Jurgen Klopp bringing ‘brain training’ to Liverpool to get players off phones and out of headphones

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Young people nowadays communicate less and less in person and more and more via small screens, deafened to those around them by ridiculous headphones covering their ears.

And it seems some Premier League managers reckon it’s actually affecting the verbal relationships of their squads, with footballers the most screen-happy set of young men around!

Jurgen Klopp and Ronald Koeman are planning on bringing in Life Kinetic brain training to Liverpool and Southampton respectively in order to improve communication, friendliness and actual human interaction.

It involves physical, cognitive and verbal training – and will be used on coach trips and at the training ground.

“Communication on the pitch is so important, even if it is just to help your team-mates and say ‘time’ or ‘turn!’ … For young players it is all about themselves and less about communication with the rest of the players,” Koeman told a conference in London, cited by the Guardian.

Life Kineteic’s founder Horst Lutz added this: “The idea is to make the most of our brains, making new connections between our neurons by doing things we haven’t done before,” he explains. “For footballers, the main focus is reaction speed and [making] fewer errors.”

According to the report, Klopp used the system at Borussia Dortmund, and we all know the success he had in Germany, based around a tight-knit squad becoming more than the sum of their parts.

Our chances of success in the coming years will be largely defined by the kind of spirit Klopp can conjure among Liverpool’s squad. Anything that helps is more than welcome.

 

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