The importance of questions

FC London’s Yiannis Tsalatsidis’s football obsession.

(Photo: Allan Lewis).

* * *

By Allan Lewis

“I am a bundle of interests: every day from morning until night this endless curiosity leaves me almost unable to move.” — Daido Moriyama, Tales of Tono

Football? Yiannis Tsalatsidis is obsessed. As Technical Director and first team men’s head coach for League1 Ontario’s FC London, he’s built an uncommon program of player development. He’s a catalyst and a builder, with an approach founded on a keen sense of curiosity.

At FC London, he’s instilled a culture of personal and systematic understanding that relies on asking questions to unlock the capabilities and motivations of his players.

Yiannis grew up one of three brothers in a tight-knit family in Winnipeg. When his mother passed in his teens, his family fell apart. Yiannis struggled. He went into survival mode. He learned to be attentive to everything and grew adept at reading people. He studied those around him to understand how they’d made it to where they were. This natural curiosity, amplified by circumstance, pointed the way to his career in football.

“I was always very curious, but never very good at asking questions.”

Clubhouse at FC London’s Tricar Field.

Yiannis started coaching at the St. Charles Soccer Academy in Winnipeg, working with an early mentor, Fabio Capone. He obsessed over every moment in training, running sessions full of frenetic energy.

Then, he lost his job.

In the weeks that followed, he found further rejection. “I applied to 117 jobs,” he recalls. “Not a single interview. Nothing. I was like a nobody at the time.”

After starting as Coordinator of High Performance for Saskatchewan Soccer, he met Danny Worthington, then an assistant coach with Canada’s Women’s National Team. Worthington was intrigued watching Yiannis running blitzkrieg 36-player sessions on his own.

Over several encounters, Worthington shaped Yiannis’ perception of what was realistic. He taught the importance of building and trusting a staff that could help to share his philosophies. “He raised my awareness,” says Yiannis. “The importance of building others, taking others on the journey with you.”

“I always wanted to build something. To help create profound footballing experiences.”

Yiannis would eventually work for Worthington as a remote analyst at the 2019 World Cup, handling scouting and preparing game footage for review. “That changed the way I saw things,” he recalls. “Pattern recognition, reverse engineering, mental models, team tactics. That’s like getting your PhD in football.”

The work opened doors. A few years later, he found himself at Cavalry FC, where he continued to feed his football obsession, reading research papers on high performance and the impacts of trauma on the human brain. He studied in earnest, fixated on the intersection between football tactics and human behaviour.

While at Cavalry FC, Yiannis heard about an opening at FC London. Good things were happening at the club; its development relationship with TFC and reputation for propelling personnel to new levels was compelling. During negotiations, Yiannis’ condition for taking the role was the freedom to build his own staff. The club was open to the idea. He took on the project for the 2023 season.

“I want to be around a certain group of people, which is probably more important than the work itself.”

FC London first team training. May 2024.

Yiannis Tsalitsidis runs training like it’s stadium rock: imperious; propulsive; occasionally gentle. Days before a game, the mood is light but hesitant at FC London’s Tricar Field, at the southwest edge of London. Yiannis’ cadence shifts from warm and easy to sharp and biting. He howls tactical direction at his players: “There is no fucking sideways when it’s on! This is our fucking home! Turn their back line!”

At FC London, every game has something on the line.

After the 2023 season, the 21-team Men’s Premier Division in League1 Ontario split into two divisions, the Premier and the Championship. A lowly 2022 season prior to Yiannis’ arrival had already all but condemned them to the second tier. In 2023, they were the third-most improved team, and promotion back to the upper tier in 2024 became the team’s singular goal.

They did it, turning in an impressive 13-3-2 record.

Returning to the Premier Division is only one part of a greater promise at FC London. The club operates with a ‘do more with less’ imperative. As one of League1 Ontario’s smaller clubs, they had the league’s highest attendance in 2023. Its senior men’s team sent the most players to professional clubs after the 2023 season. And in 2024, they beat their affiliate team, the eventual first-place TFC Academy Men.

Part of Yiannis’ job is to nurture the club’s ability to develop players and coaches. He’s clear on the number of pathways out of League1 Ontario. He sees his academy players, with their chins on the fences at Tricar, in thrall with the promise of the next step. He knows his responsibility to guide those who want to keep striving and winning.

Develop or else.

As training draws to a close, Yiannis stalks the field, notebook in hand, stopping play and directing his squad. He uses questions to get players to see where he suspects they can go. “Everything we’re doing as coaches is to help players select the right information at the right moment,” he says.

He describes the difference between ‘what’ questions, which can narrow focus, and ‘how’ questions, which address perception of what’s possible. “I really believe that everyone has the tools to bring out what they need to bring out. Did I really help the player to do that or was the player always able to do that? The questioning just helps draw it out of them.”

Yiannis describes thoughts as energy, and he works to guide individual player thought patterns in useful directions. His language can be direct and harsh (it’s football, after all), but at its core, Yiannis’ coaching program is one of love and care. He acknowledges the non-verbal relationships he has with players — the understanding that he wants what’s best for them, and that he will at times make life difficult.

“You’re having these moments where you’re running a session, like there’s just no words, but a player will look you in the eye and you feel this sense of gratitude.”

“It’s not like I’m connecting with them a lot in terms of small talk and little conversations,” he says. “I think it’s just I come with such a care and such a love that the players feel that.” There’s a humility here, but Yiannis’s intentions are clear: grow these players; grow the club; grow himself. Or else.

The only option is to invest in curiosity. And in others.

* * *

This story and all photos were contributed by Allan Lewis. An original version appeared on the author’s website at allanl.com.