Inside Milan’s ‘Mind Room’, Italian football’s first psychology laboratory
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to take a spot kick in a World Cup penalty shootout? What were Roberto Donadoni, Franco Baresi and Robert Baggio, for example, picturing when they stepped forward at Italia 90 and USA 94? The fear etched on the faces of teammates left at the halfway line? The pep talk at the end of extra time? Or 4 billion tigers?
The Italian national team stars, who all missed penalties in pivotal World Cup matches, played for AC Milan at a time when Dr Bruno Demichelis, the club’s former scientific coordinator, was developing the ‘Mind Room’, Serie A’s first psychology laboratory. The ‘Mind Room’ provided a place for Baresi, Baggio and Donadoni to talk about issues including the trauma of failing to score from the penalty spot.
“One of them told me, ‘I put the ball down and took three or four steps back. If I score, we are champions of the world. And then a little thought crossed my mind: what if I miss?’” recalls Demichelis.
“He said, ‘That hit me. I started looking at the ball like it was a tiger. Then I looked at the coach: another tiger. Then I looked at the players and my teammates: another 21 tigers. Then I thought about the people watching at home. In a moment, I had 4 billion tigers looking at me. I was shaking. I felt confused. I almost felt like crying.’”
Demichelis, a sports psychologist who also worked for Chelsea during Carlo Ancelotti’s time in charge, was tasked with helping Milan’s players to manage the challenges that come with competing at the highest level.
Between 1986 and 2009, Demichelis built a psychology department which pioneered the use of biomedical monitoring and cognitive training, helping Milan to win 21 major trophies during his time at the club.
“We improved skills that are very well-defined: recovery, attention, stamina, speed in analysing situations and making decisions. The difference is that our players were able to deploy these skills under pressure. As a player, you need to have this ability if you’re going to take a penalty in the World Cup final,” says Demichelis.
“People think this is something professional players can do easily, but it’s not. It has to be taught.”
The ‘Mind Room’, a 40m2 lab containing between 6 and 8 zero gravity chairs for players to relax in, was a key part of Demichelis’ setup, allowing him to measure variables such as an individual’s attention span or stress level.
The idea was born from a demand for group psychology sessions, after one-on-one interventions proved popular with the Milan squad. Demichelis’ ambition, which saw him establish ‘The Mind Room’ at a time when no other club in Serie A employed a single sports psychologist, was typical of Milan’s approach in the late 1980s.
This was embodied by former owner Silvio Berlusconi, who employed Demichelis shortly after buying the club in 1986.
“He (Berlusconi) wanted to do everything (win Serie A, the European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup) in one year. We had to tell him that this was impossible. We said that we needed a minimum of three years: one year to win Serie A, the following year to win the European title and the year after that to win the world championship. He said, ‘I still want to do it in one year,’” recalls Demichelis.
Berlusconi’s commitment to the club almost led to Demichelis’ job interview, a two and a half hour meeting which he’d spent six months preparing for, ending prematurely.
“The owner asked me if I was a Milan fan and I said ‘No’. I remember him stepping back a little bit and I thought ‘Oh no’. Then he asked me if I was an Inter fan. I said ‘No’, and he moved a bit further back. Before he asked me the third question, I said, ‘I’m not a fan!’”
Demichelis’ pragmatism was also evident in a plea to Berlusconi not to publicise the appointment of a psychologist, a move Demichelis feared the Italian media would portray negatively.
Eschewing external PR, the psychologist and former karate World Championship silver medallist focused on convincing Milan’s players of the value of sports psychology.
“I said to the players, ‘We have the same goal. We have the same mission. The reason for me being here is to protect you as an asset,’” recalls Demichelis.
By introducing sensors to assess a player’s condition during training, monitoring indicators such as heart rate and muscle tension, Demichelis was able to demonstrate the impact of his work.
Backing from both Berlusconi and the coaching staff was also crucial in winning over the first team squad.
“I had the players on my side because we had the club on our side. We had the coach on our side because he believed in our philosophy. At the time, he told the players ‘You don’t play football with your foot, you play football with your brain’. It’s a big asset for a sport psychologist,” says Demichelis.
Older players, who were less able to use fitness and strength training to compensate for physical deterioration, responded particularly well to the newfound focus on psychology.
Using a range of cognitive training exercises, Demichelis was able to improve an individual’s attention span, for example, allowing players to develop quicker responses to on-the-pitch situations.
The ‘Mind Room’ also proved popular with Milan’s household names, who were singularly focused on the benefits of psychological support, rather than any perceived drawbacks, according to Demichelis.
“The very first players who come to you are the outstanding players. Then you have the very, very good players. Then you have the good players. The average player hides himself, because what we’re doing is working with facts and facts prove how good a player you are,” he says.
The ‘Mind Room’ formed part of the ‘Milan Lab’, the club’s renowned sports science setup, which, according to Demichelis, helped Milan reduce soft tissue injuries by 91% during his time at the club.
“If you think about circuit training, the circuit has different stations. Within the Milan Lab, you had a station which was focused on biochemistry and a station focused on structure, for example. The Mind Room was one of these stations. It was about looking at the player as a person, a person with skeletal, biochemical, emotional, technological and structural subsystems.”
The data-driven ethos which underpinned both the ‘Mind Room’ and the ‘Milan Lab’ was innovatively harnessed by Clarence Seedorf, who brought Demichelis back to the club during the Dutchman’s spell as manager in 2014.
“The General Director of the Milan Lab said to him (Seedorf), ‘Wow, you’re 31, but to me (from looking at your results), fitness-wise, you’re 26: your biological age is much, much younger,’” recalls Demichelis.
“Seedorf said, ‘Give me that print out’. He went to the CEO and said, ‘Listen to what your lab is saying about me. He (the Milan Lab General Director) is saying that I am 26, biologically speaking, so extend my contract for four more years,’ and they did!”
Whilst a pioneering focus on psychology and sports science was important to Milan’s stratospheric rise from relative obscurity in 1986, Demichelis highlights the cultural change enacted after Berlusconi’s takeover as the key to the club’s success.
“The most important thing was the cultural re-engineering we introduced to the club. When they (Berlusconi’s company) bought Milan, the club came from a very bad recent past. It had its shield in the mud,” says Demichelis.
“We had three coaches (Sacchi, Capello and Ancelotti) who all oversaw cycles of winning, so there must be something more than the coach. That was the club’s culture and philosophy. We introduced professional and organisational science. That was a big difference.”
Whilst Milan enjoyed almost uninterrupted success during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, the Champions League final defeat to Liverpool in 2005 was a hammer blow which left a real mark on the club.
Whilst confirming the psychological imprint of the loss, Demichelis denies that the defeat was due to complacency, following a first half showing which saw Milan race into a three-goal lead after 45 minutes.
“(Gennaro) Gattuso said that it took him six months to recover. To this day, we don’t know what happened. I know for sure what didn’t happen, though,” says Demichelis.
“There’s been talk of players going back to the dressing room at half time, thinking they had won and celebrating. This isn’t true. I was there. I remember saying to Ancelotti, ‘Go and talk to them.’ He told the players, ‘We are playing against British players. You know their mentality: they will never give up. You must kill them.’”
With Milan once more in contention for major honours, theories for the club’s renaissance are not in short supply. Demichelis again highlights the role of culture in the recent resurgence.
“There were two or three years of confusion. But now Maldini is back. They have a really professional group behind the scenes who have brought back the club’s organisational skills. They’ve brought back a philosophy,” he says.
Whilst only time will tell if Milan’s upturn in fortunes is long standing, Demichelis believes that football’s increasing focus on sports science and psychology is here to stay. It’s a trend which he thinks could have a serious impact on future managerial appointments.
“Today’s coach has to be a great communicator and a really skilled psychologist. You have to know a lot about sports science, and deal with lots of information and stats. A background (in playing football) is not enough,” he says.
It’s an interesting opinion, in the light of decisions which have seen relatively inexperienced coaches, such as Andrea Pirlo and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, handed first team responsibilities at elite clubs. But, as Demichelis has showed throughout his career, he’s not a man afraid of challenging convention.
This article was first published on Curva e Calcio:
https://curvaecalcio.substack.com/p/exclusive-interview-inside-milans
You can listen to the full interview on the Beat The Press podcast:
