Why don't more coaching teams include a psychologist?
Why don't more coaching teams include a psychologist?
Gareth Southgate and Luis Enrique might not have much in common (it’s unlikely, however compelling the prospect, that the England boss will be emulating his Spanish counterpart in setting up his own Twitch channel), but both are part of a select group of managers who have integrated psychologists within their coaching teams.
This, to some observers, may seem like a fairly innocuous trait to highlight. But, beyond the roles Ian Mitchell and Joaquin Valdes (pictured above, alongside Enrique) occupied within the English and Spanish coaching units, how many psychologists can you think of who have been handed similar responsibility by an elite manager?
Even for psychologists working closely with playing and non-playing staff, embedded to an extent far beyond the narrow, unfairly drawn parameters of what some in the football world still believe to be the domain of a ‘psych’, there remains a distance from the coaching team they may well be supporting.
Not so in the case of individuals such as Valdes, who was formally listed as part of Enrique’s coaching team during the Catalan’s time in charge of the Spanish national team. The same could also be said for Mitchell, whose work was highlighted during a conversation with Sarah Murray, a psychologist who has worked for both Premier League and international cricket teams.
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“To the best of my knowledge, he (Mitchell) was very much part of the (England) coaching team”, said Murray, during an appearance on The Football Psychology Show in 2022.
“Since then, I can't off the top of my head think of an equivalent whereby actually you have a psychologist that is seen and sits and fits within that world of coaching day to day.
“It’s the kind of experienced person that would support the coaches to manage conversations, to work alongside players, to think about their own behaviours and actions, to think about the impact of mental health on performance and all the things that an experienced sports psychologist can be really useful for.”
Whilst Valdes - whose work with Alvaro Morata and other members of Enrique’s playing and non-playing staff was such a feature of Spain’s successful Euro 2020 campaign - might provide another example, other notable cases seem few and far between.
There are a multitude of possible explanations for the scarcity, ranging from the low number of specialists employed by clubs in full-time roles to the onus placed on tactical and technical expertise - ahead of psychological acumen - within a coaching team.
Another factor at play is the sometimes competing interests of clubs and players. To what extent can a psychologist retain long-term focus on an individual if they’re operating as part of a coaching team shooting towards demanding short-term goals? It’s a theme Murray picked up on during our conversation last year.
“I had to really question my purpose because it is my purpose to serve the player in front of me and to work with them, but my employer is the club,” she said.
“Long term, if I work with that player in front of me, even if they're leaving in six months’ time because they're out of contract, the work we do will serve them well in years to come.
“That means a lot to me. I'm humanistic. But it doesn't necessarily serve the club long-term. The club pay my wage.”
Of course, it’s possible to argue that there would be less of a need for a psychologist to be ‘formally’ included within a coaching team - in the way, for example, Valdes was listed on the Spanish national team’s website - were psychological support ingrained within the work of all non-playing departments. To Murray, the advantages of the approach are clear.
“If we're thinking long term about psychology being embedded within a football club, actually working with and through staff and the system…is a fantastic way to move forward,” she said.
“There are players that I am sure over the years would've seen my fully immersive and fully integrated approach and I know it would have stopped them coming to ask for help or wanting to work with me because perhaps they thought I was very close with the coaches, which will happen less so when we get the environment right.”
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