Luca Brecel lifts lid on plan he deployed to 'confuse' Mark Selby ahead of Crucible final

Belgian star Brecel was speaking as a guest on snooker coach Chris Henry’s ‘Peak Performance Podcast’ where the two discussed his career from being a youngster, to becoming world champion, and where the state of his game is right now.

In 2023, Brecel - who was already a multiple-time ranking event winner - created history in becoming the first player from mainland Europe to claim snooker’s blue riband tournament.

Despite having won the Championship League earlier in the season, Brecel wasn’t fancied by many to launch a serious bid for the world title that year. He’d never won a match at the Crucible, losing on all five of his previous appearances there.

But the then 28-year-old broke his duck with an opening round deciding frame win over Ricky Walden before dismissing ‘Class of 92’ members Mark Williams, and defending champion Ronnie O’Sullivan. Against O’Sullivan in the last eight, Brecel won seven consecutive frames from 10-6 down.

He then produced the biggest comeback in Crucible history - numbers-wise - as he sensationally recovered from 14-5 down to deny Si Jiahui, 17-15, in the semi-finals.

An amazing run to the final, but Brecel was still seen as a firm underdog for the title match against one of snooker’s greatest-ever matchplayers in Selby, who had won the world crown four times in the past decade.

Brecel played like ‘he didn’t care’

Asked by presenter Henry how he approached a four-session, best-of-35 frames battle with Selby in snooker’s most prestigious fixture, Brecel said he went in with the same carefree mentality that he’d used before for big games.

“Something I've always done when I had to play really big games for the first time like the world final...I always try to use the trick like play as if you don't care about being there.

“My thing was if I just start the first frame and play really quickly, then Mark’s gonna think ‘Oh. He doesn’t really care that he’s in the world final’

“Obviously, you need to pot all the balls to have an impact, because if you just play quick and don’t pot a ball then he’s not going to be thinking anything of it.

“It turned out I made a good break of 85 or something in the first and six minutes I think it was, so that was sort of the perfect first step to take to the final.”

‘What’s going on?’ Brecel’s attempt to unsettle Selby

But Brecel’s plan to confuse Selby started before the break-off in the opening frame.

The Belgian - whose pre-match preparations have sometimes been brought into question - explained why he deliberately left it very late turning up to the opening session of the 2023 world final.

“Obviously, you can’t always intimidate people like Selby, Ronnie and Higgins. Sure, but you can always try to do something which could help.

“I turned up ten minutes before the final. I turned up five to ten minutes just before - this was also deliberate. Because that was just to give Mark Selby a kind of feeling like ‘hmm, what’s going on?’

“Because normally, if you go to the final for the first time, you want to be there two hours before and make sure you’ve practiced one hour, and sort of seen the venue and all this kind of stuff.

“And again, I’m not saying that Mark Selby will crumble because of that, but you just try to be clever sometimes. He would have been practicing and thinking ‘Where is Luca? Why is he not here? Where is he?’

“So I see that of a good way of trying to play some - not mental games - but you know what I mean.”

Whether Brecel’s blueprint disrupted Selby’s start is unknown, but he delivered on the things he could control, as he established a 6-2 first session lead.

Predictably, Selby - who made the first maximum 147 break in a world final during the second session - battled back and trailed by just one frame at the end of the opening day.

But on the final day of the Championship, Brecel produced a stunning spell of ‘Super Luca Snooker’ as he won all four frames of the opening mini-session, making three century breaks in the process.

From 16-10 down in the evening, Selby rallied to set up a grandstand climax, stringing five successive frames to close to within one, but Brecel resisted the onslaught, standing firm by taking the next two frames and finishing in style with a 112 - his fifth century break of the final.

Brecel’s World Championship campaign in 2026 looks very different. Currently ranked 46th in the world, Brecel must attend qualifying for the first time since 2021, and win two matches at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield in order to qualify for the main draw at the Crucible.

That will be no easy feat either, with exciting Chinese youngster Chang Bingyu, and 2024 World Championship runner-up Jak Jones both possibly standing in his way.