Sports psychologist

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Leeds had refused the services of a top sports psychologist.

Some scoffed at the need for one then, some still scoff at that now despite the recognition within sports of psychology's importance.

It’s no co incidence that more open minded people are talking about this as an issue for Leeds and the athletic cover this in-depth in an article today, well worth a read....for those willing to entertain opinions other than their own.

Leeds United set no limit on the number of staff they were willing to employ for Marcelo Bielsa. The club were bound by English work permit rules, the usual stipulations set by the Football Association, but Bielsa was free to pick his own men. Three coaches came with him from South America. Leeds recruited a fitness guru who Bielsa knew from Lille. There were analysts and interns, cogs in the machine Bielsa wanted when he and Leeds first spoke.

One thing missing from the list of key positions was something top-level clubs are gradually bringing in house: a member of staff whose job it is to analyse and manage the psychology of his players. Bielsa pays heed to the mental aspect of professional sport — “psychology as a tool is very important," he said in August — but his own inner circle does not extend to a dedicated psychologist. As someone at Elland Road told The Athletic: “Bielsa is the psychologist. He sees that as his job and his responsibility to control."

Bielsa conditions his players with what sports psychologists would call technical and tactical interventions. Leeds are coached and drilled to the nth degree and through the repetitive nature of that training, Bielsa counts on confidence developing as the squad learn to trust their swing. But elsewhere in England, and across Europe, clubs are turning to specialists and specific techniques to manage the emotional side of football, with interventions that nurture the brain. Psychology is pertinent at Elland Road, where historical pressure squeezes Leeds and turbulent experiences of competing for promotion pose the question: how much of this battle is in the mind?

Over at Liverpool, a club whose mental stamina and self-confidence is off the scale, Jurgen Klopp is leaving nothing to chance. In the summer, he appointed Lee Richardson, a former football coach and now a performance psychology consultant, to provide services at their Melwood training ground three days a week. Richardson has his own office and, with Klopp’s authority, is free to work with the players as he pleases. He should be part of the furniture when Liverpool relocate to new training premises this year. “I have no idea what they are talking about," Klopp told The Athletic. “I am not interested. It’s just a nice add-on."

Klopp is a modern thinker and can see that performance is tied to the brain. Liverpool were a little like Leeds when he became manager, falling below the levels of achievement which the club’s reputation said they should aspire to. History was once a burden, he said. “Now it feels more like a trampoline." The Premier League is following the same trend. Chelsea employ a sports psychologist, Tim Harkness, and Manchester City have gone so far as making a dedicated psychologist, Lorraine O’Malley, available to their loans department and players like Jack Harrison. There is no resistance and less suspicion of consultants like Richardson; just an acceptance that footballers cannot avoid emotion like robots.

Dan Abrahams, a psychologist who is part of the medical department at Bournemouth and dealt previously with the England rugby team, has seen a switch from “isolation to integration" where many clubs and coaches think of men like him as colleagues rather than outsiders with intangible value. It is not true of every team and Abrahams thinks that at the upper end of the Championship, where competitive pressure is severe, too little attention is paid to enhancing the mentality of players.

“At that level there are no real psychological systems in place," Abrahams told The Athletic. “It doesn’t look as if they’re taking that side of the sport as seriously as they should be. There’s a lot of tactical and technical expertise in the Championship so coaches can intervene in those ways but they’re still relying heavily on tactical and technical input. In sport, psychology is everything. It’s omnipresent. It’s always there.

“At any club you’ve got coaching staff, a squad of 20 to 30 players and auxiliary staff around them. Everyone thinks differently and everyone feels differently so you can have 40 or 50 individual daily narratives which are constantly changing. In terms of psychology you’ve got complexity and chaos. People in sport, and a lot of people in football, are starting to realise that you need to manage that."