When Bodø/Glimt walked into the San Siro and finished the job against Inter Milan on February 24, 2026, it felt like one of those Hollywood stories. The underdog from north of the Arctic Circle knocking out one of Europe’s giants – home and away. But if you look past the romance of it, what stands out for me as a mental performance coach isn’t luck or momentum but actual mental preparation and readiness to perform under pressure. This is what I call “Pressure-Confidence” and this is something players can learn if they want to gain the edge.
For parents on the sidelines, but especially also for coaches serious about youth development, there’s something deeply relevant here – let me explain.
Bodø/Glimt’s success was not just tactical discipline or superior conditioning. It was mental mastery under pressure. And that is a lesson that scales all the way down to U12.
For me, one of the most compelling details in Bodø/Glimt’s rise for the past years, is their collaboration with a former Norwegian fighter pilot who they brought in as their mental performance specialist.
Why bring in a former fighter pilot? Because very few professions demand better decision-making under pressure. Fighter pilots are trained to operate with sky-high heart rates, intense stress, and narrowing focus – yet they still must read situations clearly and act decisively. And yes you might think now – well but soccer is not about life or death, and you are right, but for the body pressure is often pressure and this mental stress impairs thinking, decision making and execution. So, soccer players can immensely benefit from improving their “Pressure-Confidence”
Picture a center back protecting a 1–0 lead in the final minutes of a state championship. The crowd is loud. Legs are heavy. One mistake could change everything. Or imagine a 16-year-old stepping up to take the deciding penalty in a shootout. Heart pounding. Hands slightly shaky. The mind racing.
In those moments, talent isn’t the issue. Regulation is.
Structured mental performance training teaches players how to recognize what’s happening in their bodies and regain control – how to slow the breath, widen their vision, and lock back into the next action. It answers the real performance question: How do I start a big game when it already feels overwhelming? How do I stay composed when everything around me speeds up?
Through breathwork, stress exposure and scenario training, followed by mental analysis, I teach players how to recognize what’s happening in their bodies under pressure and how to shift it. Instead of being hijacked by adrenaline, they learn to channel it. Instead of mistaking nerves for danger, they learn to transform it to game readiness.
For youth coaches, this is a powerful reminder that composure is trainable. We often tell players to “calm down” or “focus,” but we rarely teach them how to do this in a step-by-step fashion – this is where mental performance training comes in.
For parents, it’s also a reframing moment. When your child says they feel nervous before a big game, it’s not weakness and not something we need to fight against by trying to stay calm forcefully. It’s simply learning how to shift the nervous system a bit back to the center, back into optimal performance arousal.
Psychologists have long described performance as the nervous system’s sweet spot between flat and frantic. Too little activation and performance drops as much as too much activation or the often used “performance anxiety” does. Athletes best performances and flow activation lives in the middle: alert, focused, composed and ready.
This helps explain why underdogs sometimes perform above expectations. They often enter matches with heightened activation—more alert, more emotionally invested. If they interpret that activation as a challenge rather than a threat, and if they have the tools to regulate tension through breath and attentional control, that energy can sharpen focus rather than disrupt it. Research on challenge vs. threat states shows that when athletes view pressure as an opportunity, physiological responses support better performance outcomes.
Favorites, on the other hand, can fall into a different trap. Confidence may reduce activation slightly. In some cases, that calm state can drift toward under-arousal—reduced intensity, slower reaction time, and decreased attentional sharpness. What looks like composure can sometimes be a subtle drop in competitive edge. Studies in attentional control theory suggest that both excessive anxiety and insufficient activation can impair focus, just in different ways.
In other words, performance isn’t about being relaxed. It’s about being optimally activated—and knowing how to adjust your nervous system when you drift too far in either direction.
At the youth level, we see this every weekend. The team that assumes they’ll win comes out flat. The team that knows they have to fight for every ball shows up alive.
Rather than trying to collectively hype the team up or collectively calm them down in a pregame speech, coaches may get better results by focusing on balance – and then giving players space for individualized regulation.
Some players step into the locker room already overactivated. They need grounding.
Others are flat and need intensity raised.
Treating them the same ignores how performance actually works.
Modern performance psychology suggests that activation is individual. The most effective teams build self-awareness so players understand their own optimal zone. A defender who plays best slightly “amped” should know that. A playmaker who performs best composed and steady should know that too.
The coach’s role then shifts from emotional conductor to regulator of the environment:
And then, critically, allow time – even five focused minutes – for players to run their own pre-performance routine – something they establish in mental performance sessions, following the good example of Bodø/Glimt.
Research on pre-performance routines shows that consistent individualized routines improve attentional control and emotional stability under pressure. What looks like a quiet five minutes is often where the real performance switch happens.
The goal isn’t to control players’ emotions. It’s to equip them to control themselves.
For parents, this can also be an important mindset shift. Performance is not about helping your kid eliminating nerves – nerves are not the enemy. A certain level of nervousness before kickoff is actually a good thing and a sign the athlete cares and the body is biologically preparing for action. Studies on cognitive reappraisal show that when athletes interpret pregame nerves as challenges that we want to overcome rather than danger that we must avoid, performance can improve and personalities get shaped.
In recent years, anxiety has become a buzzword, and understandably so. But being nervous is not automatically being anxious. In competitive sport, the goal is not to create athletes who are completely relaxed. Total relaxation is not a high-performance state. Soccer requires alertness, speed, and even controlled aggression. If we overemphasize calming down and we are trying to completely get rid of the feeling of nervousness, we risk pushing athletes toward under activation – where focus drifts, sharpness fades and easy mistakes follow.
The better approach is developing self-awareness. When players learn to recognize their internal state, their feelings, their heart rate, breathing, muscle tension and thoughts – they can make small adjustments. Slow the breath slightly. Increase movement intensity. Refocus attention on the next action. Research shows this kind of self-regulation is trainable.
So the real question before kickoff isn’t:
“Are you relaxed?”
It’s:
“Are you optimally energized and ready to compete?”
That’s a very different standard and a much more performance-oriented one. And it is something Bodø/Glimt has mastered as well it seems.
MAS in Sports Health and Leadership and Pro Soccer Mindset Coach
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