Coach Values: from the meeting room to the football pitch

The Barça Players Association consolidated “Coach Values” this season, a programme where leadership skills are worked on through the experience and values of FC Barcelona ex-players. One of the last sessions of the season was held on the 14th of June for the business school IESE. A group of former players led by Xevi Molist, Jordi Martínez, Damià Abella and Jofre Mateu had one clear aim: bringing football and business together, through the first hand experiences of former azulgrana players and their coaching methods which are used to teach key values.

This BPA educational programme aims to work on different business skills such as teamwork, communication, and the confidence and leadership skills that a football or company manager needs when leading their team towards a target. The programme is very hands-on, with participants learning through training drills on the pitch.

Jofre Mateu, a former player and consultant for “Coach Values”, explained that “the main goal of the programme is to design training drills to be carried out on the pitch, from which clear conclusions can be drawn and applied to the world of business”. He added that “every aspect of teamwork where group decisions need to taken quickly under pressure can be seen in both sport and business. The problem-solving skills and values that you need to develop are the same, or very similar, and we can follow a successful model like Barça’s to do this”.

Xevi Molist, the former azulgrana player who is now a coach, also participated in this session and said that although this was an educational day for companies, “it’s still a training session for ‘players’, with drills that are tailored to make it easy to understand what’s really happening and achieve the objective of learning”.

Objective of Coach Values

This programme is run by the BPA with the aim of placing value on the experience and education that FC Barcelona players possess. And it shows that it’s not all about skills on the ball, you also need mental and emotional preparation and individual and collective intelligence and strategies if you want to be successful, be that in football or in business.

Another aim of the programme is to provide work opportunities for FCB former players and Association members. For this reason a selection process for ex-players was organised, so that the speakers, coaches and teachers were all former Barça players.