Alvaro Morata and Joaquin Valdes: the player-psychologist partnership key to Spain's World Cup hopes
It's rare to hear an elite manager talk openly about working with a psychologist. It's rarer still for a national team boss to make a ‘psych’ the subject of a press conference prior to his side's first major tournament semi-final in nine years.
Fortunately, Luis Enrique is no stranger to speaking his mind (just take a look at his Twitch channel). Before Spain's Euro 2020 match against Italy, the former Roma coach devoted part of his media briefing to explaining the way in which Joaquin Valdes - one of Enrique’s current right-hand men and the team’s psychologist - helped coaches and squad members communicate effectively.
If Enrique's public praise was unusual, it was surely deserved. Valdes played an essential role in preparing Spain’s squad for their most successful tournament campaign since 2012, holding one-to-one sessions with players and providing Enrique with advice on how to communicate effectively with the team and media (who he has imitated in a bid to help his fellow Asturian navigate press conferences).
Arguably, the most notable example of his work has been the support he has provided for Alvaro Morata. The impact of Valdes’ aid has been such that Morata, who lost one of his closest friends in a car crash in 2017 - the year the former Chelsea striker’s wife also endured a difficult pregnancy with the couple’s twin boys - has called for regular, mandatory consultations between players and psychologists.
Morata’s indifferent spell at Stamford Bridge, which saw him find the net on just three occasions in 22 games between January and May 2018, helped catalyse his partnership with Valdes. A combination of a £58m transfer fee, together with his barren spell in front of goal, heaped pressure on the Spanish striker to such an extent that Morata was, in his own words, on the verge of suffering from depression.
If Valdes’ help was a source of strength then, it was equally key during Euro 2020, when Morata’s wife and three children - Leonardo and Alessandro (both two at the time of the tournament) and Edoardo (aged eight months when the competition was played) - were the subject of death threats.
Morata himself was also the victim of sickening online abuse, leaving the former Juventus frontman “struggling to want to get out of bed, not keen to leave my hotel room... until team mates or a conversation with my wife helped bring me out of that." It spurred the Atletico Madrid striker to talk publicly about Valdes.
"He's been a great help and we don't just talk about football,” explained Morata, speaking in 2021.
“Players are simply human beings with our own fears and insecurities, many of which have nothing to do with our profession.
"It's good to have people around you you can talk to and who can help. We take our bodies to the gym, we use specialist physios to be in peak condition, we are scientific about our diet: why shouldn't we attempt to 'train' the brain?"
Recently, Morata told Mens Health: "Complicated personal moments help teach you to put everything in context. I look at the situation in many countries around the world, and I can accept that losing a match or missing a chance are important, but only to a certain extent.
"Football connects to the emotions of so many people that if things aren't going well, it's hard for them to remember we're only human beings. We need to remember we are healthy, we are lucky to be doing what we do and we have our families to go home to -- that's what really matters in life".
His comments might well have been influenced by his discussions with Valdes. A former judo expert, who played and coached professionally, Valdes has been psychologically supporting elite European teams for over a decade, joining Enrique on the touchline for spells with Barcelona, Roma and Celta Vigo, before becoming part of Spain’s current coaching setup.
Perhaps influenced by injuries during his playing career, which he says “harmed him psychologically”, Valdes has championed the use of psychology in football. He has publicly stressed the importance of overcoming negative stereotyping of the profession, speaking eloquently about the intrusion of what he terms ‘pseudo mental coaches'. He has also promoted the discipline’s ability to aid performance and the need for teams to consistently devote their attention to the mental side of the game.
As Spain’s World Cup campaign kicks off, this focus will need to be redoubled. Valdes has spoken previously about the difference in the psychological preparation of national teams and clubs, highlighting the extreme peaks and troughs which face international sides that meet a handful of times a year. It’s a situation that will be brought into even sharper relief in Qatar. Fortunately for Spain - and Morata - they appear to have just the man for the job.