Stress and pressure: threats to the mental health of coaches

The soccer coach is that guy on the side of the field who shouts, who stomps his feet, who waves his arms, who pulls his hair, if he has any, who screams, if he has any voice left, or who simply meditates: “If I lose, will they take me out today, tomorrow, next week? Will they give me another chance? If we win, will those in the stands continue to insult me? Damn, another goal, now what do I do? Who do I put? Hot 9! Out on the 8th! Time is running out! What are the press going to ask me now, if I'm leaving? What do I tell the managers? I quit? I do not follow! Tomorrow we have to train. We won the other game, for sure…”

The coach doesn't have time to think about anything other than football. His daily life takes place on the fields, on the tactical boards and in the match videos. That's his job. And he seems funny, but he's not always funny. The coach carries a lot of responsibility. If the scorer doesn't score goals, it's the coach's fault; If the defender scores an own goal, the same. If he wins they ask him to win more. If he loses, they pack his suitcase. There is no wait. The fans are demanding and impatient. The normal thing is that the coach, very unloved, is the center of collective anger.

Coaches who lose get up with the rope around their necks and go to bed with the rope tightening. If things don't work out, his position will hang by a thread. They don't have time to get attached to the team because at any moment they leave. The Mexican writer Juan Villoro said well: “The position of coach exists to have a certified guilty party.” Those who win are not freed from tension. Some simply get tired. Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool's successful manager, recently said that he will leave the club at the end of the season. “It's just that I'm running out, how can I put it, without energy.”

The DT crisis happens even in the best families. The Dutchman Ronald Koeman was accurate when explaining his time on the Barcelona bench: “Being Barça coach is an attack on mental health… I suffered the pressure and stress.”

The mental health of coaches is not a recurring issue. The fan is not interested in knowing what he thinks, nor his dramas nor his personal battles nor his family troubles nor if he sleeps or if he stays up late. If he is there, on the line, it is for the team to win no matter what. The prestigious Argentine sports psychologist Marcelo Roffé set off the alarm. In a message on his X account he stated: “The coaching profession is very stressful. 70 percent are divorced. Many suffer from illnesses. There is little research on the mental health of football coaches. And it should be done. It's a pretty thankless job. “The football environment is very cruel and there is a lot of pressure.”

The coach lives in fear of dismissal. Fear of failure. Fear, sometimes, of being a coach.

moments of stress

–Teacher, what stresses you out?

–The 2 hours before the game… I look like a crazy man in a cage… they seem endless to me… my head is filled with adverse situations… I can't wait for the game to start… I calm down when the game starts game…

The one who answers is Luis Fernando Suárez, an experienced Colombian coach, World Cup winner, who has suffered the stress of his profession. Suárez has experienced victories and defeats. He knows that this job can be overwhelming, but it is what he chose. So he accepts it. “If you got into this, you must be aware that there is pressure, that there is a greater demand. You are a coach and you have to get used to being asked for more. Or that there will be anxious situations. I handle it thinking that no one asked me to be a coach and I have to accept the pressure. Yes, it affects me emotionally, I am a person, one is going to be affected when they are being treated with great injustice, that has generated stress in me, it is normal; Sometimes you get up or go to bed and go about your worries, fortunately I have not felt depression or thinking that I am getting sick, I handle normal emotional stress. What I do feel sometimes is sadness. You are in a union where sometimes you feel that the work is not looked at well, the bad is looked at more. Now there is a thin thread between pressure and threat, that is serious.”

Coaches live with that pressure, they accepted it the day they decided to be what they are. And there are extreme cases, cases when fans attack with violence. Recently in the Colombian league a fan broke into the press room to harass Nacional's coach, Jhon Bodmer. The coach, with his successes and mistakes, endures, refuses to give up, trusts in his abilities, that everything will improve in the next game.

Fernando Rivera is a sports psychologist, currently working with InderValle. He witnesses the drama that the coaches experience. “When we talk about the mental health of the coach, we take into account that their psychological abilities are similar to those of athletes: they have to have good emotional control, cognitive control, good decision making, excellent stress management. You have to understand that the coach has a working life, a job like that of a top executive, and is going to suffer from illnesses that have to do with performance. Especially when the work depends on the results of others, what others do will define their continuity in the team,” he explains.

The pressure of the result seems to be the underlying issue, the one that torments many coaches, but there is more. “Studies show that the result, from the work approach and the pressure to win, is always complex. Some coaches with a lot of experience are more concerned about team dynamics, good relationships with athletes and understanding how the team works, which generates a lot of stress. In the most novice coaches there is the need to stand out, to win, that weighs a lot. The issue is how do I learn to handle that outcome. Having more experience does not manage stress. “You see very experienced teachers who are very stressed,” he says.

The pressure to win

–Professor, what causes you stress or anguish?

–I have not reached those levels, but some of them cause me concern…

Now Alexis García, coach of La Equidad, speaks, a club with little fans that, however, generates another form of pressure. “The pressure that we coaches face is permanent, each game stopped being an opportunity and has become a threat. We are judged by people who perhaps have achieved much less in our environment than we have. Preparation is permanent and in the end your position depends solely and exclusively on your players, in addition to your capacity for strategy and your preparation as a leader, to manage not only your emotions but that of your entire squad. “Some say that in Equidad there is no pressure, they are very wrong, there is as much as in other teams, what happens is that it is more internal than external, but the position is at risk like everyone else,” says.

Nowadays teams usually have experts in sports psychology, who are the ones who work with players and coaches. One of them is Edwin López, from Millonarios, who speaks from his experience with different coaches: “Miguel Ángel Ruso (former coach of Millonarios) told me, 'they pay me to make decisions as the leader of the group', and they often make decisions. just to respond to a president, to journalism, to the fans. These coaches often end up isolated because they make decisions, but they cannot share them because they handle sensitive information and they remain ostracized to decide and endure pressure, because if they appear fragile in front of the group, the group will feel that it is not right. led. They have a family, a parallel life, with responsibilities and expectations. I feel like they are very alone and are under more and more pressure, which affects their mental health. At any moment they can be asked to resign, so they cannot generate roots or affection for the institution because most of the time they feel like they have one foot outside. “This uncertainty generates emotional discomfort that they have to deal with daily.”

The coach is still on the side of the field, he is the one who does not stop shouting, who runs in his field as if he were going to come in to fix the game, he is the one who if he does not explode it is because he thinks: “Could it be that we tied? If we tie, will he save me? Maybe we won. If we win, will I convince you? Will they stop attacking me? What if I lose, do I leave? No, I'm not leaving. Not yet…”.

Pablo Romero
Editor of EL TIEMPO
@PabloRomeroET

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