collected by Mike Ashford, a postdoctoral researcher at the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics, while at the Premier League, Scott McNeill, the Head of Coach Development, and Danny Newcombe, the Senior Coach Development Manager, have driven the work from their side.
Scott and Danny’s roles have been to ensure the Coaching Expertise Project is anchored in the real demands of coaching practice and closely aligned to both academy and first team environments. They have worked with clubs to identify expert coaches across phases and to shape the project so that it reflects the realities of their day-to-day work. This is important for them because their ambition is to impact the full coaching pathway, supporting ongoing development not only in academies but also in first team settings. More broadly, their main intention is to contribute to the wider football system by enhancing the skill and expertise of both coaches and coach developers. The Premier League sees this as part of a bigger picture as they work alongside their professional game partners.
Photo: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
At the outset, we identified six coaches per phase across the Premier League, each working at a different development phase in their club’s academy. These coaches were selected from amongst their peers – the only effective means by which we can say one coach is better than another – and invited to undertake an extensive research journey.
Through this process we seek to better identify and understand the coaching demands at different levels. If we can understand those demands then we can be better at identifying expert coaches and helping coaches to reach an expert level.
The coaches involved in the project love it too. They’re constantly trying to find opportunities to learn and develop and it has supported their efforts to step into deep, reflective practice.
And so in shifting that focus from mere competence to true expertise, the Coaching Expertise Project has challenged long-held assumptions and is establishing new industry standards.
The issue with traditional coach development plans
Too often in coach development practice there has been a tendency to focus on coaching behaviour. That’s antithetical to what expertise is because, by definition, expertise is about flexibility, decision-making, and changes to practice that are, frankly, not very observable.
The risk in focusing on behaviour and attempting to change coach behaviour is that we end up reproducing what’s already there.
If there is too much focus on behaviours there is also too much focus on the coach and not their environment. This creates coach development plans divorced from demands. It is important to ask: is a coach development plan based on the demands of practice or on a series of generic capacities that cannot be tracked?
Our project is focused on the interaction between the coach and their context because we cannot identify expertise unless we understand the interaction between a coach and the demands of their role. We’ve identified a series of coaching demands – six or seven per phase – then mapped out the cues and strategies that expert coaches use to navigate those demands. It’s not a list of qualities that says ‘every good coach does this’. The demands are consistent but the coaches are different, and they navigate those demands in reasonably unique ways.
Photo: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
What ‘expert’ looks like
The Coaching Expertise Project has used this fresh understanding of the demands and coaching context to build a profiling tool that we want to embed in coach development at the Premier League.
It will inform a needs analysis for each coach because we can better understand good practice and the development status of the coach in question.
Capacities are still important. Entry level coaches will still need to show that they’re good enough to enter a role, but the Premier League’s ambitions extend beyond that starting point.
We’re going to be able to provide recommendations for coaches on the different demands of their roles and how they might work to develop themselves against these demands. Ultimately, we hope it’s going to become embedded into coach development practices across Premier League academies and in the daily life of an academy coach.
People have also asked me if we’ve simplified anything for coaches. The answer is no. You’d never say ‘how do you simplify this for a sports scientist or psychologist?’ because we have higher expectations of those professions. Coaches are some of the most expert practitioners in any field so it’s less important that it’s simplified and more that it’s valid and useful for coaches, that it can be integrated into their workflows.
Photo: Phil Greig, courtesy of the Premier League
Evolution not revolution
This remains a fruitful area for research. There are fewer than ten studies that have used expertise as a lens to understand coaching practice – and two of those studies have been mine.
The Premier League remains committed to the ongoing development of coaches across both academy and first team settings. The central intention of the project is to contribute to the wider football system by enhancing the skill and expertise of coaches and coach developers alike. By doing so, we aim to strengthen the overall quality of coaching and create development environments where the very best practitioners can continue to grow and positively impact the game.
We hope that this will eventually have an impact in the wider sporting world, but we are promoting an evolution rather than revolution, and if we can recognise the very best coaches and we’re better able to develop coaches towards expertise, it’ll see those coaches rewarded for good practice and then ultimately every player, when they walk into a club, is on the receiving end of high quality coaching practice.
Dr Jamie Taylor
Jamie is an Assistant Professor in the School of Health and Human Performance at Dublin City University, with a focus on coaching, coach development and coaching research. As a researcher, he supports practitioners on DCU’s MSc and professional doctorate programmes and collaborates with high-performance sports organisations including the Premier League, GAA, IRFU, and Premiership Rugby. As a coach developer, he has worked across a range of high-performance environments. Alongside his academic and development work, Jamie coaches rugby union at Leicester Tigers.
If you would like to speak to Jamie Taylor, Scott McNeill or Danny Newcombe about their work, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.
Patrick Mannix, the federation’s Sports Science Senior Manager, shared his insights with Leaders Performance Institute members at a recent virtual roundtable.
Eisenhower liked the sentiment enough to repeat variations during his time in the White House and the appeal to people working in elite sport is obvious.
In fact, Patrick Mannix, the Sports Science Senior Manager at US Soccer, began his recent presentation to Leaders Performance Institute members with that very line.
“The idea behind this quote is that high-performance teams don’t necessarily have a static plan,” said Mannix.
“The plan is constantly evolving as new information comes to light, whether that’s in relation to the tournament that we’re playing in, the players that we’re working with, and a variety of other contexts that are relevant to the world of international soccer.”
With those words, Mannix set the scene for a discussion that centered on performance planning in the international game, specifically the development of camp training plans for players who join up from their respective clubs in the US and beyond.
First, he offered a summary:
Mannix then shared how he and his colleagues approach international training camps from a sports science and medicine perspective with the help of this cycle:
“Building rapport and trust with those clubs is massively important,” said Mannix, “because that helps us drive a lot of the exchange of information.”
He then outlined the common challenges he and his team face in the realms of communication, health & safety and load management:
In explaining how they meet those challenges, Mannix focused on three areas in particular:
1. Club and country alignment
The US national teams draw on players from across the globe and, even for matches in the US itself, such is the size of the country that most personnel will have made a long-haul journey.
This map, which depicts the travel schedule of the US men’s team during the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup, provides some idea of the challenges present even in a domestic setting:
“We need to know when our equipment and staff are arriving and where our players are coming from,” said Mannix in reflection on this map. It calls for close collaboration between the technical/coaching staff, the high performance team and the operations team.
“When a coach is trying to build out the session plan, the right hand is a good sports scientist or a performance coach, and the left hand is the first assistant, and those three individuals are working very closely to ensure that there’s a good plan in place for every training session,” Mannix continued.
“There’s good understanding as to what the availability of the players is going to be, particularly in the first two days of training, because what we’ve found through communication with clubs is we sometimes have to be flexible when players are coming into our environment simply because although Europe observes FIFA windows, we have to work with our partners in MLS on when players are released to come and join our environment.”
Mannix and his colleagues understand the range of fixed and dynamic constraints they face. They use that understanding to find optimization indicators.
2. Time of year
The leagues of North America operate on a different seasonal calendar to their European counterparts, which requires tailored approaches to preparation and recovery for each player.
Staggered arrivals in camp is a prime example. Players may be excluded from certain match days depending on their status.
Additionally, the federation will try to use domestic camps “to address the identity of the team” and “hybrid camps where we look to go abroad, ideally to play opponents from Africa, Asia, and Europe so we get a variety of different opponents of the kind that we could potentially face in a World Cup.”
Travel logistics are a focus too. “We try to increase our sleep and recovery opportunities, decrease the number of flights to hopefully avoid a situation where the players have to get up at the crack of dawn to hop on a plane,” said Mannix.
Then there are cultural considerations. “The November window for the women’s national team will overlap with the Thanksgiving holiday,” he said, adding, “we’re working with chefs to ensure that we can put together a really creative Thanksgiving meal so the team feel like they have that communal or family experience.”
Ultimately, when it comes to periodizing camps, US teams have eight time scales to consider:
These come with several potential challenges:
Mannix shared the example of a convalescing player joining the men’s national team for the 2024 Olympic football tournament. “In close collaboration with the club, we mapped out the tissue healing process, what the rehab was going to look like and then also what his reintegration into his team training back in his club environment would be,” he said.
“Then we had to negotiate if he were to join us in the Olympics what his match exposure would look like once he joined us, because his first time competing in official competition following the injury would be under our care. So it was super important for US Soccer that this individual was included in the roster because of his long-term trajectory within the national team.”
The coaches and support staff at US Soccer develop training plans three weeks prior to a camp, with session plans devised two weeks out once player arrival times are confirmed.
“We will design things from a team level, but then we also have to look at matters very closely at an individual level when we’re trying to safely integrate players into our national team environments.”
Mannix also spoke of periodization (the macro-level planning of when and why) and programming (the micro-level execution of what and how). He explained the distinction using the following table:
“Most of the time, we are dealing with tapering strategies and figuring out how can we optimize players’ readiness going into competition,” he said. “So it’s often an exercise in fatigue management when they’re coming into our environment and not necessarily trying to drive fitness adaptations, but, on the flip side, we’re also there to potentially facilitate a lot of those long-term physiological adaptations that are occurring.
“When it comes to planning, some of these training variables are super important. Things like training frequency, density, volume, and intensity, ensuring that those are squared away and, with our coaching staff, exercise order. So when it comes to building out session plans, making sure that the sessions are sequenced in the correct fashion.
“Again, I think that’s a lot of close communication and collaboration with primarily our head coach and our first assistant.”
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