It was slightly lost amid the welter of memorable moments in Arsenal’s 4-1 north London derby win against Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday, but one item offered a clue to manager Mikel Arteta’s key message.
It was a scarf emblazoned with the slogan “Make it happen”, and it could be seen everywhere — hung up in the dressing room, held aloft by players on the pitch after the final whistle and even around the neck of injured defender Gabriel, watching on from his seat behind the Arsenal bench.
The saying is one of Arteta’s favourites, one that is painted in large white letters on a wall in the home changing area at the Emirates Stadium. He repeated it around one of his side’s most memorable games last season: the 3-0 victory there against Real Madrid in the Champions League’s knockout phase.
“It was the theme of the game — make it happen,” said Arteta in his post-match press conference after that first-leg quarter-final win. “Then you have to make it happen. You have that mindset and that belief that things can happen.”
The slogan seemed to have its desired effect again on Sunday, and for the Arsenal manager it’s another tick in the box for the kind of motivational methods that raised eyebrows when they were revealed in Amazon Prime’s All Or Nothing documentary series which followed the team throughout their rather-less-successful 2021-22 season.
Those included bringing a light bulb into the dressing room to use as a prop in a pre-match team talk about the importance of connection in creating energy; an address that ended with him telling his players to “Go out there and f***ing turn the light on and play football.”
Mikel Arteta’s lightbulb moment at Arsenal during the 2021-22 season (Amazon Prime)
Then there was the moment he asked his players to close their eyes and rub their palms together while he described what was going to happen in an upcoming game against Leicester City. “After that, you’re going to grab each other’s hands and we are going to create a bubble with the energy that we’re going to play f***ing there.”
Perhaps most infamous was Arteta blasting Liverpool’s anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone from huge speakers positioned around the training pitch as he prepared his team for a match against them at Anfield.
All of these things are likely to be mocked or applauded, depending on the fortunes of the club involved. But how much of an impact do they really have and what do the experts make of them as tools for improving performance?
“It’s a trigger, not a transformer,” says high-performance expert and psychologist James A King of Arteta’s “Make it happen” slogan.
“It can remind players of who they are, but it can’t make them something they’re not. It works if the identity already exists. If the identity depends on the slogan, it’s just a scarf.”
King, who hosts the Accelerating Excellence podcast and authored the bestselling book of the same name, says that the use of psychology in football is still in its infancy. Having worked in Premier League environments and with Champions League winners and England internationals, he has seen its implementation first-hand.
“There is great intent — rituals, slogans, cultural moments — and those can create belief,” he says. “But belief isn’t enough. The next leap is turning psychology into a structural advantage: conditioning players to execute with clarity when the game becomes emotional.
“A lot of what we’re seeing at the moment in football is surface-level psychology: symbolism, slogans, emotional speeches. That can create belief and energy, but real psychology is systems that change behaviour under pressure.
“That means measurement, systems and standards that are enforced, not just spoken. In other words: moving from inspiration to implementation.”
The ‘Make it happen’ slogan in Arsenal’s changing room before the Champions League semi-final defeat last season against Paris Saint-Germain (Lars Baron/UEFA via Getty Images)
This season, Arteta spoke about inviting pilots from the UK’s Royal Air Force (RAF) into the club to discuss what effective communication looks like, while also observing and analysing how he and his coaching team interact with the players.
The Spaniard is far from alone in football when it comes to seeking outside opinion. Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp invited big-wave surfer Sebastian Steudtner to talk to his players about coping with pressure at their pre-season training camp for the 2019-20 season, where they went on to win the club’s first league title in 30 years.
Steudtner met players at the swimming pool of their hotel and asked them to hold their breath underwater individually for as long as possible. Results ranged from 10 to 90 seconds. Later, he got the squad to compete against one another: the best-performing pair came close to four minutes.
“There must be a lot of pressure built up if you let it, but (not) if you’re just 100 per cent focused on the task. It’s the same underwater,” Steudtner told Liverpoolfc.com. “If you’re focused on, ‘I want to breathe, I want to get my head out of the water, I’m uncomfortable’, you’re going to panic right away and not perform at all.
“But if you relax and focus, then you add that competitive edge, all of a sudden you lose four minutes. You can translate it to anything.”
Arteta’s explanation for calling on the RAF was his search for “constant improvement”, while Klopp told the BBC he wanted to “do something different and bring in interesting people. We are so focused on our football that sometimes, we lose other things”.
Former England cricketer turned performance psychologist Jeremy Snape says the use of external voices and analogies, such as Arteta’s light bulb, is about creating sustained high performance by “finding new ways to energise people around the brilliant basics”.
“Analogies, stories, role models and external case studies unlock creativity and offer fresh angles that renew commitment,” Snape adds. “Even routine tasks, such as keeping work rate high when tired or maintaining communication, gain new meaning when viewed through the experiences of special forces teams or other elite performers. These examples give players a new reference point, showing them people who have succeeded under pressure and prove that excellence is still possible when the work is difficult.”
Mikel Arteta has forged a close bond with his Arsenal players (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Not every football manager opts to employ the kinds of methods used by Arteta and, to some extent, Klopp. To do it well requires leaders possessing what King describes as “total internal alignment”, meaning their standards, language and behaviour all match. “Players don’t follow what you say, they follow what you are,” he says.
The hardest bit is not setting standards, but enforcing them. That can mean benching players, releasing them outright or relaying uncomfortable truths. “Philosophy means nothing until it costs you something,” King adds.
Managers also have to be switched on to understand what drives their players, says Snape, host of the Inside the Mind of Champions podcast. “They ask thoughtful questions to uncover fears, doubts and intrinsic motivators, then translate those insights into stories and analogies that genuinely resonate. Human beings are built to learn through stories. It is one of the oldest leadership tools for creating alignment and engagement around what matters most.”
After Arsenal beat Leicester 2-0 in October 2021 (Arteta’s ‘energy bubble’ game), his jubilant players returned to the dressing room. Striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang picked up a microphone and, once he had asked Arteta’s permission to speak, said: “Everyone, close your eyes, go like this with your hands (rubbing them together). And now sing, ‘Two days off, two days off, two days off!’.”
Arteta joined his players in laughing, apparently accepting the mockery in good heart (although three months later, Aubameyang departed the club in acrimonious circumstances).
But are there some players for whom this approach simply does not work? And if so, can they be converted?
“There are players who don’t buy philosophy,” says King. “They buy proof. Veterans, cynics, hyper-individualists; for them, belief comes after evidence, not before it. You don’t convert them with slogans. You convert them with outcomes: calmer execution, faster reads, more control, better results. Once they feel the shift in their body and in their performance, the belief follows.
“Resistance isn’t defiance, it’s rational scepticism. You don’t fight it, you outperform it.”
Snape says players who believe their success comes from genetics or physical gifts often struggle to see the value in such methods, but that adopting a “growth mindset”, where they embrace continual improvement, is the route to turning good players into great ones.
“It is always easier to kick a ball than to confront fears or new ideas,” Snape says. “But over a decade, the best players evolve repeatedly because opponents analyse their game and exploit any weaknesses. If you are not constantly searching for new ways to develop and gain an edge, you quickly become irrelevant.”
Cynicism comes from outside the dressing room, too — from some sections of the media and fans. Those doubts are rooted in the fact that the benefits are not always immediate or easily measured, Snape explains.
“In sport, we often prioritise being busy rather than doing what genuinely makes the biggest difference,” he says. “Another hour in the gym feels like progress, but sometimes the most transformational work comes from honest conversations about nerves, complacency, confidence or conflict. Great coaches understand this, which is why they continue to build learning environments where players can grow, reflect and adapt.”
King says the scepticism is justified, given psychology’s early-stage position in football. “It sits in the wellbeing bucket,” he says. “Valuable, but separate from performance. Workshops, slogans, and emotional moments are awareness, not integration.”
He equates psychology in football in 2025 to where nutrition was in football before Arsene Wenger arrived at Arsenal as their new manager in 1996: “People know it matters, but they haven’t industrialised it into daily practice, measurement and tactical execution. Real psychological performance is when identity, emotional regulation and decision-making are engineered into every session, every meeting, every moment under pressure.”
Arsenal are top of the Premier League table, a position they have occupied in recent seasons but failed to hold onto and become champions. Before the meeting tonight (Wednesday) with Bayern Munich at the Emirates, they also have a perfect record at the halfway point of the eight-game league phase in the Champions League — a competition the club’s men’s side have never won.
Ultimately, securing trophies can come down to many factors, but King believes that the power of psychology cannot be overlooked.
“If a system collapses when emotions rise, that’s not a tactical failure — it’s a psychological one,” he says. “Symbols and slogans can create belief and energy, but they are not the finish line. What’s missing is a system that conditions behaviour under pressure, measures mental performance, and builds identity into execution.
“That requires training, data and systems — not just speeches.”