If you’ve happened to notice that Manchester City players have been better behaved around referees lately, it’s no coincidence.
Manuel Pellegrini has made a concerted effort to decrease the likelihood of his players picking up silly bookings for acting aggressively towards match officials by introducing an interesting training ground technique.
The Chilean has revealed that he and his assistant coaches intentionally referee training games poorly so that his players will get accustomed to playing through bad decisions and avoiding the modern tendency to complain at every single refereeing call.
“Sometimes I am the referee, sometimes it is Ruben [Cousillas] and sometimes it is Brian [Kidd],” he told the Sunday Mirror , “but the players know every day that we are all very bad referees.
“We deliberately make mistakes, so that when we play the official game the players are not thinking about the referee.
“There are fouls that we won’t whistle for because we don’t want the players to stop and make complaints. We want them to continue running.”
The psychological technique is something that the 62-year-old has used throughout his career and looks to be working with just 39 yellow cards shown to City players in the Premier League this season, and not one sending off.
“We try to prepare a player’s mind in that sense because, when a referee makes a mistake, is an important part of the game,” Pellegrini continued.
“When it happens you have a hot head, but you must continue playing.
“If the players complain in training we have punishments. It will be push-ups or laps of the pitch.
“I have always done this throughout my career.
“The players learn to keep playing until they hear the whistle and not to react badly when the referee makes a mistake.”
It makes us very happy to imagine Alex Ferguson attempting these kind of managerial mindgames with a certain Roy Keane back in the day. It probably wouldn’t have gone so smoothly.
