Why are we failing to provide the right psychological support for young athletes?
Financial, educational and structural barriers are blocking early development of skills such as self reflection and emotional regulation
“An athlete comes into an academy and we tell them what to do, and it's very difficult then to give them the self-responsibility or the self-reflection to figure out 'Hey, do you even know what you're doing? Does this work for you? Or are you just following instructions the entire day like a machine?’”
German national team psychologist Julia Eyre, speaking to Jonathan Harding, September 2024
The last line of Julia Eyre’s quote has followed me around for days. We’re talking N’Golo Kante-esque levels of shadowing, for those familiar with the former Chelsea midfielder’s zest for claustrophobia-inducing pressure.
The idea that young athletes are operating within heavily structured environments which strip away the autonomy so vital to an individual’s development is nothing new. But there was something about Julia’s line of questioning, the idea that elite sport systems increasingly possess the capacity to reduce playing to a series of robotically-followed instructions, that really resonated.
Which led to an obvious question, covered in-depth in the German national team psychologist’s interview with Mind Room columnist Jonathan Harding: why are we failing to provide the right psychological support for young athletes?
The conversation (available to listen to via the above link) provides a stark insight into the barriers which exist across elite sports, from football to cheerleading.
But, in the spirit of the reductionism we’re discussing, Jonathan and I have tried to boil down the discussion to three issues, spanning finance, education and structural design.
Why? Firstly, and least importantly, because I’m slightly obsessed about thinking about things in threes. Secondly, because we hope it acts as a digestible way into a complex topic, and prompts further debate (you can leave your comments at the foot of this article via the button below). And thirdly, well, you see where this is going.
So, here’s the rundown, complete with what we hope are some helpful links to previous interviews with psychologists and coaches operating across European sport.
1. Sport psychology budgets
With so much focus on the senior teams, funding is hard to come by for youth sports. The gleam of a medal from the Olympics shines tantalisingly bright for federations compared to results at youth events. But the failure to invest in young people today invites issues later on. Here’s a sample of Julia’s reflection on the situation in Germany:
“There’ll never be enough sports psychologist in academies unless we seriously invest in the system," she said.
"When we abandon or neglect the youth, those are the senior athletes that we get later, and then we have to build up from the neglect that we gave them earlier.
“So I really wish that we had a sports psychologist for youth teams or the ability to develop something long term.”
Sound familiar? It’s exactly the kind of lament I’ve heard from countless psychologists working in English sport. Take this quote from Misia Gervis, former psychologist for the England women’s football team:
“What's happening is clubs are employing sports psychologists to work with 150 people,” she said, during our discussion in 2022.
“One sports psychologist to work with the whole academy: I mean, how can you do that?”
“It's tough on the psychologist because they know that they're not delivering what they want to deliver all the time and the clubs will go, ‘Well, is this any value? Is this helpful?’”
Psychologists are thinking creatively about how to circumnavigate these budgetary bottlenecks, but this often relies on professional goodwill that once again brings into the question of fair pay in football.
"Ultimately, it's about trying to find ways around this lack of funding for youth teams because how many of these are actually going to be professional athletes that will medal at the Olympics in ten years?” said Julia, during her interview with Jonathan.
“I'm in the process of developing am online course with the (German) Cheerleading Federation, where the youth teams have a little bit of input from me for about 45 minutes once a month.
“But that's also something that I'm doing for as little money as possible, basically for free, because I know it's going to make my job easier later, instead of working with senior athletes who, for the first time, are having to talk about self-reflection, self-awareness, stress management, arousal control and attention.
“And I just think, ‘Wow, if we have these fundamental competencies checked off, by the time all of our athletes were 18’..."
2. Structural design
“When it (emotional regulation and self-reflection) is never, ever a topic, then how are they supposed to learn? It's unfair to expect that they can learn it just out of nowhere, especially in football where it is really a different system here in Germany, because there is so much structural support built in, not always in the right places, so there's very little wiggle room.”
Julia’s depiction of an overly-prescriptive youth system might be specific to Germany, but the essence of the observation - that we’re curtailing the freedom of thought we should be encouraging - is something I’ve come across again and again during interviews over the last half-decade.
It’s a point that former Rangers coach Harry Watling, who has coached U-18 age groups at Chelsea, Millwall and West Ham, stressed when talking about the psychological traits vital to preparing players for first-team football, as well as aiding those leaving professional football.
"The big thing for me is being mentally capable to cope with the pressure of the game and the pressure of life,” said Watling.
"If you put the right roadblocks in place on that development pathway to help build resilience, help build problem-solving and help players become more agile in their decision-making, then I think when that point does come of, ‘Okay, this club's not for you’ or ‘This industry's not for you, what's next?’, it's still a shock to the system, but they're able to absorb it a little bit earlier. They're able to consume that and then go, ‘Okay, this is what I'm going to do next.’”
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3. Coach and backroom staff education
It’s a topic we’ve discussed on numerous occasions in Mind Room articles, but Julia’s conversation with Jonathan reinforced the point made by everyone from Real Madrid coaches to AC Milan sport scientists: it’s vital to incorporate psychology within coach education.
"When you have one sports psychologist at an academy, for example, there's no way that the sports psychologist can be the only one responsible for helping people to reflect: I think it's also the job of the coaches to help," said Julia.
"Also, the physios and the doctors and basically everybody in our medical team are so key because they do the frontline sports psychology and psychotherapy.
“People come into the training room and just need to talk, and those are some of the best scenarios to actually get real thoughts out of somebody's head, to help them to regulate in that moment and give them the skills to identify what they're going through and ask: 'Okay, what do I do with this? Where do I place it? How could I get it out of my body? How can I either allow it to pass in my mind and how do I move on?'
“My hope is always whatever role that I'm in and whatever role that my sports scientists are in or my rehab trainers are in, that they're always giving the boys a little bit of something that they can take with them afterwards."
Julia’s approach aligns with a framework integrating 11 performance competencies used in Canadian high performance, referred to as "The Gold Medal Profile for Sport Psychology".
The paper was printed in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology in 2023 and explains how these 11 mental competencies grouped under three categories - fundamental (e.g. confidence), self-regulation (e.g. self-awareness) and interpersonal (e.g. communication) - can aid teams and organisations to implement a more comprehensive and personal approach to mentally supporting young athletes.
Julia is battling to make it work, and her athletes are clearly benefiting from her approach. She is someone who cares about the individual and sees the person way before the player, but equally knows how to handle the player when the time comes. But like many in the job, she is fighting against a system that is not designed for longevity.
"I wish that everybody was doing it, which means coaches need a better education, sports scientists need a different education, people in management need a different education, and people who are doing the pedagogical support as well, potentially,” she said.
“Because we all need to be able to do that effectively at the end of the day and it takes significant understanding of these things in order to teach it appropriately, as well."
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