Do football and psychology travel on parallel tracks?

At the centre of the debate, the uncertainty of the moment is based on the pandemic. However, questions that are useful to everyone. ‘The moment is particular, it is useless to hide it, and everyone is experiencing it in a subjective way. There are those who are serene, those who are worried and those who unfortunately have been personally affected by the coronavirus. The first piece of advice I can give is to take some time for yourself. To analyse. To understand how people are. We said, we are living in a period of uncertainty, so we need to take advantage of this moment to know and recognise emotions’

Fear, anxiety, tension, components experienced in recent weeks, but present in the head of every sportsman. Giona Morinini has no doubts: ‘Unfortunately, having control over everything is impossible. I will give you an example: during the game you are afraid of missing a penalty kick. But we need to go further, believe in your abilities, think of all those times in which the outcome of a penalty has been positive and above all that you are on the pitch to have fun. Stop for a moment and be lucid. Knowing that emotions are part of us, but at the same time not being influenced too much. All elements that we can also use outside a playing field’.

Is it wrong to be afraid?

Of course not. You have to see fear like all other emotions. It is normal and also useful. It comes when a possible danger is perceived. We can speak of a possible contagion, as an error. At that moment there are two options: escape or counter attack. So I said that fear must be recognised, in order to be able to activate all possible resources to counter attack. Here, at that moment, one’s resources are used to defeat fear.

In the opening words of this article we talk about psychology which today, unlike in the past, is not unrelated to the world of sport, but an indispensable component to raise the level of every sporting performance. Is enough being done in Ticino, and also in regional football?

Surely there are many contexts in which more could be done and I am thinking of psychology applied to achieving excellent performance, but also to create a context in which to play sports, feel 100% well and in a more educational way. At the same time, a lot is already being done and sensitivity in this sense is growing. At what age do you start working on psychology? There is no age. Obviously the intervention will be different. Pay attention to the psychological aspect, which means the emotions you experience, it is an excellent opportunity to ensure that sporting activity truly becomes a formative moment in which the adult takes on the very precious role of accompanying the child. For example, making sense of a defeat. From which perhaps you learn more than from a victory.