GALICIA

John O-Neill writes about the people and the province of Galicia where he and his wife have lived since moving there in the summer of 2006: humourously, knowledgeably, contentiously, and with no little respect for the people and customs of Spain's largely forgotten region. Full of personal moments and incidents that the reader will relate to.

A Sport Psychologist who is from and currently based in Ireland. Since 2015, John has been travelling to Athletic Club Bilbao learning about their Psychology and the Personal Development methods they implement with their coaches and players. That was the first year that John and María started to collaborate, learn, and share psychology concepts and projects with each other in elite football. From such learning opportunities, John was able to apply his Psychology MSc Dissertation to Athletic Club Bilbao's unique approach to developing home-grown players within La Liga. With both María and John having an aligned outlook on development and what this actually means for each person and organisation, it has been a very interesting mentoring relationship in understanding the psychology needed for the development of coaches and players in high performance football. This includes having a strong belief with each other in understanding the function of vulnerability within the player, coach, team and club, and how can it be used to promote learning. While also seeing the importance in helping coaches to face their own fears and blind spots before helping the players to do likewise. This is especially important when María's and John's objective of psychology for a club is to develop the potential of the player through the development of the coach. Over the last number of years, John has been on collaborative learning spaces professionally with some of the following Clubs and Organisations; Arsenal Football Club, Manchester City, Manchester United, Leeds United, Nike Football Academy and FC Bayern Munich. After completing his undergrad degree in Sport & Exercise Science, John completed an MSc in Sport, Exercise & Performance Psychology with both programmes completed at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Currently, John is undertaking a PhD with the Psychology Department at Mary Immaculate College, Ireland where he is investigating what can be achieved when we allow vulnerability to lead and coach us in the learning context of the group as problem-solving on a one-to-one basis may not solve a problem group-wide. This can often be the case in football development when a player gets broken up into different departments and data within a club, meaning there is a chance the player will break. Understanding the vulnerability within these relationships is one of the main pillars of work that María and John collaborate closely on in order to achieve a more concrete and applied framework of research that makes a development impact especially within elite football.