Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023

/39 We consider technology as an ally to reachour goals,wedon’t seetechnology as a tool directing where we have to go. Some time ago, we decided that within the club, education and football have to be perfectly united. We do not see where the person ends and where the footballer begins. Our players are indifferent contexts and will get feedback from different areas. Our players can carry out different tests to get to know about themselves and try to improve. This weekend, I saw a statement from Carlos Tevez who is leading Independiente in the First Division. Hewas saying that they carried out a neuroscience study that had to do with solving a problem, a longer session. It was a problem with a tablet about mental stress. You have to carry out this test under pressure. By the end of the training, three players from one of the most important clubs came to them saying,” Hey, we don’t know how to do the pass here.” Six out of ten kids are poor, and therefore they don’t have the education. For us, education is the legacy for our club, and we can see that in the name of our club, Estudiantes, which means students. That’s why we see innovation as a way to add value to people. We do this through education and we do this with sports as a vehicle in order to be able to do this. Within our club we always talk about four components; and the first is adaptability. In our country, we have a tough financial situation, and this generates pressure for our players, so on the pitch, adaptability is key. In fact, it is the most important thing. Next, we want them to be autonomous. We want them to be aware of their strengths and at the same time they need to be aware of their weaknesses, because later on it will be a player demanding from us as coaches. If it a player is autonomous, then they will be demanding something from us. They need to consider what is important for their own development. The third has to do with high performance. There are many players that are at the top level, but they are not operating at a high performance level. Finally, perhaps the most important thing to have is self knowledge. From a very early stage, when they are 12 or 13 years old, we have a holistic program to reduce stress. We work other activities outside the traditional methods such as yoga programs. For example, in our residency, we inaugurated a sort of club garden. The players see the metaphor of planting a seed, and then the seed will become a plant, and then perhaps grow fruits and flowers. They can see how this relates to the process they are going for. Using this metaphor, we can help them understand their journey better. JuanPablo Garcia EstudiantesdeLaPlata: AreaEstudiantes Innova TOPIC 1