
Inside the Minds of Football Champions
What great footballers have built — and what you can do with it
By Gildas Garrec · 220 pages · 2026
Available format
About this book
Guide de psychologie du sport pour jeunes footballeurs : ce que la recherche identifie, après coup, dans les grandes carrières — sans jamais permettre de prédire à l'avance qui réussira. Un programme TCC de huit semaines pour travailler ce qui, dans ta trajectoire, dépend réellement de toi.
You play, you keep improving, and one question comes back more often than you'd admit: do you have what it takes? This book starts from a finding that should set you free rather than worry you: sport psychology research has identified what distinguishes exceptional careers — after the fact. None of it can predict, in advance, who will make it. No scout, no test, no non-selection can cross you off the list for good. Built not around superstars but around concrete mechanisms — the practice that actually counts, how you respond to an injury or a rejection, the pressure of a match that matters — this book gives you an eight-week program, built on cognitive behavioral therapy tools, to work on the part of your journey that's truly yours. No promise of results. A method for improving, whatever path lies ahead of you.
Table of contents
- 1What Great Footballers Have Built — And What You Can Do With It
- 2Legal Notice
- 3Emergency Resources
- 4About the Author
- 5Also in This Collection
- 6Introduction — The Promise, and What Disproves It
- 7Chapter 1 — The Ten Thousand Hours Myth
- 8Chapter 2 — The Myth of the Early-Born Child
- 9Chapter 3 — The Myth of Mental Toughness
- 10Chapter 4 — Seeing Before Everyone Else
- 11Chapter 5 — The Rocky Road
- 12Chapter 6 — Filling a Gap or Extending a Model: Two Drivers
- 13Chapter 7 — The Skills You Can Learn
- 14Chapter 8 — When Regulation Breaks Down
- 15Chapter 9 — Identity Beyond Performance
- 16Chapter 10 — The Injury
- 17Chapter 11 — Not Making the Team
- 18Chapter 12 — The People Around You
- 19Chapter 13 — The Match
- 20Chapter 14 — What's Not Up to the Individual
- 21Chapter 15 — Survivorship Bias
- 22Chapter 16 — Why Talent Scouting Gets It Wrong
- 23The 8-Week Program — A CBT Protocol for the Six Skills
- 24Conclusion — The Only Predispositions You Can Learn
- 25Glossary
- 26Appendix — Mental Training Journal Template
- 27Appendix — Post-Match Self-Assessment Grid
- 28Appendix — Questions to Ask a Scout or Academy
- 29Bibliography
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