My Story

I have been into soccer ever since joining my first travel soccer team at the age of 5 in my native city of Cologne, Germany.

During my 15+ years as a  player in Europe, I enjoyed many fantastic grassroots and community based moments of soccer in Germany, while also enjoying the privilege of playing tournaments in Austria, the Netherlands, and England, including games against academy teams of Nottingham Forrest and Derby County and top domestic German powerhouse clubs Borussia Dortmund and Bayer Leverkusen.

And then I retired from soccer for good when I went to law school and was able to join one of the top 3 US law firms upon graduation. I was particularly done with anything relating to soccer when my wife and I decided to relocate from our beloved Munich to her hometown just outside Columbus, Ohio.

Or so I thought. While “King Soccer” – as we call it back home in Germany – may lessen its flames and grip on you  for certain periods of your life, the legend says it will never truly let you go once you have been under its reign. And that legend certainly held true for my own journey.
Without me ever consciously trying to influence my own daughter towards picking up soccer that is what she decided to do one day. And opposed to her briefest of brief ventures into ballet, gymnastics, and karate, soccer stuck.

And just like that, King Soccer had rekindled its still existing flame in my life to new heights. Instead of sitting on the sidelines and enjoy soccer retirement, I was sucked into the world of coaching and before I knew, I wasn’t just a coach but also Technical Director of my daughter’s team’s soccer association – a local grassroots soccer association with over 1,000 players of all skill levels.
King Soccer had put me on the fast track, and I quickly went through US, German, and Spanish coach credential programs. While all 3 aforementioned nations have quite a few differences in their soccer coach education, there was one common denominator: their standard education and coach credentialing was almost completely silent on the topic of mental performance and sport psychology principles.

Unbelievable, right?!

I have always been big on a positive mindset, positive affirmations, and emphasizing fun and joy as key components to sustainable success. But I wanted to know more to develop a systematic approach that I could share with just “my teams” and athletes. And so, I started venturing beyond coaching and training the physical components to focus on humanity’s most powerful tool: the mind.

I initially launched a program called the “Healthy Soccer Mind” to share insights on the power of working with mental performance principles and ideated a Mental Performance Coach Certification via the Center of Executive Coaching.
When the opportunity came along to deepen my know-how through taking courses at Universidad Europea – Real Madrid Graduate School, I jumped on that opportunity to deepen my subject matter know-how with insights from the world’s most successful soccer club. Once hooked by the depth of sport psychology research, I decided to dive deeper and enrolled at a Master of Science in Sport and Body Psychology with the University of East London and I set to complete these studies in 2025. 

I sincerely believe mental performance and mindset principles are oftentimes the “missing link” in athletic careers and I am truly grateful to have the opportunity these days to empower aspiring top athletes and their parents in their journey.