Paper Presentation IV:
Past and Future of Football
Friday, April 9, 10.30–12.30
Identity and Performance in Premiership Football: Who we are is what we do!
Mark Nesti & Martin Eubank
Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences,
Liverpool John Moores University
This paper addresses the importance of developing team identity in relation to local and club identities during 8 seasons applied sport psychology work at Bolton Wanderers, Newcastle United and Hull City. Qualitative data will be presented based on the experiences of the first author who was employed as a consultant to work within each of these clubs on average 3 days a week. A significant part of the role focused on developing the identity of the first team players and staff. The presentation will examine how this was carried out and discuss the way in which the team’s identity was viewed as crucial to success on the field, and how there was considerable effort devoted to matching this to the club’s view of itself, and the connection of this to the city and fans. This involved input from all stakeholders including the Board, manager, back room staff, first team players, local media and fans.
The importance of identity within these Premiership clubs will be examined in by drawing primarily on existential philosophy and psychology, and related theory within sociology and cultural studies. Existential perspectives argue that the individual or groups of individuals (eg: teams) can only be understood within their cultural context. This extends to the crucial concept of identity. Commenting about the benefits that existentialism could bring to his own brand of Humanistic psychology, Maslow (1968) claimed that it had much to offer because it places, “ a radical stress on the concept of identity and the experience of identity as a sine qua non of human nature and of any philosophy or science of human nature” ( 9). It will be argued that ensuring congruence between the identity of the club (which is partly based on its history and traditions, and broader local identities) and the team’s identity, is not merely a method to win the fans over. The volatility of the Premiership and demands for rapid achievement also mean that this is vital to the success of the team, and the job security of the staff, especially the manager and other senior individuals at the club.
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