Importance Of High Performance Culture
11 October 2026
By M J Kocx
High performance.
A football club can have all the fancy gym equipment in the world.
A state-of-the-art training facility.
An elite backroom team.
But ultimately, the culture of the playing squad is vital. Culture outperforms talent.
Let us consider English Football League (EFL) One club, Leicester City F.C.
In the 2010s, Leicester City F.C. surged up the English Football pyramid.
A strong in-house culture of hard work, teamwork, and never say die attitude propelled the club to dizzying heights.
In the 2015/16 English Premier League (EPL) season, Leicester City F.C. won the EPL title.
A football club that had 12 months prior been considered odds-on favourites to be relegated, had pulled off the most miraculous title campaign in English Football history.
Leicester City defied the astronomical odds of 5000 to 1 to win their first EPL title.
The football club captured the hearts and minds of millions of football fans.
Now, a decade on from that famous title campaign, Leicester City F.C.'s faces the abyss.
At the conclusion of the 2025/26 EFL Championship season, Leicester City F.C.'s relegation to EFL One was all but confirmed.
But, how could this have happened?
Well, following its early successes in the 2010s, the in-house culture of Leicester City F.C. shifted.
A football club proud to be once considered perennial underdogs, decided it wanted to become the next member of the EPL’s Big 6 football clubs.
Instead of operating on a shoestring budget and recruiting undervalued footballers, Leicester City F.C. targeted major, multi-million pound signings.
In doing so, the football club lost its unique identity, and with it, its unique high-performance culture.
Now, Leicester City F.C. faces long-term financial struggles, ownership uncertainty, and wandering the doldrums.
High Performance Culture
What we can learn from the case study of Leicester City F.C. is that a high performing football club does not need complex tactics, or headliner signings.
What a high-performing football club environment needs is:
o Simplicity – in playing style and the long-term vision of the football club brand
o Consistency – consistently hard standards on and off the field
o Continuous improvement – never settling, always looking to improve and refine itself
Squad Mentality
The mentality of the playing squad is critical to the success of the football club.
Elite facilities, massive transfer budgets, and competitive salaries are all great.
But, if used poorly, they can breed a sense of security, complacency, and entitlement in a playing squad.
The playing squad is a living embodiment of the football club’s history and values.
They are custodians of a rich and dynamic footballing history.
Simplicity in Team Approach
At its simplest, professional football is all about winning games. A football team needs to score more goals than it concedes in order to be successful.
Teams can become lost in the detail. Playing styles can become muddled. Managerial changes can cause disjointed playing squads.
To combat this, football clubs should maintain and continually refine a core philosophy or style of play.
Consistency
Consistency drives standards within a football club, for better or worse.
Consistency in managerial appointments is critical.
Kneejerk appointments and sackings of managers does not help football clubs succeed.
Playing squads need stability, clarity, and consistent leadership.
Too often, managerial changes occur within the EPL season.
This author asks the question: How can a playing squad perform to the best of its abilities, if the leader is constantly being replaced?
Football clubs need to remain the course, when times become hard, or bumps occur along the way.
It should not matter if your team lost 4-0 or 5-0 last weekend.
What should matter is that the football club is consistently looking to adapt and improve under the manager and playing squad.
Too often, players are signed because of one strong game, or one amazing season.
It should not matter whether a player has had an amazing season.
What should matter is that the player is consistently driven and improving.
Constant Improvement
A football club can be a good team. But to become a GREAT team, that takes something else.
It takes sacrifice, a relentless drive, and an unrelenting work ethic.
A GREAT team knows that what worked today will not necessarily work tomorrow.
A GREAT football club knows that one amazing transfer window does not guarantee long-term financial success.
A football club that was challenging for the title in the previous season, could just as easily be fighting for relegation in the next season.
Complacency and entitlement. They cannot exist within a GREAT football club.
A high performing football culture.
From
Yours truly,
