During the 1980’ and 90’s I was very much involved in soccer management and football administration, both at Club level ( St. Andrew’s FC) until 1991, and later as Treasurer with the Malta Football Association. Having personally enjoyed a semi-professional soccer career for almost 20 years, including a 9 yearstint with Valletta FC, a top Maltese Club, I had grown to respect the game at all levels, and my experiences and passion for the gameled to my being elected as a member of the UEFA Youth Committee in 1994. I also served as a UEFA Delegate between 1994 and 2000, during which time I served the role as UEFA Delegate in over 85 games. Having been given the opportunity to observe the game from such a close and advantageous ‘insider’ position, I was thrilled to admire the talents of so many good players, especially at youth level, but at the same time I also began to question why talented players ‘sometimes’ acted in such irrational ways, often leading to incidents and consequences that would have been totally avoided with a bit of ‘thinking.’

I challenged myself with a simple question…………..
Why don’t talented athletes “ think “ – both on and off the field of play ??
Why do they sometimes put their careers at risk by taking questionable decisions and/or acting stupidly ??
I read and researched a lot of material, even though I was not quite sure what I was actually looking for, and I even attended a couple of mental preparation and sport psychology workshops in England. Although I did find some relevance to my ‘question’ , I did feel that all the material that I had covered fell somewhat short of the possible answers that I was actually looking for. It was about at the same time thatall this was happening that I came across an article in a local Maltese newspaper advertising the Third International Conference on Creative Thinking which was held in Malta in July 1997. This conference was being organized by the Edward de Bono Institute of the University of Malta, and Edward de Bono was the keynote speaker for the event. I decided that it would be worth looking into, and with the assistance of Dr. Sandra Dingli, who was running the Conference at the time, I managed to get myself a seat. What I did not realize at the time, was that in pursuit of my quest for some possible answers to some simple questions regarding the ‘thinking behaviors and decision-taking skills’ of talented athletes, I was actually embarking on a journey that would change my life forever,