Why isn't psychology part of football's future-gazing?
In the first of two issues featuring reports from Barcelona's Sports Tomorrow Congress, one question continues to rear its head: where is the focus on psychology?
The statistics are stark. Only seven of every 10,000 Spanish academy footballers will play in La Liga. In 2022, just 3% of English top-flight clubs’ academy graduates aged between 21 and 26 played a minute of a Premier League match. Elite football - as with most sports - is ruthless and shows no signs of becoming less cut-throat.
The demands - and effect of those stressors - on athletes aren’t abating. The average number of games played by La Liga teams rose by 65% between 2020 and 2021. Two years ago, a survey by England’s Professional Footballers Association showed that over 20% of members experienced severe anxiety in the month preceding the questionnaire.
All the more reason, you might think, for leagues, governing bodies and other stakeholders to place a real focus on psychologically supporting sportsmen and women. But the reality paints a mixed picture. Put aside headline quotes from Jurgen Klopp and other forward-thinking managers and there’s little to suggest that proactive attempts to manage, for example, physical ‘loading’ are really being matched by efforts to protect its cognitive counterpart.
Indeed, in this issue, I’m reporting from the Sports Tomorrow Congress, a future-gazing football conference run by Barcelona’s Innovation Hub, where speeches focused on sport psychology are noticeably thin on the ground.
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