Blog Archives

Thinking of a career shift? Here’s how to increase your odds of success…

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Lee Brooks — 3 Comments

Every so often people ask me for career guidance. I guess I’ve done pretty well charting my own career path, so far at least, and folks want to know the ins and outs. Well, here’s a shortish post that captures…

Tagged with: adjacent possible, career growth, hiring
Posted in Careers, Everything, Soccer

Book Report: The Game of Our Lives

Posted on July 4, 2016 by Lee Brooks — Leave a comment

“The world that English football is now played in has changed again. The country is increasingly diverse; society is more individualized and more networked, and the economy has become an exemplar of a globalized and deregulated liberal model of capitalism.…

Tagged with: Adam Crozier, Anthony Crosland, David Goldblatt, economics, Sven-Göran Eriksson, The Game of Our Lives, The Secret Footballer, Vladimir Putin
Posted in Books, Everything, Soccer, Sports

Book Report: The Secret Footballer – Access All Areas

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Lee Brooks — Leave a comment

“It’s a brotherhood isn’t it? You played together and then you stay together. You shared a dressing room and forever you will walk the earth like a band of brothers? No. That’s sentimental bollocks. You make the same number of…

Tagged with: Alan Pardew, Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo, John Wooden, Leicester City, Lionel Messi, Mike Ashley, Niall Quinn, Real Madrid, Sam Allardyce, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sunderland, The Secret Footballer
Posted in Books, Everything, Soccer, Sports

Book Report: The Secret Footballer’s Guide to the Modern Game

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Lee Brooks — 2 Comments

“What stands out about Ronaldo, when you play against him, is that he is an athlete: he looks like a middleweight boxer when he takes his shirt off, and yet he moves like Nijinsky, the Russian ballet dancer. When he…

Tagged with: Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Dunning, Dunning-Kruger effect, fear of failure, Gareth Bale, Johan Cruyff, Lionel Messi, Manchester United, Mind Gym, perfectionism, Real Madrid, Sepp Blatter, So You Think You Can Dance, The Secret Footballer, Tottenham, Vaslav Nijinsky, Wayne Rooney
Posted in Books, Everything, Soccer, Sports

Book Report: Soccer iQ Vol. 2

Posted on July 4, 2015 by Lee Brooks — Leave a comment

“I promised myself that I wouldn’t release a Volume 2 unless I cultivated enough quality content to truly justify its existence. I wasn’t going to throw together some rubbish and hope that the second volume would ride the coattails of…

Tagged with: Dan Blank, soccer, Soccer IQ
Posted in Books, Soccer, Sports

Book Report: I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Lee Brooks — 2 Comments

“I realized it had been tough. It had been hard. The person who was supposed to mean the most to me as a footballer had given me the cold shoulder completely, and that was worse than most stuff I’d been…

Tagged with: biography, David Lagercrantz, expertise, Fabio Capello, Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Ruth Urbom, Simon Kuper, Sotirios Kyrgiakos, Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Posted in Books, Everything, Soccer, Sports

Don’t overlook the quietly effective

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Lee Brooks — 2 Comments

“The best defenders are those who never tackle.” – Chris Anderson and David Sally, in The Numbers Game In 2001, Sir Alex Ferguson sold the Dutch international defender Jaap Stam to Lazio based in part on match data that showed Stam…

Tagged with: absence, Anne Treisman, Bobby Fischer, Chris Anderson, cognitive illusion, Curious George, Daniel Kahneman, David Sally, Eliot Hearst, Jaap Stam, Janet Souther, performance evaluations, presence, self-awareness, self-evaluation, Sir Alex Ferguson, The Numbers Game
Posted in Leadership, Management, Soccer

How do you solve a weakest link?

Posted on March 5, 2015 by Lee Brooks — 1 Comment

“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.” – John Foster Dulles Today’s post examines your options if you find yourself managing…

Tagged with: Chris Anderson, coaching, David Sally, indispensability, John Foster Dulles, Kohler effect, motivation, O-Ring Theory, social comparison, team dynamics, teams, teamwork, termination, The Numbers Game, weakest-link, weaknesses
Posted in Books, Leadership, Management, Soccer, Sports

Book Report: The Numbers Game

Posted on February 23, 2015 by Lee Brooks — 4 Comments

“It is easy…to think of soccer as a game of superstars. They provide the glamour, the genius, the moments of inspiration. They sell the shirts and fill the seats. But they do not decide who wins games and who wins…

Tagged with: analytics, Andrew Friedman, Bill James, Bob Paisley, Boris Groysberg, Chris Anderson, conjunctive tasks, Daniel Kahneman, David Sally, Einstein, failure, Gabriele Marcotti, Gianluca Vialli, John Wooden, Kohler effect, Louis Van Gaal, Luca Toni, Malcolm Gladwell, Nathan Milstein, O-Ring Theory, Pep Guardiola, regression to the mean, Sepp Herberger, statistics, strongest-link, Tampa Bay Rays, team dynamics, The Extra 2%, The Numbers Game, Thomas Huxley, weakest-link, Zidane Clustering Theorem
Posted in Books, Management, Math and Science, Soccer, Sports

Book Report: Soccer IQ

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Lee Brooks — 1 Comment

“This book isn’t about soccer technique. This book is about soccer decisions that take place during the course of a match. These concepts are in no particular order. All of them are important and any one of them could provide…

Tagged with: Dan Blank, soccer, Soccer IQ, toe-poke
Posted in Books, Soccer, Sports

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