Tottenham player says he’s gettinig psychological help: snigger snigger

 

 

 

• What are the punishments for the past sins of Chelsea and ManC?
• When we talk about Tottenham going down, are we talking about the wrong London club? 

By Tony Attwood

“Tottenham’s Richarlison says he’s going to seek psychological help” is the headline in the Telegraph today.  And unfortunately, a number of people seem to be making two mistakes.  The first is to confuse “psychological help” with “psychiatric help”.  The second is to assume that Premier League players don’t need mental as well as physical support.

Psychologists study human thoughts, emotions and behaviour.  So, for example, a club might have a player who is considered exceptional, but who can be affected during a game by goading and chanting from the crowd.   There is nothing mentally wrong with such a person – most of us would find some of the things chanted by crowds against players to be fairly disturbing.    But the psychologist might help the individual player understand how he/she is being affected, build up resistance, and then overcome the situation so that nothing said by or chanted by members of the crowd affects the player.

It is a fact that some players, despite being seen by most commentators as excellent exponents of the game, can start to doubt their own ability, and here again a psychologist can help the players so affected overcome this.

Other players may well find that they have habits within their play which are not always beneficial to the team’s performance, but they find it hard to get rid of those habits.   (We all have multiple habits – it is an interesting activity to spend a week or two identifying yours).   Others might be seriously affected and upset by the nonsense journalists write – nonsense which is not only logically unsound, but also factually incorrect.  Such journalistic writing can affect a player’s game quite severely.

The simple answer sometimes suggested, “to learn not to take any notice of journalists” or indeed the crowd, is easy to say, but it doesn’t actually show the individual player how to achieve that.   Such players might have colleagues in the team who aren’t affected by such comments at all, but their statement that “I just ignore them – they’re stupid” doesn’t actually tell the player who is affected how do deal with this problem.  That is when a psychologist can help

Psychiatrists, on the other hand, tend to be medical professionals who can prescribe drugs to help overcome a difficulty of the type described above, and of course, this is where players have to be careful since utilising drugs to improve one’s performance is strictly controlled in all sports.   

So psychologists, with their expertise in handling emotional reactions to situations, can often be much more useful to a player than a psychiatrist.  But the problem is that, in the UK at least, there can be confusion between consulting a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and anyone who is known to be seeing either can be described as a person who is a “nutter” (to use one of many pejorative terms).

In fact, virtually all football clubs in the top divisions employ psychologists whose job it is to ensure that the player is in peak mental condition for each match, just as others in the club’s medical team work to ensure that the players are physically fit.

Psychologists can be useful for anyone in employment whose job is complex enough for the individual to have a wide range of choices as to how he or she does the job.  They can also help lower levels of stress and anxiety, raise the level of focus, help the individual pace him/herself, and reduce the level of distractions. both from other players and from the crowd.

Consider for a moment the player who finds that each time he/she touches the ball, that player is booed by the crowd for some alleged misdemeanour in the past (such as having left one club and now playing for the opposition).   Some players can ignore this; others find it disturbing.  The psychologist’s job is to help the affected player overcome this distraction and put in his best performance.

Psychologists thus can and do work in all spheres of life.   I know that when I was a lecturer, I came across students who simply couldn’t cope with exams, although they performed excellently throughout the year in terms of essays and discussions.  They had a fear of exams, which saying “try not to worry” was about the worst advice that could be given.  But with support, they could learn to diminish their fear..  Similarly, some players can’t cope with aggression from the crowd.   But all such attributes can be overcome.

In short, psychologists study human emotions and thoughts and how these affect behaviour, and they then can work with individuals to help them set aside any behaviour that is not helping them in their daily activities.

But I find it sad that a newspaper can publish a line such as “Tottenham’s Richarlison says he’s going to seek psychological help” simply because I am sure all clubs in the top divisions offer psychological help to their players.  After all these players have to suffer abuse, aggression, taunting and threats in ways that few people in our society have to put up with and of course, they need and are entitled to psychological help.   Indeed, can you imagine what it is like to train all week, be working hard on the pitch, and then hear a bunch of people in the ground booing you each time you touch the ball because of some imagined past misdemeanour?