Mental Health in Football (Players)
Mental health has always been a crucial part of football, for the good and the bad. Players, managers, club staff, fans all experience this and it changes the way football is played or even viewed. Negative mental health in players and staff causes performances to drop, negative mental health in fans may cause more issues such as violence, abuse or more. Positive mental health is the opposite; however, the problem is that it is so difficult to keep up this positive morale within football in the generation.
Mental Health Effecting Younger Players-
Jordan Ibe- considered one of the next best players at Liverpool, Ibe struggled badly with his mental health off of the pitch which halted his career and led him to being left club less for a whole year. Many injuries, pressures of being seen as one of the best up and coming players and having an early peak may have contributed to this ‘dark place’ that Ibe described to be in. Since being released and made a free agent, I’ve hasn’t received any offers and looks to have been forgotten about. It is such a shame as he was at one point going to be the replacement for Sterling at Liverpool.
Jesse Lingard- similar to Ibe, he had an early peak, he had the weight of becoming one of the best players in the world on his shoulders and injuries, making him an inconsistent player as he progressed through his career. Moreover, Lingard struggled with his life off the pitch, and he spoke out about this in his 2022 Channel 4 documentary explaining that his mother had always struggled with depression, struggling to get out of bed some mornings leading to Jess having to take care of his younger siblings on top of himself and his future in football. Lingard was seen as one of the best players at Manchester United between 2015 and 2019 until new managers left him out of the squad and his mental health took a dip leading him to leave United and have a tough season at Nottingham Forrest. Lingard has never fully recovered from his negative mental health; however, he did have an amazing half a season spell at West Ham where people had thought he had revived his career. Currently, Lingard is a free agent with just one week left in the window.
Dele Alli- by the age of 19, Dele was playing first team football for a strong Spurs side, scoring goals and providing assists consistently for 3-4 seasons with them and picking up many individual honours such as PFA Young Player of The Year 2015/16 and 2016/17, however, Dele began picking up injuries and his form began to dip, then when Conte joined in 2021, he was not a part in his system. After having a poor season at Everton, Dele was sent out on loan to Besiktas where he continued to struggle to find his old self, during his time in Turkey, he lacked game time due to being below expectations and yet another injury struck him. Recently, Dele spoke out about his mental health and his tough upbringing due to abuse as a child, he then revealed that he received treatment at a rehabilitation centre. Dele’s future is still being questioned but Dyche wants him to be a part of Everton and is helping him through his tough times.
For some players, careers take huge, unexpected turns and it gets away from them which leads to dark times for them. One thing can happen then another and another and so on, leading to poor mental health and making it harder for them to revive their careers. Support for players has become important for many teams to prevent players from falling into these places, however, it is not easy at all.
Effects of Abuse on Players-
Abuse can affect players more than people think. Fans’ opinions have a big effect on players’ mental health. For example, Karius received so much online hate following his mistakes in the 2018 Champions League Final which led to Liverpool missing out on their 6th (at the time) UCL trophy. Karius never went back into the Liverpool team due to his mental health being so low and his career has taken a turn for the worse. Vinicius Jr has received so much racial abuse in his time at Real Madrid in Spain from opposing fans, this had led to multiple breakdowns on the pitch and pleads to fans to stop this abuse. Saka, Rashford and Sancho suffered backlash with racist comments after their crucial penalty misses for England in the 2020 Euros Final, this led to them having to take breaks from social media to escape the constant abuse, Sancho has never really come back from this as his form has been below average since.
Social media is a huge problem for players as they receive abuse from opposing fans constantly. People say things to these players forgetting that they are human, forgetting that these people are elite athletes who work so hard to get where they are, many players steer clear of social media to avoid the abuse so they can stay focused on their performances, but something must be done about the amount of abuse on social media and quick.
Personal Experience with Mental Health and Football-
As a lover of football, I hate to see what people have to go through when playing the beautiful game, things behind the scenes that we don’t even see as well. I have played football all my life, loving every minute of it, however, I have struggled with my confidence on the pitch due to other peoples’ comments in the past 7 years due to secondary school, people telling me that I wasn’t good enough leading to the fear of making the tiniest mistakes, kids turning to teenagers can get horrible, thy don’t think about how people feel, just about making people laugh. This does take a toll, for me it was the confidence on the pitch and just being scared that any mistake would list me as a bad player. However, I found that the right manager can fix this issue and believing in yourself is a big help.
Mental health off the pitch also affects how people play as well, little things happening outside of football causing you to play at 40% rather than the 100% expected. But I couldn’t imagine how players cope at the highest of levels, walking onto a pitch with 50,000 people watching you live, millions more on TV, people from all over the world spreading their opinions on your performances and backlash when mistakes happen. So, on a professional level, players go through so much on the big stages, they have so many people around them helping them overcome this; sports psychologists, mental health technicians, doctors and most importantly, their teammates.
