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Chelsea "respecting the ball", former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp and New Zealand's haka Design: Dan Goldfarb/The Athletic; Photos: Visionhaus, John Powell, Luis Robayo/Getty Images Chelsea’s infamous pre-match huddle in the centre circle, with the ball positioned in the middle, has not impressed former Manchester United and England right-back Gary Neville: “I think it’s a nonsense, ” he said on his Sky Sports podcast last weekend. “The whole thing is a nonsense. ” Liam Rosenior’s side have been using the huddle as part of their preparations since winning 3-2 at Napoli in January, with the Chelsea head coach explaining in his press conference after their defeat to Newcastle last weekend that it was the players’ decision. “They wanted to be around the ball, to respect the ball and show unity and leadership. That is not my decision. That was a decision between the leadership group and the team. ” Advertisement The huddle drew extra attention last weekend after referee Paul Tierney became comically positioned in the middle of it, seemingly unwilling or unable to extricate himself. It was a farcical scene that did little to quell Neville’s ire. After the game, he dismissed Chelsea’s huddle as “gimmicky”, painting it as a “show” of togetherness, but with little substance behind it. He labelled it “cultish” and “ridiculous”, surmising that “fans won’t be conned by that, they’ll just judge you on your performances”. Rosenior sees it differently, arguing that his team are “showing unity and togetherness and spirit, and you need that… you need a group of players willing to run and fight for each other”. Team huddles are nothing new in football, or in sport generally. They’ve become part of an ever-evolving library of pre-match rituals that are designed to give teams an extra “one per cent” that can make a difference between winning and losing. While there are no direct comparisons with Chelsea’s choice of hogging the centre circle to pay homage to the ball, we have seen teams being creative in other ways. In 2019, Australia cricket head coach Justin Langer had his team walking barefoot on the grass at Edgbaston before their World Cup semi-final against England in an attempt to capture “positive energy coming out of the earth”. The practice of ‘grounding’ or ‘earthing’ involves making physical contact with the earth’s surface. Proponents of it believe that doing so connects the body to the energy current that flows through everything on the planet. “Matthew Hayden and I used to do it before every Test as a bit of a ritual, ” Langer later explained, referring to his Test-match opening partner. It was, he said, a way to stay relaxed before a tough game. For former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp, there was no huddle on the halfway line, but he did have a habit of positioning himself there while the teams warmed up, with his eyes firmly fixed on the opposition. Advertisement “It’s really off-putting, ” said ex-Brighton striker Glenn Murray in an interview with Talk Sport. “It throws you the first time it happens because you’re like, ‘What is he doing? He’s not even looking at his own team; he’s just watching us’. He won’t break his view, he’ll just keep watching the whole time. ” After he left Liverpool in 2024, Klopp explained he had employed the tactic throughout his coaching career, but that it was intended to intimidate on only one occasion: against his former team, Borussia Dortmund. Mostly, though, he said during an Instagram Q&A, it was a way to “understand the other team a little bit better”. He added, “Sometimes you see a player limping a little bit, you see a player do this or that… I just try to understand what they are doing. It’s not so interesting when they are doing pure physical stuff, but when they are doing passing and these kinds of things. ” Former Burnley and Everton boss Sean Dyche had a different ploy when it came to unnerving the opposition: switching ends after winning the coin toss before kick-off. In a piece investigating the impact of turning a home team around, it was discovered that Dyche had done exactly that a remarkable number of times. His Burnley side had turned Arsenal around twice at the Emirates, Manchester City three times at the Etihad, and Manchester United four times at Old Trafford. It continued at Everton too — during his first year in charge, he swapped ends with 10 of the 15 teams he faced away from home in the Premier League. The idea is that preventing the home side from attacking their preferred stand in the second half might somehow land a psychological blow before a ball has been kicked. Was it effective? Results were largely mixed, so we’ll go with ‘inconclusive’. Former England rugby union player Will Greenwood was part of a memorable pre-match moment during the final game of the Six Nations in 2003. It was Ireland vs England at Lansdowne Road, with both teams vying to win the coveted Grand Slam trophy. Advertisement England captain Martin Johnson led his side out onto the pitch first and lined them up for the pre-match ceremonials on “Ireland’s side” of the red carpet. “That was the side we were going to kick off from, ” Greenwood tells The Athletic, “Therefore, that’s the side you go on. No one had told him (otherwise). ” When he was asked to move, Johnson stood firm. As did his team-mates. “No one moves a bloody inch, ” commanded England’s No 7 Neil Back. It might have been a one-off moment, as opposed to a ritual, but there’s little doubt that it became part of the team’s intention and approach that day. “You just go, ‘Not today, Ireland’, ” says Greenwood. “You’ve done us in 2001 (a dramatic loss that cost England a Grand Slam for the third consecutive year) when we got bullied around. It was a line in the sand. ” It wasn’t only the England players who were strengthened in their resolve by that moment. It did the same for Ireland, too. “We called it an act of unity and solidarity, they’d probably call it an act of political sabotage, ” says Greenwood, referring to the fact that Ireland’s president, Mary Mc Aleese, was forced off the red carpet and onto the muddy grass to shake hands with the Irish players. “Whichever camp you’re in, it produced two teams who put in the most extraordinary physical effort for the first 30 minutes of that game. It was about who was going to blink first. ” England and Greenwood went on to win the match 42-6, before lifting the World Cup eight months later. Pre-match rituals can impact both teams, then, perhaps none more so than the haka, a ceremonial dance performed by many of New Zealand’s sports teams, most famously the nation’s rugby teams. Deeply rooted in Maori culture — the indigenous group who make up just under a fifth of New Zealand’s population — the haka is traditionally used to welcome guests, as well as to acknowledge great achievements, or pay respect at funerals. When used in a sporting contest, though, it’s often painted otherwise: as a war dance, or as Greenwood puts it, “A challenge. A picking up of the gauntlet. ” Advertisement He still remembers the first time he was faced with it in person: “1997, Old Trafford. Their back three that day was Jonah Lomu, Jeff Wilson, Christian Cullen. It might be the greatest back three of all time. And yet I was totally lost in what I was seeing in front of me. ” Greenwood loved the haka. He drew energy from it. “If you’re intimidated by it, you’re in the wrong sport, ” he says. The haka and Chelsea’s huddle are two extremely different things, of course. The former represents a deep connection between the team and their nation’s cultural history. It’s about pride, passion, and heritage. What is the latter about? Sports psychologist and performance coach Jamil Qureshi brings it back to values and says the huddle we see is part of a bigger picture. “There’s something that happens before and after it, regarding how they train and what they talk about when they’re training, ” he says. “If it’s about ‘respect the ball’, then this is something that they’re clearly working on to give them a set of values, which will standardise the way in which they’re to play. ” Pre-match rituals, he says, help athletes develop consistency of mind — and thus consistency of play. For some athletes, that might look like superstitions: putting their right boot on before their left or kissing the head of a bald team-mate (see Laurent Blanc and goalkeeper Fabien Barthez during France’s victorious 1998 World Cup run). For others, it’s pre-match routines, which Qureshi recommends on a micro level — for things such as penalties — and on a macro level before a match or tournament. “I don’t know why it’s a big deal for people, ” he says. “It appears to be neither spiritual nor superstitious. It’s a pre-match routine, which is relevant to allowing people to form a state of mind to allow them to play. ” When it comes to Rosenior’s line about “respecting the ball”, Qureshi says that is likely to have a tangible meaning, based on the fact that athletes at the top level understand that there will always be things beyond their control, so they must focus on the things they can: “Maybe it’s about understanding their responsibility and ownership for playing well and winning games. ” Advertisement He spent time working alongside Sam Allardyce at Bolton Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers and recalls the manager’s messaging there before games against the league’s top teams: there will always be things the opposition can’t stop you from doing. No matter how good they are, they can’t stop you from communicating. Can’t stop you from running. “In a way, ‘respect the ball’ might be about this, ” suggests Qureshi. “What are you in control of? What are the valuable bits of a game that you need to be responsible for or own? It’s directly relevant to how they show up as a team. ” One of Neville’s main criticisms is that all of a team’s preparations should be complete by the time they get onto the pitch for kick off: “No words should be able to help you five, 10, 15 seconds, 30 seconds before a football match, ” he said. Qureshi disagrees, pointing out that for some players, it’s helpful for these final preparations to take place as close as possible to the realm in which they are going to perform. “It’s like practising penalties on a training ground and then practising on the actual pitch where you’re going to play, ” he says. “The closer you can get to the real moments, the easier it is to translate them on the pitch. ” There are some players, he accepts, who do complete all their mental preparation beforehand. Perhaps this was Neville, who says he never did a huddle in his 20 years at Old Trafford and preferred to go straight into his right-back position from where he would finalise his own preparations. “But that isn’t necessarily always the case, or in the case of a team, ” says Qureshi. “The closer you can get to where and how you’re going to perform, the better, because then it helps with visualisation. ” Greenwood agrees about the individualisation of approach. His snap judgement of Chelsea’s huddle is one of disgust: “That’s actually crazy. What are they doing, standing around the ball? It feels like a Life of Brian sketch, ” he says, referencing the 1979 Monty Python satirical comedy. Advertisement He mentions the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning model, which posits that athletes have unique, personalised, and optimal levels of anxiety, arousal, and emotions for peak performance. That means “you do what is right to get you in the right frame of mind to play”, he says. “Obviously, there is collective time to do a warm-up, last tactics, the strategy, and how you want to play. Then, in terms of performance, the best way to get a team functioning is counterintuitively to allow the individuals to prepare in the way they want to. ” His question about Chelsea’s approach then, is whether some of them are doing it “because they feel they have to? If so, it loses an element of its collective power and show of strength”. The more he thinks (and talks) about it, though, the more Greenwood starts to appreciate the nuance involved. In the 1970s, he says the haka felt like something that New Zealand’s players almost “felt obliged to do”. But from the mid-1980s onwards, that changed. “From Zinzan Brooke’s era — that 1987 World Cup winning team — they started to acknowledge the heritage and the real difference within that group. “It was really important to some members of the team, and it’s therefore become important to all members of the team. “That’s another way of looking at this huddle: if it’s important for some, it should be important for all. Some Chelsea players will be looking over the ball, going, ‘I wonder what’s for supper? Have the kids got tickets? ’. Others will be going into the zone and looking at the ball like it’s the be-all and end-all and they’re harnessing energy from it. ” Greenwood thinks back to that moment at Lansdowne Road when Johnson’s refusal to budge inspired his team-mates to take that same attitude into their crucial game against Ireland. “In a way, Chelsea are trying to create those collective moments of reinforcement, of self-belief, of mental resilience being built together that triggers performance. ” Advertisement They won’t win games because of it, says Qureshi, because the beauty of football is that “you can do all the right stuff and still lose”. But that alone is not reason enough for Chelsea to give up on their huddle. In fact, it makes it even more important that they stick to their routine. “All you can ever do is give yourself the best chance of winning. And it’s the consistency of this sort of thing, which allows, over time, more opportunity to win if the players believe it, if it’s got a good context, and if it’s put in place properly. ” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Sarah Shephard spent 10 years at Sport magazine before becoming Deputy Head of Content at The Coaches' Voice. She has also written for publications such as The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times Magazine, among others. Follow Sarah on Twitter @Sarah Shep Sport