Football News - Football Mind Games

The Purist looks at the role of sports' psychology in the modern game

Once the hubbub that attends every single press conference called by the Brazilian football confederation had subsided enough for Wanderley Luxembergo to address the microphone his candid message came as a welcome morsel to the ravenous pack.

A much-loved member of his team, he revealed, would be skipping training and receiving specialist counselling in the hope of getting his head right for the forthcoming final against Uruguay in July 1999.

The player in question - sitting dutifully if awkwardly by his manager's side after this Copa America semi-final win over Mexico in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay - was Rivaldo. He duly played against Uruguay four days later and scored twice in a 3-0 win. That one of the most graceful players to decorate this or any tournament, and for many his country's outstanding World Cup winner under Felipe Scolari in 2002, had problems there was no doubt. That those problems should be treated with external professional help raised no eyebrows back in Brazil.

At the end of the same week in July 1999 Stan Collymore, discarded by Liverpool, was surveying the wreckage of an Aston Villa career punctuated by more bouts of clinical depression and public outbursts than goals - and about to start the season on an ill-fated loan to a pre-Premiership Fulham that would bring anything but relief.

A Villa career whose end would be signalled with then-manager John Gregory's succinct preview for those gathered at another press conference in leafy Bodymoor Heath, Birmingham just six months after Paraguay: "The big top has been taken down and moved to Filbert Street".

Hardly an insight into man-management and about as sensitive as The Sun's infamous "Bonkers Bruno" splash, Gregory would doubtless protect his club's investment differently today, thanks to the prevailing support-system climate. But his joke was representative, all the same, of the lay man's reaction to a millionaire's so-called 'demons'. A millionaire whose fall was yet to take in La Manga (part one) with his next club, Leicester City, and cameos of varying success with Bradford, Real Oviedo, sport radio and reality TV.

If he is at least reconciled with an athletic potential sadly unfulfilled, Collymore nonetheless remains on the therapy treadmill. The contrast contained in his saga with attitudes further afield is only too obvious and easy to over-simplify.

What lessons there are to learn from these random 'case studies' clearly transcend trends in managerial style and, in an industry beloved of euphemism, the list of borderline ' eccentrics' among managerial icons is exhaustive, let alone the phenomenon of the 'problem player'.

Here is a domain far too complex for depression alone to be isolated as the prime hazard to a player's optimum output. No, the word confidence has been common currency since the first goal ever scored - or should that be conceded - and with it stress, group dynamics, concentration and a lot more besides.

It is the player, after all, that has to stand up for himself and still be a piece in the jigsaw; the player who has to rise above those spiteful nicknames and produce on demand. And all within the sometimes suffocating disciplinary regime of guardians rarely qualified, even when inclined, to act in loco parentis.

Not the kind of stuff to make your heart bleed, admittedly. Already this season we have seen the Jermaine Jenas goldfish bowl effect before he quit Newcastle for Spurs, the David James Copenhagen mea culpa and the unreconstructed tantrums of Wayne Rooney.

Down the years the problem player has ranged from your pathological bully to Arsenal's AA crowd to the wasted life of Justin Fashanu - and depression could hardly explain the disparate misdemeanours of Marco Boogers, Jermaine Pennant, Duncan Ferguson, El Hadji Diouf, Gazza nor George Best.

James has even confided how much he depends on psychologist Keith Power, though confessing the way he did to poor preparation at a critical time for Sven Goran Eriksson appears to have cost him his place in the Swede's England plans.

Eriksson himself has been published in the field of sports psychology. He collaborated with eminent Norwegian Willi Raillo - no stranger to the England players under Sven - on Sven Goran Eriksson on Football (Carlton, 2002).

As Middlesbrough's Bill Beswick is fond of saying, "Who coaches the coaches?"

There lies rich irony in Jim Smith's short stint with Harry Redknapp at Southampton, where England 'hero'/British Lions 'villain' Sir Clive Woodward now resides. For Smith it was that boldly tore up Derby County FC's rule book to provide a ' prozone lounge' complete with ambient sounds; memory cards; self-assessment and a brave new world of player accountability when he was manager - with the help of Bill Beswick and then-coach Steve McClaren.

Beswick, subsequently appointed assistant manager by McClaren at Middlesbrough in 2001, could hardly fail to empathise with an attempt to storm football's bastions by a know-all from rugby - having himself emerged from basketball.

Beswick, who worked with Derby, Manchester United and various England intermediary sides before Middlesbrough, welcomed the appointment of Woodward, not least for his recent tribulations.

"It's good for the game. I don't think Jim took anything with him from our Derby days but I certainly welcomed Sir Clive's appointment - as long as he's allowed to contribute.

"In football the gatekeepers are the managers, and football has to be re-educated - the Lions experience has given Sir Clive a blueprint for losing - and I think that is equally valuable to his success in winning the World Cup.

"I'm a stretch not a shrink," Beswick insists, "and most of my work is done in corridors, not in rooms or on the training ground." Confronted with a superstition-riddled environment, his logic is engaging: "I don't believe in superstition - we get what we deserve. But there is an important place for positive rituals in a place of anxiety and stress," he was prepared to admit.

The cases of Maurice Yaffe, brought in by Malcolm Allison in the seventies at Crystal Palace and John Syer, author of Team Spirit - The Elusive Experience (Heinemann 1986), set at Spurs from 1980 to 1985, prove that clubs have dabbled in sports science for a while without settling on a solid model.

Beswick's Focused For Soccer - Develop A Winning Mental Approach (Human Kinetics, 2001) offers a holistic model intended to touch every level of a club - and is unashamed in citing figures as diverse as US generals Patton and Schwarzkopf to Rudyard Kipling when it comes to backing up his beliefs.

Did he feel the combination of academic jargon with a large dose of Americanisms can feed suspicion and be counterproductive to his mission? Free your feet and your mind will follow, for example?

"I know what you mean but ultimately people who are not open to the new are holding themselves back. They simply won't gain the information on performance development and there is a generation of people coming through who aren't so worried about those things."

As part of justifying his work is he ever tempted to put a more basic value on his contribution? Lee Carsley was struggling at Derby under the Smith/McClaren regime, for example, but has since moved to Coventry, Blackburn and Everton in deals totalling almost £7.5million.

"No, it's not really measurable, although in the case of Lee Carsley, Jim Smith was thinking of selling him for £30,000 before the improvement came! The chairman at Middlesbrough is investing in performance and we guarantee a certain level of performance but it's a role that's much harder to define than that of, say, a goalkeeper coach."

Given how stigmatised sports psychology has been in this country, just where do we stand when you consider the use of specialists in top European clubs has been common for many years? "We are just catching up with Western Europe," Beswick responds. "And we're miles behind the Americans, Eastern Europe, Canada and Australia."

Could he have helped Stan Collymore as a player - once fame comes into the equation it must be harder to keep things under control? "It is true that celebrity is a major distraction and what we do is try and minimise the effect of any distraction on performance. Footballers are front-page news as well now and that is another challenge again.

"But you do aim to nip it in the bud and we believe that players respond to those they admire. If you have good senior pros you can find they will deal with all kinds of things before it even gets to us."

For Bayern Munich midfielder Sebastian Deisler chronic depression was diagnosed, and nipped in the bud, at Bavaria's Max-Planck Institute of Psychiatry in November 2003 - ruling him out of Euro2004 and raising a distressing question mark over his future beyond even football at a stroke.

Hardly resembling 'temperamental' German types of yore Paul Breitner, Bernd Schuster or Stefan Effenberg, Deisler nonetheless had earned such sobriquets as 'Basti Fantasti' and 'Der Supertalent' when bursting into the Bundesliga at the age of 17 with Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Transfers to Hertha Berlin and FC Hollywood (Bayern Munich) followed, as did a nagging knee injury and then, according to the latter's head coach Felix Magath, no less, "the pressure" got to him.

"He's put all those things from two years ago behind him," national coach Jurgen Klinsmann said of the 25-year-old after this summer's Confederations Cup campaign firmly laid fears of a relapse, attributed to Deisler's missing a Juventus trip last season, to rest.

Not exactly the Priory experience, given that fatherhood and Buddhism also accompanied his recovery. Deisler has featured in Germany's last 11 matches and finds himself firmly back in the Munich bosom. Rivaldo, having been superseded by younger tyros in the Brazil squad, is still, like Deisler, competing at Champions League level albeit with lesser lights Olympiakos.

Don't you love a happy ending - and Villa? They laid off their academy psychologist 18 months ago.

The Purist
Frank Rijkaard
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Charlton Athletic
Euro 2004: A Look Back
Inside Euro 2004
Football's Quitting Culture
Gareth Southgate
Warren Barton
Ramon Vega
Gary Lineker
Steve Perryman
Di Law

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