SportsPsychologist.com Blog by Dr Victor Thompson

Football World Cup 2014, 8 th June 2014, semi-final Germany 7 – Brazil 1 What a match! As a sports psychologist, who's worked with footballers at different levels, I really enjoyed the match. Here's what I saw: 0-0  The beginning. For Brazil there was such hope. When they had possession of the ball, the crowd cheered, and most of the stadium was a sea of Brazilian yellow and green. For Germany, they played equally well as Brazil, but the crowd was not willing them to do well or win. 1-0 Germany scored, Brazil looked surprised, their supporters looked surprised, the pressure increased for Brazil.  The Germans gained momentum after the first goal and looked more in control. 2-0    When Germany scored the second goal, the Brazilian players and fans looked shocked. How could this be happening? Is this really happening? What do we do? For Germany, their momentum and confidence grew. 3-0    After the 3 rd German goal, the Germans played with more confidence a

When we think of managing our emotions when performing, we usually think of managing nerves, anxiety or stress. While this is important, these aren’t the only emotions to manage so that we perform well. Top athletes – or any athletes trying to perform at their best – need to learn to manage frustration or they risk expressing their anger or aggression in unhelpful ways. Last night’s Champions League football match between Chelsea and Barcelona showed a ‘great’ example of this, when Chelsea’s John Terry kneed the lower back of Barcelona’s Alexis Sanchez . Terry was observed, sent off and will now miss the Champions League final. Lashing out can be tempting when feeling frustrated at your performance, competitors, officials or something about the situation. However, lashing out in most sporting contexts will almost certainly get you in trouble and give you more to deal with than the original frustrating experience. The great athletes learn to manage their emotions and how the

A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke, by Ronald Reng, today wins the British William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2011. Reng tells the story of the German goalkeeper Robert Enke, his life and tragic death by suicide in November 2009. A national hero, he appeared to have it all. His teammates and management had little idea that Enke was battling depression for some time. The book serves as a reminder that top sports people can struggle too, just like the rest of us, and need to have access to psychological help. Such help needs to be based on what helps people address their psychological problem (e.g. as endorsed by the NICE Guidelines for the treatment of psychological disorders in the NHS in England) and does so with an understanding of their life as a sportsperson. Dr Victor Thompson Clinical Sports Psychologist www.sportspsychologist.com

Sports stars, footballers and managers are human too. What I mean by this is life still happens to them. Challenging life events or experiences still happen. So, just like the rest of us, they end up in challenging relationships, enter into marriages that break-up acrimoniously, have loved ones who get sick with nasty illness, cancer or mental health difficulties. They can experience accidents and get into car crashes like we all can. Just like the rest of us. What we see is them performing on the pitch or under the spotlight. What we don't see is their life outside those 90-minutes a week, when they are training, at home, with their family, at the hospital…. We see them composed, focused, coping, performing athlete. This is what we expect. We don't see the struggles, challenges, emotions, arguments, angst, doubts, fears. Who expects this from high paid stars doing what we dream about doing? Sports stars are able (mostly) to cope with competitive pressures and they can appl