Dali Ostojic Talks Mental Strength in Football with TTI from Wien, Austria TODAY!
May 8th 2020
Dali gives love with TTi Soccer at 2pm CST TODAY!
Dali is a colleague I met through FC Barcelona’s Innovation Hub. A former player, Dali is completely focused on helping players to achieve through mental coaching.
This comes from him being a player that would have benefited from help psychologically whilst he was playing. In our last face-to-face chat in Barcelona, he was adamant and passionate about his movements within football. I hope you enjoy his answers!
“Dali Ostojic is considered as one of the TOP coaches in Vienna and is an expert for high performance and self-confidence – KOSMO Magazine”
Dali is a personal mental coach of various professional athletes and soccer players from the Italian Serie A, German and Austrian Bundesliga, MLS Soccer League and Serbian Premier League.
Speaker at various colleges, sports clubs and companies on the subject of "Top performance, self-esteem and self-confidence".
Host of the Youtube-Podcast “Dali’s Mentor Talk”: Secrets and Learnings of Selfmade Millionaires and Top Athletes.
Youtube: Dalis Mentor Talk
1. How did your pathway from playing to coach come about??
After my second knee operation, which I had at the age of 22, I asked myself questions which made me realize that just playing soccer won’t pay my rent in the long term.
For me it was clear, that I have to make arrangements now for the time after my soccer career.
I enrolled at the University of Vienna and decided to study sports and history as a secondary subject. At first, I was very happy with my decision, until I realized that gymnastics and soccer were two different pairs of shoes. In the meantime, I started reading books about psychology and the topic fascinated me a lot. As time goes by, I fell in love with it and read countless books on psychology and personality development. Therefore, it was obvious to me that I had chosen the wrong subject to study. Consequently, I quit my sports studies and switched to psychology, philosophy and education.
When I was about 25 years old, I started to support my younger teammates in the soccer club in a mental context. They came to me repeatedly at sporting or personal challenges and I tried to help them in a secret and personal exchange with the best of my knowledge and belief. It was remarkable that on the one hand most of the players were too proud to ask me for support, but on the other hand they indicated by jokes that they wanted to talk to me. I quickly discovered an enormous potential in the field of mental training and I found myself in the coaching work. Basically, I wanted to spend every free minute with coaching.
Two years later I decided to hang up my soccer shoes, but not because my soccer qualities have decreased or because I no longer loved the sport. On the contrary. I loved standing in front of people and give them the life improving tools they need. My goal was to become the best in the area and in order to do so I had to reduce my commitment to other areas. In this case it was my career as an active soccer player.
I didn’t regret my decision, because in 4 years as a mental coach in soccer I achieved more than in 20 years of my active career as a player. Of course, the huge network that I have developed during my days as an active athlete has been a huge advantage for me.
I am very grateful for how much soccer has given me in life. My work has now expanded to sports clubs of all disciplines, companies and schools.
2. How important is the role of the parent in a youth athletes development (and what advice would you give)?
I asked world champion and Champions League winner Marco Materazzi the same question when I interviewed him once. His answer was: „Parents play a huge and important role. Parents can enable their children all their dreams, but they can also destroy those dreams. Every child should be allowed to dream the dream of a professional soccer player, but it should also know that it does not only depend on luck. It also depends on passion, ambition and hard work.”
Parents shape their children’s environment. Starting from language learning as a toddler up to support with homework as a student. In my opinion, the way children grew up in a family is highly relevant for the child’s self-esteem and the self-esteem itself is relevant for the future education and career opportunities.
A parent’s role covers many aspects, but three of them are particularly important. First, parents should be an interaction and relationship partner, who respond sensitively and appropriate to a child’s development and his needs. They should shape their relationship with them with emotional warmth.
Then comes the central function of parents as teachers and educational supporters. This role requires a complex interaction of self- and child-related competencies as well as context- and action-related competencies of the parents. In order to specifically promote child skills, parents must be able to recognize opportunities and react flexible. In the ideal case, they adapt their support and stimulation to the corresponding learning and problem-solving possibilities of the children in the respective situation. As a result, they provide a “framework” for independent learning of their children.
At last, parents are organizers of child development opportunities through the choice of their childcare, soccer clubs and friends who offer their children a special “ecology of development promotion”.
Parents should influence their children by encouraging their willingness to cooperate, their motivation to learn and their ability to control themselves. Furthermore, parents should expand their children’s knowledge and repertoire of actions through instruction, stimulation and role models.
3. How do you see the role of the sports psychologist developing over the next decade?
For many sports psychologists, professional soccer is a career dream goal. However, in reality the path to it is long and difficult: despite many positive developments in the adult sector, there is still a lack of acceptance and trust in the discipline. Only a small amount of Bundesliga clubs work with sports psychologists on a full-time basis. In many clubs, sport psychology work in the professional team, if at all, only takes place outside the public perception.
In my daily work I usually experience two reactions to my activities as a mental coach: very high interest or direct skepticism. The latter is a direct result from the prejudice that only “sick people” have anything to do with psychology.
While in the US psychology is naturally integrated into the everyday sports life, in Austria, Germany and Switzerland we are on a slow but good way to get there. Austria tries to copy as much as possible from Germany, because in the meantime they have recognized that sports psychology is an extremely important component of success in professional and performance-oriented high-performance sport.
Especially in the last 10 years, the professional field of work has evolved enormously and the already high demand is still increasing. Unfortunately, the access to the sports psychology subject is currently problem-oriented. This means that the responsible persons in a soccer club have identified a specific problem area and want to handle it with the help of an expert. There is nothing wrong with that, but in the thoughts it doesn’t yet seem to play a role that sports psychology can also be specifically used to improve performance. The reason is that there are many methods and techniques that enhance the daily training routine.
Although sports psychology has not yet arrived in the everyday Bundesliga-business, it will play a major role in the future. Clubs are already realizing that the competition is not sleeping and that they are always looking for the best sports psychologists in their respective countries.
Over the next ten years, I see the role of the sports psychologist or mental coach as a central figure in the core of every team of trainers. Basically, on the same level as a co-trainer, stamina trainer and tactics trainer.
A showcase example of this in European soccer is the FC Barcelona under Luis Enrique, who had the sports psychologist Joaquin Valdez in his core coaching team. Valdez was always by his side, in training sessions as well as in soccer matches.
4. How can the mental health of a player affect performance positively and negatively?
In order to answer this question, you have to ask yourself: “How do professionals achieve top results on a regular basis and what is their secret recipe?” Questions like these have kept me busy and I wanted to find out the answer for myself. I interviewed countless top athletes and coaches and almost all of them agreed that at least 50 percent of a good performance is based on mental abilities.
The best athletes perform constantly well over a longer period, due to their mental health and strength. Thereby, mental strength is a universal formula for success, regardless of the area. Yet the average athlete sacrifices only five percent of his training time to improve his mental abilities, but then often wonders why his performance decreases or why he never reaches his full potential.
Soccer players are also just human beings with strengths and weaknesses, with feelings and problems. Especially, the requirement to perform well under extreme pressure, despite various psychological challenges, is very difficult for them. Therefore, it is essential that soccer players not only look after their bodies, but also after their mental health.
In a recent interview, the German manager of the players' union VDV, Ulf Baranowsky, has stated that he has noticed a significant increase “in the field of psychological problems among athletes”. He also said that approximately half of the players he supports suffer from depression or unrealistic fears. In many cases injuries and the enormous pressure, that the athletes have to go through, are the root cause of the problems.
Besides the intensive training sessions, players are also particularly concerned with questions like “Am I playing? Am I not playing? If not, why not?" Additionally, the public comes along and every move I make will be judged from the outside. Hence, I am always on display. The media judges how I look at someone or something, how I walk, my appearance. This increases the pressure, because I have to show my best performance not only in the game, but also during training.
The performance of a person has always to do with his psyche, because performance is based on behavior and behavior underlies psychological regulation. Therefore, high performance is no coincidence, but a reward for mental health. This doesn’t mean that it enables the athlete to run faster, but he can reach his full potential at the right moment and stay calm. Qualities that are extremely important in sport. If I may summarize everything in one word, then it is all about self-confidence! The secret of success of match winners: They feel like winners even before they win. Athletes train their self-confidence parallel to their physical abilities.
Top athletes could allow themselves to sink into self-pity after a loss. Instead, they get up again, move forward and compete again.
Athletes must train their brain like a muscle. Mind work is as hard as strength training, because in both cases you are your own most powerful opponent. Those who always tell themselves that they are not good enough, are more likely to fail. Try to positively influence the inner dialogue, which is fed by your subconscious - for example through techniques such as monologues or through rituals in order to strengthen your self-image. The more mentally stable you are, the less self-doubt and anxiety you feel.