The player and the person.

Every player I've coached has had the same two needs: to get better at football, and to get better at handling themselves.

I started coaching in Northern Ireland in 2010, and since then I've coached in Canada, China and the United States, from primary school programmes to academy football.

The standard I hold myself to came earlier, from the boxing gyms I grew up around in Belfast. My grandfather, Mike Callahan, worked in boxing as a promoter and matchmaker. My uncle, John Breen, trained fighters, and his gym ran on high demand and high support at the same time. He treated the people in it like family. I didn't notice how much of that I had carried with me until I started coaching.

On the football side, my thinking starts with one idea: perception and decision come before technique. Every action is communication, decision and execution at once, so I coach what a player sees and chooses as well as what their feet do.

Over years of coaching I built a system for the second need. It covers self-awareness, confidence, self-control and the other emotional skills that decide games, and it gives the same weight to a player's wellbeing and growth as a person. In 2020 we turned that system into HeadCoach. Today a team builds it as a performance and readiness platform for athletes, coaches and clubs, and I'm co-founder and President.

I'm now Director of Football at Chicago City Soccer Club, a 95-team club, where I bring both halves to how its players and coaches develop. I also coach two teams there, the U18 Girls Academy and the U14/15 boys. Staying on the grass keeps the rest of the work honest.

The app has been live on iOS and Android since February 2024.