Jürgen Klopp, Arsène Wenger, Ralf Rangnick and Julian Nagelsmann have highlighted that the next step in the world of football will be cognitive speed in decision-making. Once the game has become more conceptual and structured, and the physical factor is extended for more and more time at the highest level, several prestigious technicians consider that the next step that will change this sport is neuroscience, something that they know very well. well Jamal Musiala (Stuttgart, 2003).
The talented Bayern Munich player, a great threat for Real Madrid in the Champions League semi-finals and a torment for Lucas Vázquez in the first leg at the Allianz Arena, has been working for a few years with Steffen Tepel, his neurotrainer. personal in the Bavarian team, who polishes, through this science that deals with the nervous system, the offensive midfielder and great friend of Jude Bellingham, with whom he coincided in the lower categories of England before opting for Germany.
The technician is in charge of preparing the coordination between his eyes, body movement and his brain to convert prepared actions into natural movements and, with this, gain time on the grass that seems essential. «The more you educate your brain to act and think as you want, the more you improve. Neuroscience can be used in many ways, such as to exercise peripheral vision, coordination, intuition, automation of movements… The brain is everything; It is the origin of all our movements. If you don’t think well, everything you trained disappears. If you are not concentrated, you lose all the relevant information to perform well,” explains Mikel Alonso, doctor in neuroscience applied to behavior and CEO of Brain Data Sports, to this newspaper.
The two ways in which a player’s brain processes his football
Dorsal route
It is the learning zone. It is slower because it is activated when greater mental effort is made
primary visual cortex
Receives visual information and performs a first processing
ventral route
Here, unconsciously assimilated knowledge acts, which aims to enhance neuroscience in sport. Helps you make decisions quickly based on thousands of hours of prior learning
Source: Dr. Mikel Alonso (neuroscience)
The two ways in which a player’s brain processes his football
Dorsal route
It is the learning zone. It is slower because it is activated when greater mental effort is made
primary visual cortex
Receives visual information and performs a first processing
ventral route
Here, unconsciously assimilated knowledge acts, which aims to enhance neuroscience in sport. Helps you make decisions quickly based on thousands of hours of prior learning
Source: Dr. Mikel Alonso (neuroscience)
The two ways in which a player’s brain processes his football
Dorsal route
It is the learning zone. It is slower because it is activated when greater mental effort is made
ventral route
Here, unconsciously assimilated knowledge acts, which aims to enhance neuroscience in sport. Helps you make decisions quickly based on thousands of hours of prior learning
primary visual cortex
Receives visual information and performs a first processing
Source: Dr. Mikel Alonso (neuroscience)
With the improvement of physical abilities to the limit of what is possible, now the challenge is to improve the speed of the brain and even more so in an era in which patience is greatly involved in football. «I have lost many of the best players because their head was in the ball. “They didn’t see what was around them,” said Arsène Wenger, former Arsenal coach and currently FIFA development director. The architect behind Leipzig’s sporting growth, Ralf Rangnick, who today leads the rebirth of the Austrian team from the bench, agrees with the Frenchman. «That he is good with the ball is a great advantage. Speed, rhythm, acceleration, they are important. But the most important thing is not to run fast but to think fast. “That they know how to analyze the situation and suddenly realize how they should play the ball,” he responded when asked about the key to anticipating the progression of a great soccer player.
Musiala, a Hapkido practitioner who was taught by chess to think in a much more strategic way, is one of them. The esteem in which the Bavarian midfielder is held is so high that legend Lothar Matthäus assures that he has everything to be the new Messi. «He was always my role model growing up. “I always watched his games and admired him for his play,” the German footballer said in a recent interview, saying that he is currently convincing in all aspects of the game, and is one of the most decisive footballers in the Bundesliga. His long legs are combined with excellent technical skill and important physical and mental agility.
He has resources for all situations on the field, which causes him to do 4 dribbles per 90 minutes, and has a success rate of 58%. Against Madrid at the Allianz there were seven goals. The versatile German pearl – 12 goals and 7 assists in 36 games this season – performs especially well when it comes to moving between the lines, with and without the ball, at high speed and being an artist when it comes to solving problems with the first touch. She looks like she’s going to trip but she never does. He is skilled and intelligent. A specialist in slalom and small spaces, she manages to successfully emerge from infinite pressure situations to later give meaning to what is happening around her.
«He does not limit himself to receiving the ball, but starts the next action at the same time. Once he turns, he surrounds the opponent with a fluid turn in a half circle, so fast that he can no longer react,” they describe on the Bayern Munich website, where he landed at the age of 17 from Chelsea. «I always had to deal with bigger and stronger rivals. To assert myself, I had to find other solutions and learn to use my body correctly,” says the German.
Del ‘Big Data’ al ‘Brain Data’
The connection between the mind and the ball seems as clear as how unknown everything that happens in the players’ brains still is for clubs. «In football, mental training is currently a wasteland, just as nutrition, for example, was 40 years ago. The perceived performance of some footballers would skyrocket by applying techniques that he could describe as simple, and that he himself could verify with the objective and scientific data provided by an electroencephalogram or an ‘eye tracking’. But these skills are hardly trained,” says Alonso, who laments that “in the era of big data, brain data is being ignored, and information about a player’s mental state after a gross mistake is disregarded.”
The expert also exemplifies in Real Madrid, Bayern Munich’s rival in the Champions League, the way to train the most emotional part of the sport and win more by attitude than by physicality. «The security of winning is also trained; the brain believes in it, they know they can do it, and that is also Brain Data. Your training is your continuous exposure. “They have trained it, they have lived it, they believe it, they do it,” he points out. Carlo Ancelotti’s men will not be able to lose sight of Bayern’s number 42 next week at the Santiago Bernabéu.