Carlo Ancelotti was photographed at the end of October in Valdebebas with a 46-year-old former Northern Irish lawyer and with the stuffed owl that he had just given him. This wasn’t just a hobbyist hunting for a wallpaper. This guy with a modest career as a Gaelic football coach had been called to the Real Madrid sports city. Eamon Devlin offers consulting on a very specific section of football, half-time, the only 15 minutes in which the ball is not in play between the time the referee whistles the start and signals the end. He has interviewed dozens of coaches and players and has concluded that in that time almost everything is done wrong: tension, chaos and too many words.
“The break talk lasts an average of five minutes and 30 seconds, about 770 words,” he explains over a video call. “We asked the coaches, ‘Do you remember what you said? If you don’t remember it, how are the players going to remember it? When he works with his clients in England, Germany, Italy and Spain, including four Champions League teams, he strives to convince them to speak for only 60 seconds. “We try to get them to use more visual elements. When you are tired, it is not a good idea to use only words.”
This rare specialty began with his daughter Zoe, who was 10 years old in 2021 when he was practicing in Zurich as a lawyer at MJ Hudson, a firm listed on the London Stock Exchange of which he was one of the founders. “Their soccer team wasn’t doing very well: they lost 6-0, 10-0, 19-0… And the more they lost, the longer the coaches talked to them, getting angrier and angrier. After a game that ended 24-0, I timed it: nine minutes. That’s why my company is called Minute9. On the way home, he told me: ‘I’ll quit. “I can stand losing, being beaten, but I can’t stand coaches making me feel sad.” And he left it. “I thought: this is absurd, there must be another way to communicate with the players.”
He also sees the extreme tension under which everything happens in the locker room as counterproductive. “It is a moment of a lot of pressure against the clock. There are similar situations, such as hospital emergencies, where patients arrive constantly. Or air traffic controllers. These situations require protocols, and in all of them calm language is used; never altered. Never. “Effective communication does not include anger.”
The coaches who come to Devlin — “good coaches ask for help,” he says — do so because they have detected one of these three problems: “My breaks are chaos, there is no structure; The players don’t listen to me, they don’t pay attention to me; and the third, the most common lately, my players stay silent, they don’t say anything.” When the consultant arrives at a place like Valdebebas, he spends the first few hours talking to the coach, watching some of his talks, observing the dynamics and interviewing several footballers. “If you ask coaches what is the most important thing at half-time, most will say tactical changes, that is, the talk. If you ask the players, they will say: food, water, rest, recovery, feeling safe, being with my teammates, and then the tactical changes. At half-time, footballers feel tired, alone and very anxious.”
Devlin, who studied psychology when he left his firm after a deep personal crisis, has seen the tension begin to build before the break. That is why he believes that coaches should watch the first half from the stands, like in rugby. “Show me a player who likes to be yelled at from the sideline. An English full-back told me that he plays better the half in which the coach is on the other wing.”
When the referee sends them to the locker room, Devlin says the first thing the coach should do is eat. “We try to make the trainers feel less stressed by giving them food. Your brain’s glucose levels drop during the game. When they eat something, they calm down. Breathing slows down, because to eat it has to be regular.”
In addition, this way they keep them out of the locker room, where the players should spend a few minutes doing something unrelated to football, even looking at their cell phone. “To get the players to talk more. As soon as the coach comes in, they usually stop talking.” It is useful that they do so. “And let them argue too. He feedback the more valuable is that of a companion; not the coach’s. If the coach is harsh, the player will have one of three reactions: he doesn’t listen to him, he will say you’re wrong and I’m going to prove it to you, or they can accept it, although few do. But if it’s a peer, I’m more likely to believe you.”
He also recommends that there be very few people in the room. “The owner is there, the president is there, a sponsor… They say, it doesn’t matter, they’re not talking. But just because someone isn’t talking doesn’t mean they aren’t communicating.”
In the two days of work that his sessions at the clubs usually last, Devlin even leaves recommendations on the technicians’ clothing or how to reset the footballers when nothing works for them, for example, forcing them to change their socks when they arrive at the locker room. In short: less chatter and more order. And a stuffed owl like Ancelotti’s for the coaches, whose meaning, like other details protected by confidentiality agreements, he refuses to reveal.
