A brain of two halves: Football management skills, by Professor Mark Griffiths

So Fabio Capello has held onto his managerial position despite the fact that England couldn’t progress past the knockout phase of the World Cup. I’m one of those cynics who thinks that he held onto his job not because of his great managerial skills but because the English FA couldn’t really afford the £12million compensation they’d have to pay if they sacked him. Personally, I don’t think all the blame for England’s sorry showing can be down to Capello’s management. There’s plenty of evidence outside of the English game that Capello is (or at the very least has been) a good manager. But it does get you thinking about what qualities and skills an ideal manager needs to possess to guarantee international football success in the current climate.

Sport psychologist Martin Perry has written a number of populist pieces about “the perfect manager”. He often talks about a football manager needing to be “whole brained”. The reason he says this is because the human brain has two distinct sides (more usually known as the right and left hemispheres). Each hemisphere is responsible for different human actions. Many people develop dominance toward a particular side of their brain. As a consequence, they tend to have certain characteristics and areas of common interest. The left side of the brain is often thought of as the objective, logical, rational, thinking side and has more influence on speech, analytical reasoning, writing, and mathematical literacy. The right side of the brain is the more subjective, creative, and has more of an influence on imagination, intuition, empathy, spatial awareness, sporting ability, and artistic temperament.

This is why Perry argues that the perfect football manager will be ‘whole-brained’, as they need to be equally adept at using both left- and right-hemispheric skills. In addition, Perry also claims that the ideal football manager would have honed a wide range of specific skills utilising both sides of the human brain. These are Perry’s ‘Top 10’ key skills:

• Vision. Here, the manager’s perception and original thinking helps him to see beyond the immediate needs of their team.
• Innovation. Here, the manager introduces new philosophy of doing things, experiments, and utilises successful strategies from other arenas (such as the business world).
• Edge. Here, the manager acts without sentiment or emotion. Perry says that such managers are driven by a subconscious fear of failure and are never satisfied with their success (although he doesn’t offer any scientific evidence for this).
• Strategy. Here, the manager is a master tactician who loves the psychological mind games that football at the highest level provokes.
• Storytelling. Here, the manager is able to provide meaning and relevance to every game played by his team. This, Perry argues, needs to be embedded in a strong awareness of the history of the football club, its community values and cultural significance.
• Respect. Here, a manager exudes respect for himself and others around him that instills a strong sense of belonging, moral certainty and a family spirit.
• Leadership. Here, a manager creates loyal “disciples” who will sustain and articulate the team’s culture. The players become “ambassadors” for both the team and for football more generally.
• Communication. Here, the manager knows how bring the best in every player (i.e., the right words, at the right time, in the right way for the right reasons).
• Principle. Here the manager has a defined ideology and acts without compromise. They have clear beliefs, standards and ideals that they champion in every area of their lives.
• Organisation. Here, the manager utilises meticulous and detailed preparation techniques, and leaves nothing to chance.

I’m not sure how many of these attributes Capello brings to the England set-up, but someone, somewhere at the FA clearly believes he ticks the right boxes.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

When the going gets rough, Clough gets going: The wit and wisdom of Nottingham’s greatest football legend, by Professor Mark Griffiths

OK, so the two semi-finals are over and we all have a bit of ‘down time’ before this weekend’s World Cup Final. Time for a bit of frivolity before the business end of the tournament kicks off.

In a previous blog (“I’ll get my quote”: Managing their reputation), I recounted some of my favourite quotes from football managers around the world. I also mentioned that some football managers could have a whole column to themselves and top of the list would be the best manager England never had – Brian Clough, OBE (“old big ‘ead” to the masses). Cloughie was arrogant, as typified in his most famous quote when reflecting on his management career (“I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one”).

Here are my other golden Cloughie moments starting with some more arrogant claims:

• “The river Trent is lovely, I know because I have walked on it for 18 years”
• “When I go, God’s going to have to give up his favourite chair”
• “We talk about it for twenty minutes and then we decide I was right”
• “I’ve decided to pick my moment to retire very carefully – in about 200 years time”
• “Telling the entire world and his dog how good a manager I was. I knew I was the best but I should have said nowt and kept the pressure off ‘cos they’d have worked it out for themselves”
• “I’m sure the England selectors thought if they took me on and gave me the job [as England Manager), I’d want to run the show. They were shrewd, because that’s exactly what I would have done”
• “Rome wasn’t built in a day. But I wasn’t on that particular job”

On England’s exit from the 2000 European Football Championship:

• “Players lose you games, not tactics. There’s so much crap talked about tactics by people who barely know how to win at dominoes”

On his alcoholism:

• “Walk on water? I know most people out there will be saying that instead of walking on it, I should have taken more of it with my drinks. They are absolutely right”
• “I’m dealing with my drinking problem and I have a reputation for getting things done”

On Sir Alec Ferguson only winning one European Cup:

• “For all his horses, knighthoods and championships, he hasn’t got two of what I’ve got. And I don’t mean balls!”

On women’s football:

• “I like my women to be feminine, not sliding into tackles and covered in mud”

On Sven Goran Eriksson, former England manager:

• “At last they’ve got a manager who speaks better English than they do”
• “I might be an old codger now and slightly past my best as a gaffer, but the FA would know they’re safe with me. At least I’d keep my trousers on”

On managing Roy Keane:

• “I only ever hit Roy the once. He got up so I couldn’t have hit him very hard”

On football hooliganism:

“Football hooligans? Well, there are 92 club chairmen for a start”

Classic Clough. Nuff said.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

Let he who is without win cast the first moan: Football betting and the gaming industry, by Professor Mark Griffiths

Not everyone in Britain is unhappy that the England team has been knocked out of the World Cup (and no, I’m not talking about Scotland supporters). England’s untimely exit in South Africa has saved British bookmakers from an estimated payout of over £50m. In fact, David Williams of Ladbrokes went as far as saying that if England had won the World Cup it would have been “the darkest day in history for the betting industry.”

In an earlier blog (Bored games: The case of gambling and football), I argued that football and gambling are inextricably linked. Psychologists claim that gamblers are attracted to betting on football because they love competitiveness. Sociologists have speculated that human instinctual expressive needs, such as competition, can be temporarily satisfied when engaging in gambling activities. The US sociologist Erving Goffman developed what he called the ‘deprivation-compensation’ theory to explain the relationship between gambling and competitiveness. He suggested that the stability of modern society no longer created situations where competitive instincts are tested. Therefore, gambling is an artificial, self-imposed situation of instability that can be instrumental in creating an opportunity to test competitive capabilities.

One of the problems for regular sports gamblers is that they can sometimes experience what we psychologists call an ‘illusion of control’. Put simply, those who bet on football matches think they have more chance of winning than they actually do. Many sports gamblers passionately believe their betting is skill-based, and offer very specific explanations when they fail to win. These beliefs have been tested experimentally by US psychologist Thomas Gilovich in a study of the biased evaluations in sports gambling behaviour. In three studies using people who bet on football games, Gilovich demonstrated that gamblers transformed their losses into ‘near wins’. What’s more, my own research has shown that gamblers not only feel psychologically and physiologically rewarded when they win, but also when they nearly win.

Gilovich also showed that gamblers pinpoint random or ‘fluke’ events that contributed to a loss but were unaffected by identical events that contributed to a win. I’m sure you can all think of instances like this when watching a football match. When your team loses, it’s not uncommon to berate the referee for a dodgy penalty decision or deride the linesman because he failed to spot an offside (or that Frank Lampard did actually score against Germany).

If you placed a bet on England to beat Germany, you may have blamed England’s loss on one particular event (such as the disallowed Lampard goal). Had England won with a dodgy refereeing decision going England’s way, you would have probably rationalised it and convinced yourself that England would have won anyway because of their superior playing ability and skill. (I know this sounds delusional under the circumstances but it’s not uncommon among hard-core gamblers who lose). Gilovich also reported that gamblers spent more time discussing their losses and discounting them. For example, after a loss, a lot of time may be spent analysing a small incident of a few seconds duration (e.g., Tevez’s offside goal against Mexico) even though the game lasted 90 minutes. What’s more, we make ourselves feel better by blaming the loss on something or someone external (such as a single poor refereeing decision).

Finally, it’s worth noting that one of the questions that I get asked most often is why people gamble regularly if in the long run they tend to lose? Well, you have to remember that gamblers don’t consistently lose, they consistently nearly win which as I highlighted above is both physiologically and psychologically rewarding! No wonder the betting industry loves sports gamblers.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

Battle hacks: Football, stereotypes, and the national identity, by Professor Mark Griffiths

I don’t know about you, but I take a keen interest in how newspapers use narratives, metaphors, analogies, stereotypes, and puns when they write about the build up to a football match or the post-match analysis. Even after the drubbing by Germany, The Sun’s headline was “All 4-1 and one for all”. Here the message was that the England team was united – even in defeat. Before the Germany match, every story had somewhat predictable headlines in an attempt to either rally the country behind England (“Stand up and be counted”, “It’s revenge time”), to make rhetorical capital out of individuals like the England goalkeeper David James (“He’s got the whole world in his Hans”) and Germany’s ex-captain Franz Beckenbauer (“Kaiser sticks Das Boot in”), and/or poke racist fun – or should that be racist pun? – at the whole German team (“We’re ganna bish bash the Bosch”, “Keep it English, it’s the only way to sour the Krauts”).

There has been relatively little academic research carried out on the narratives used by the football media in relation to how national football teams are portrayed in print. However, in 2006, Liz Crolley (from Liverpool University) and her colleague David Hand, published a book called Football and European Identity based on their academic research over a number of years. They claimed that newspaper narratives about football matches don’t just reflect the game itself, but also help shape readers’ awareness of national identities. To support this view, Crolley and Hand analysed the written content of various European newspapers’ match coverage of football tournaments. I was particularly interested in their analysis of the 1996 European Football Championship when England reached the semi-finals and got knocked out by Germany on penalties (the nearest I have ever got to seeing England win a major trophy as I was born one month after England won the World Cup).

Their research concluded that the overriding theme of British press reports about the 1996 England team was in the form of battlefield and warfare analogies coupled with the English sporting virtues of energy and commitment – words not really used by journalists in the England 2010 World Cup campaign. For instance, in the semi-final against Germany they were “gallant” and played “combative football” with “fighting spirit” – typified by England’s “absolute refusal to surrender to what appeared to be a better team.” Tony Adams and Alan Shearer were both described by the press as “lionhearts”. In the 4-0 demolition of Holland “the lions were rampant” as “England roar(ed) into the quarter-finals.”

Crolley and Hand also examined the press portrayal of the German team. Newspaper reports characterised Germany’s strength, efficiency, and self-belief – also using military metaphors. They also asserted that the German team received more metaphorical references to warfare than any other football team. The “mighty Germany” made “sorties” and “forays” and led “the battle on two fronts.” They prepared to “ambush” England. As a team, they constantly “regroup” and “march on.” Jurgen Klinsmann, Germany’s talismanic striker, was described by the press as “the blond bomber” who will help Germany “to conquer Europe.”

In addition to examining football stories about England and Germany, Crolley and Hand also studied newspaper narratives relating to the football teams of France and Spain. They claim their analysis helps us to understand the mechanisms at work in the construction of national stereotypes (i.e., English fighting spirit, German efficiency, French flair, and Spanish toughness). The language used by newspaper articles about national football matches is “varied, entertaining, highly inventive and often provocative, evoking references to warfare, politics, history, economics and popular culture”. The authors conclude that in many cases, the principal elements of the stereotypes represented by European newspaper stories are the same from country to country.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

Luck’s familiar? Football and superstition, by Professor Mark Griffiths

Hands up. How many of you reading this are superstitious when you watch England play a football match? Do you wear your ‘lucky’ England T-Shirt? Carry a lucky charm? Watch all the games in a particular chair or with a particular person? If you are, you are not alone. Even the most rational people can hold superstitious beliefs. The fallibility of human reason is the greatest single source of superstitious belief. Sometimes referred to as a belief in ‘magic’, superstition can cover many spheres such as lucky or unlucky actions, events, numbers and/or sayings, a belief in astrology, the occult, the paranormal, and/ or ghosts. When it comes to watching football it’s probably best to view superstition as a belief that a given action that you do can bring good luck or bad luck to your team when there are no rational or generally acceptable grounds for such a belief.

Surveys suggest that around a third of the UK population are superstitious. The most often reported superstitious behaviours are avoiding walking under ladders, touching wood, and throwing salt over your shoulder. I can’t say I’ve ever done any of those when watching England. There’s also a stereotypical view that there are certain groups within society who tend to hold more superstitious beliefs than what may be considered the norm. These include those involved with sport, the acting profession, miners, fishermen and gamblers. For instance, we did some research on regular bingo players and found that 81% of them had at least one superstitious belief. These beliefs included not opening an umbrella indoors (49%), not walking under ladders (55%), not putting new shoes on a table (60%), touching wood (50%) and not passing someone else on the stairs.

The majority of the population tend to have what are called ‘half-beliefs’. On the whole, people are basically rational and don’t really believe in the effects of superstition. However, in times of uncertainty, stress, and/or perceived helplessness, people seek to regain personal control over events by means of superstitious belief. This often happens in situations like watching (England play) football.

The Dutch psychologist, Professor Willem Wagenaar proposed that in the absence of a known cause, people attribute certain events to abstract causes like luck and chance. Professor Wagenaar differentiates between luck and chance and suggests that luck is more related to an unexpected positive result whereas chance is related to surprising coincidences. Other psychologists suggest that luck may be thought of as the property of a person whereas chance is thought to be concerned with unpredictability. For instance, gamblers appear to exhibit a belief that they have control over their own luck. They may knock on wood to avoid bad luck or carry an object such as a rabbit’s foot for good luck. Another US psychologist, Professor Ellen Langer argued that a belief in luck and superstition not only accounts for causal explanations when playing games of chance, but may also provide a desired element of personal control.

Even if people don’t have strongly held luck and superstitious beliefs, there is some evidence that having these beliefs (“I know it’s going to be our lucky night”, “I’m in my lucky seat we can’t lose”, or “My stars said we’d win”) add more fun and excitement to the event watched or the game being played.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

“I’ll get my quote”: Managing their reputation, by Professor Mark Griffiths

Much was made of England manager Fabio Capello’s quote about John Terry’s “big mistake” in talking to the media before he had talked to the manager about what was going on in the England camp behind closed doors. The “big mistake” quote garnered acres of news coverage yet the quote itself was underwhelming and not particularly memorable (to say the least). Anyway, it did get me wondering about which managers’ quotes will stand the test of time. Here are some of my favourites. Some managers could have had a whole column to themselves (Clough, Mourinho, Keegan and Venables spring to mind) but here, the managers only get a ‘one quote’ quota. Hope you like my selection.

• “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that” (Bill Shankly)

• “I wouldn’t say I was the best manager but I was in the top one” (Brian Clough)

• “If history is going to repeat itself I should think we can expect the same thing again” (Terry Venables)

• “If we played like this every week, we wouldn’t be so inconsistent!” (Brian Robson)

• “I’m not a believer in luck… but I do believe you need it!” (Alan Ball)

• “When an Italian says it’s pasta I check under the sauce to make sure. They are innovators of the smokescreen” (Sir Alex Ferguson)

• “Some of these players never dreamed they would be playing in a Cup Final at Wembley, and now here they are fulfilling those dreams” (Lawrie McMenemy)

• “I don’t read the papers, I don’t gamble, I don’t even know what day it is!” (Steve McClaren)

• “England have the best fans in the world and Scotland’s fans are second to none” (Kevin Keegan)

• “I got a fantastic reception from the crowd here at Upton Park – and why shouldn’t I? Now I’m looking forward to getting one off the wife. Reception I mean. I’m too old for all that kind of stuff” (Harry Redknapp)

• “Playing with wingers is more effective against European sides like Brazil than English sides like Wales” (Ron Greenwood)

• “We have top players and, sorry if I’m arrogant, we have a top manager” (Jose Mourinho)

• I suppose that [the referee] was at least consistent. He was bad all night!” (George Graham)

• “The Brazilians aren’t as good as they used to be, or as they are now” (Kenny Dalglish)

• “If I walked on water, my accusers would say it is because I can’t swim” (Bertie Vogts)

Many of these still bring a smile to my face – no matter how many times I hear them. How long before Fabio makes my Top 15 Manager’s quotes?

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

Attacks increase: The health penalty of watching your national team, by Professor Mark Griffiths

I don’t know about you, but I found the England versus Slovenia match pretty stressful to watch. The last 20 minutes seemed to last hours and my heart was pounding away. In a previous blog (‘It’s been emotional’, May 19), I wrote about some research carried out in the UK and published in the British Medical Journal, showing a significant increase in hospital admissions for heart attacks during the 1998 World Cup. The researchers concluded that heart attacks can be triggered by emotional upset, such as watching your national football team lose an important match. Well, that particular study was British. I thought I would look at whether this is a peculiarly English phenomenon or whether there was similar evidence among other the supporters of other football obsessed nations, and more specifically, the supporters of England’s last opponents – Germany. And as it happens, there is!

A group of German medics led by Dr. Ute Wilbert-Lampen from Munich, published a paper in a 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. They recorded every emergency “cardiovascular event” in the greater Munich area during the 2006 World Cup (basically a proxy measure of heart attacks) They then compared the number of heart attacks that occurred during the World Cup with the number of heart attacks both before and after the World Cup, as well as control data from the same period in other years (when there was no World Cup). Overall, the research team assessed 4,279 cases of suspected heart attacks in all their variants.

On match days involving the German team, the incidence of cardiac emergencies was over two-and-a-half times greater than during the control period. The effect was even greater among men. On match days involving the German team, men were over three times more likely to have a heart attack whereas women were nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack. No significant effects on cardiovascular health were found among Germans who watched other World Cup games during the same period. They also found that those patients who had a prior heart disorder (i.e., coronary heart disease [CHD]) were much more likely to suffer heart attacks. Of the patients they assessed, almost half of the patients that had heart attacks on World Cup days involving Germany had CHD (47%) whereas only 29% of patients assessed during the control period had CHD. They also found that on World Cup match days, the highest average incidence of heart attacks was during the first two hours after each match had kicked off.

Based on these results, Dr Wilbert-Lampen and his team concluded that viewing a stressful soccer match more than doubles the risk of a heart attack – particularly in men. They also concluded that men with CHD should take preventative measures. Therefore, not watching the matches involving Germany would appear to be the safest option. The research also seems to indicate that the most important aspect for triggering a stress-induced event is not whether the game was won or lost but the intense strain and excitement experienced during the viewing of a dramatic match such as those that end with a penalty shoot-out. Thankfully this weekend it will be the German supporters that have to think about their hearts and not us.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Professor Griffiths, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8782 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

The Morning After: England vs Germany, by Athalie Redwood Brown

Sadly England ended their World Cup bid yesterday afternoon as their old rivals Germany showed why they are one of the best teams in the World.

England weren’t entirely outclassed, showing the occasional moment of genius, but credit has to go to the young German side, displaying a pace that England just couldn’t cope with. The game perhaps started slower than the media hype and old rivalry had suggested but it didn’t take long to get going with a German goal in the 20th minute.

England never really seemed like they could match the class of the German side as one after another the English defensive line was broken by the German opposition. Although England had the high end of the possession in the first half, the German’s just kept coming and England rarely seemed confident, especially in their defending third.

Going into half time a goal down can sometimes give the losing team an advantage with the opportunity to re-gather themselves and reflect; but with a late first half goal disallowed, some players left the field frustrated and disillusioned; a clear goal, which may well have changed the outcome of the game.

All credit due to the experienced side, they came out with their heads held high and looked strong and determined from the half time whistle.  However, there were peaks and troughs in terms of momentum and intensity of play as it seemed like the ball was running from one attack to the other at either ends of the pitch.

Nothing really seemed to go England’s way in the second half; a few guilt ridden free kicks from the referee, but the number of line breaks and the pace of the attacking Germans ran rings around the defence who never really seemed in sync with one another.

As a whole, England played below par, and we must ask ourselves why? Rooney seemed tired and heavy, his imagination and his pace seemed forced and not free flowing. Some of the defence looked like they were running through glue and it would be fair to question just how well prepared they had been for this game, and ultimately the tournament.

In comparison, Germany seemed on top of their game, chasing, closing down and making the breaks at every opportunity.  We are quick to jump on the team for not playing with the passion and commitment we see in the domestic games, but we have to remember the standard of game and the intensity at international level is not the same. Our players should be able to cope with this style of play, but it’s clear that they’re doing something wrong.

“Underperformance” is clearly the buzz word of this world cup for the England squad, but what can we learn from this? England clearly needs to come together sooner as a team before major championships and work towards playing as a unit and supporting each other. We have arguably the best domestic league in the world – in which the majority of our national team play – but maybe this campaign has supported the notion that a string of world class players cannot always produce a world class team, without huge investments in the development of unity, spirit and cohesion.

Athalie Redwood-Brown, Senior Lecturer in Performance Analysis of Sport, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Athalie, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8785 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

The loyal family: Why do we stick with our team? By Professor Mark Griffiths

Why are we so loyal to our national and club football teams? Whatever the results, we tend to support them week in week out all year round. They can cause us misery and heartache and yet still we support them. As a Sunderland fan, I know this only too well!

It has been argued by academics working in the marketing field that commercial organisations would love to have the kind of brand loyalty shown by football fans – something that Ken Parker and Trish Stuart argued in their 1997 award winning paper ‘The ‘West Ham Syndrome’ published in the Journal of the Market Research Society (I’m not making this up, honest!).

Parker and Stuart, working at the time of the study for the company Discovery Research, surveyed 2000 adults and also carried out some focus group interviews with football fans (including some ardent West Ham United supporters). They found that 58% of males had made a commitment to their club team by the age of 11 years. (I just happen to be one of those men, having supported Sunderland from the age of 7 after watching them beat Leeds in the 1973 FA Cup Final). More than half of children whose parents supported a team went on to support the same one, while a third of all fans still followed their local team.

Marketeers would love to be able to take the seemingly unstinted loyalty of football fans and somehow transfer that loyalty to the products they are trying to sell. For instance, the brand of coffee we buy tends to governed by many factors such as television advertising, the taste, the price, the packaging, etc. If we come across coffee that (for whatever reason) is better (cheaper, tastes better, etc.), we automatically switch our ‘allegiance’ to another brand of coffee. Parker and Stuart argued that wherever West Ham finish in the league, Hammers fans would not desert their club and/or switch to another club. So what’s the difference between football clubs as a brand and other commercial products as a brand? Maybe it’s passion and the fact that football can be such an emotional experience for the diehard fan.

Some working in the advertising industry claim many people working in marketing lack passion in their product. Apparently there are other products (such as cars) that consumers get very passionate about that means they repeatedly buy a particular make of car despite any acknowledged faults. However, one huge fault can damage a brand’s reputation almost overnight, as Toyota is only too aware. The good news for Toyota is that one of the most interesting things about research on the ‘West Ham Syndrome’ is that it can help to explain why leading brands are able to bounce back from PR disasters in similar ways to football clubs come back from being relegated to a lower division.

However, are football fans really as loyal as most of us assume? A paper by Alan Tapp at the University of the West of England examined the loyalty of football fans (Journal of Database Marketing and Customer Strategy Management, 2004) and wondered what it is about football clubs as a brand that makes them so successful – especially as the ‘product’ is so inconsistent and unpredictable? (‘Inconsistent’ and ‘unpredictable are certainly words I would associate with the England team and the England players!). Parker and Stuart claimed that levels of loyalty were “only marginally affected” by West Ham’s fortunes”. However, Alan Tapp says this is completely untrue. He cites analysis of football attendance figures since 1945 to show that crowd sizes are related to a team’s position in the league, and that teams lose support when they are doing poorly.

Despite the fact that crowd attendance is linked to how well a football club is doing, it’s still probably true to say that football fans are still more loyal to their club than they are to most other products. All this goes to show is that most of us will continue to love England, warts and all.

Professor Mark Griffiths, psychologist, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Mark, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8785 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]

The Morning After: England vs Slovenia, by Athalie Redwood Brown

It was great to see an England team who played with spirit and passion yesterday. As they grew in confidence, they seemed to become more united in their mission to reach the final sixteen. Their unity and imagination on the ball was a far cry from the uninspiring and frustrated side that played against Slovenia. Another new line-up could have put Capello in the firing line, and somewhat open to comments of “peer pressure” that had surrounded team selection earlier in the week; but the strong-minded manager made it clear who was in charge.

The lack of fluency in midfield that had been seen against Algeria seemed a thing of the past and the team kept hold of the ball and rarely looked in trouble as the Slovenians pressed hard.  Rooney again failed to find his “spark” up front, but seemed more at home with Defoe by his side.  The injection of Defoe’s imagination and pace might have been just what England needed up front.

There was some criticism after the Algeria game of Capello and his strict “head master” like leadership; producing a team on the pitch that were “playing scared”. Although there were some shaky moments in the first few minutes of the game,  as the side grew in confidence the ball seemed to flow more readily around the pitch, especially from the midfield to the strikers. The heads that had gone down so easily in the previous game seemed lifted as the dedicated fan base showed their support for the side.  A team that had struggled to dominate and close down against Algeria were now showing the discipline and spirit of a squad that did not want to end their World Cup bid.

A lack of commitment was proposed as the reason for the under-performance in previous games, but there is a fine line between lack of commitment and anxiety. The World Cup finals is a place for taking chances and raising your game.  Although England gave us a glimpse of what they can do against Slovenia, Germany will be coming away from some strong performances.  England have always seemed to raise their game against stronger sides, and one could say coming through the dark times over the last week will make them stronger, and more confident that they can unite to play like champions.

One thing is for certain, the next game will be challenge.  The World Cup starts now!  Forget the groups, each game needs passion and spirit. There was a real buzz around the stadium as the final whistle blew last night, let’s hope that Capello and his team can bottle this momentum to bring the intensity and passion of their game to the Germans.

Athalie Redwood-Brown, Senior Lecturer in Performance Analysis of Sport, Nottingham Trent University

To speak to Athalie, call the University Press Office directly on 0115 848 8785 or email worldcup@ntu.ac.uk

[To view Nottingham Trent University’s team of World Cup experts go to www.ntu.ac.uk/worldcup]