Emotional development expert Sue Parris discusses how to get the season underway in sound body and mind…
August is a month of mixed emotions for the goalkeepers across the country who are coming out of hibernation.
At the top level, they may be ruing the short off-season thanks to the summer international tournaments. At semi-pro and amateur level, they may be rooting under the bed for a pair of smelly gloves they really should have washed after the last game of the previous season. However, one emotion that is common across goalkeepers at all levels is the excitement of getting out on the pitch again.
But how do you prepare mentally for that first game? When the training stops, the margin for error narrows and the serious business begins from an emotional perspective.
Goalkeeper.com spoke to Sue Parris, an emotional welfare specialist who founded the Changing Room and Simply Human, and is Head of Welfare and Senior Consultant to the Player Care Group, to understand what emotions players feel on the verge of the season and how they can best prepare.
Parris has experience working with players individually, and within Premier League clubs, supporting players to better understand their own emotional welfare.
Standing on the verge of a new season can feel like diving off the top box, with a mix of nerves, fear and excitement for what is about to come. For the goalkeeper, this is amplified, given their unique role within the squad. According to Parris, this mix of emotions is part of the beauty of the same.
“The overriding feeling is one of excitement mixed with anticipation. You just never know what is going to happen, which is what makes football so exciting.”
However, how the previous season finished can have a lasting impact when waiting for the season to begin. Parris explained: “For those involved, it would also very, very much depend on how they ended last season and if their position was in contention maybe, and they don't really know whether they're going to be first choice.”
This uncertainty is heightened for goalkeepers, who have to fight for one starting spot within the team. This can create an unusual tension: “As a goalkeeper, there's only one position each match,” Parris continued.
“Barring injury, you know whether you're playing the 90 minutes or not once you know whether you're first choice or not. So there's quite a difference with regard to the psyche.”
This competition can cause a challenging emotional conflict for goalkeepers. Whilst they form a tight-knit group within a playing squad, the inherent competition that the position brings can create poor emotional habits, with players using banter and bravado to cover their insecurities.
“It's quite unusual in my experience to have a group of goalkeepers who will share how they feel about things because there is that element of competition. I mean, generally, even speaking about the wider squad, you know, the dressing room is a great barometer of where those individuals are within that depending on the atmosphere. So you can get this kind of bravado banter, and it very easily becomes something more sinister.”
Therefore it is important for all players, but particularly goalkeepers, to find a safe space where they can offload their anxieties and concerns.
Parris explained that goalkeepers need “that psychologically safe space away from that environment in order to explore what you presume to be a weakness. But actually, obviously, you know, when you pull it apart, it's not a weakness, it's a strength to be self-aware and also understand then how to self-regulate that self-awareness.”
Mistakes are part and parcel of football. But for goalkeepers, they are magnified and analysed to the most minute degree. Illan Meslier conceded a goal he'd have been disappointed with in Leeds United's opening game of the season against Portsmouth. It would be easy to let such an error derail the whole start to the season.
However, Parris believes that goalkeepers cannot allow fear of making a mistake define their performance: “We're all fallible. We all make mistakes. Unfortunately, for goalkeepers, the mistakes are far more prominent.” Parris continued, “There is this, an importance of living in the present. If we're going to continually live in the past, then we're going to continue to live with the feelings of the past as well.
“So the feelings that were heightened in that moment of shame, shame is massive, shame is the biggest or the strongest, destructive feeling that we feel. Shame is very destructive, very damaging. But a lot of sports people carry shame for mistakes. So it's being able to talk about that and understand that that feeling of shame is valid.
"Okay, maybe in that moment you made a mistake, but it's not valid to carry that around into your present and also to project that into your future.”
For Parris, the most important thing any player can do when preparing for the new season is to find their safe psychological space and to remember that their role as a footballer, and particularly as a goalkeeper, does not define them as an individual.
“There's this kind of thought, particularly with goalkeepers, that they have to be some kind of superhero persona. They wear a cape, this metaphorical cape that they go out with because of the responsibility and the weight that they carry in that role. And that can be very debilitating.”
Parris continued: “Their identity is I'm a football player. I'm not somebody that plays football for a living. You know, the identity piece, again, is another huge part of what we're talking about. And on one hand, it's really important to see yourself in a certain way, in a certain environment, in a certain situation, but equally to be able to value yourself outside of that as well.”
Parris explores these themes in much greater detail with ex-professionals in the Changing Room podcast which gives a fascinating insight into the work she does to support emotional welfare within football.
She has also contributed to a research piece “The Boy in the Man’s Mask: the duty of care on football academies” which explores how football can better support the emotional welfare of their young talent. Both should be essential material for any player who is anxiously awaiting the start of the new season.
It seems only right to give the last word of the article to Sue Parris and to share her most pertinent piece of advice to all goalkeepers preparing for the emotional rollercoaster of another season:
“Give yourself the best gift you can by finding that psychologically safe person, safe space within which to explore that, because that will save you an awful lot of heartache going forward, for sure. That would be my takeaway.”
And to goalkeepers at all levels: good luck and godspeed for the new season.
