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The Great Coaches: John Aloisi
How would you define 'failure'?
Caitie Rea & Paul Barnett
March 19, 2026
John Aloisi: The Scoring Mindset
This week’s podcast guest is Australian soccer coach John Aloisi.
Prior to his retirement in 2011, John Aloisi played soccer professionally, enjoying a 20-year career spanning Europe and Australia’s top leagues and becoming the first Australian to play and score in La Liga, the Premier League, and Serie A.
Internationally, Aloisi earned 55 caps for the Socceroos, scoring 27 goals, and also represented Australia at the 2006 World Cup, three Confederations Cups, and the 2004 Olympics.
Post-retirement, Aloisi transitioned into coaching, managing Melbourne Heart and Brisbane Roar. Since 2021 he has been leading Western United, guiding them to their very first A-League Mens Championship in 2022.
After retiring in 2011, Aloisi transitioned into coaching. He managed Melbourne Heart, Brisbane Roar, and since 2021 has led Western United, guiding them to their first A-League Men Championship in 2022.
Aloisi shared some fantastic leadership insights during our interview that raised a number of points for me to reflect on (see below). Some highlights were:
His use of positive affirmations, visualisation, meditation and the verbalising of gratitude in order to strengthen his mindset and to help him recover from heart surgery.
His redefining of failure not as missing a scoring opportunity, but rather as putting yourself in an attacking position due to a fear of missing.
The reduced gap between the technical abilities of elite-level players, and how this places a greater emphasis on mental strength and belief.
This was a very inspiring and thoughtful interview, and I think you’ll take a lot from it — I certainly did.
The key questions raised from today’s episode:
Do you verbalise gratitude enough?
How can you better redefine failure for your team?
What forms of mental strength training could you instigate for your team?
Find all of our past interviews with some of sport’s most successful coaches and leaders on our website.
It’s All In The Mind
In each episode of our newsletter, we look at a different lesson that you can take and use within your own leadership.
In this week’s interview, you’ll hear Great Coach John Aloisi speak quite a bit about mindset, affirmations, and visualisation. He shares how positive mindsets and vocal gratitude helped him to recover during a difficult period of his life, but also the role that mental strength and belief can play when it comes to competitions between elite-level athletes who possess similar technical abilities.
One of the questions that this week’s episode will encourage you to think about is how you can instigate mental strength training within your team, but one simple step you can take is to address negative self-talk with the use of daily positive affirmations.
In the clip below, past guest Vern Gambetta speaks on the simple children’s book he shares with new athletes and the frame of reference it provides for combatting negative self-talk.
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“Your decisions reveal your priorities.”
We combine videos of the Great Coaches that we have interviewed with our experience as corporate and sporting leaders in order to bring insight, energy, and ideas to your teams.
Building The Complete Athlete
We shared a clip from one of our past interviews with Great Coach Vern Gambetta earlier in this newsletter, but if you’d like to delve further into his leadership and coaching insights and experience, then his new book ‘Building The Complete Athlete’ is a great place to start.
This book combines science, art and theory to present a comprehensive framework for training and developing high-performing athletes, no matter what age or stage you may be working with.
It’s full of practical advice that you can easily put into practice, and is written in such a way that you can fully comprehend the experience and theory that goes behind every idea and concept.
Elevated Leadership
If you’re looking to improve your own leadership skills, get in touch with us at elevatedleadership.com.au
Our team of executive coaches — including The Great Coaches host, Paul Barnett — bring a wealth of experience as international CEOs who have faced the challenge of stepping forward in uncertain moments.
