Why a mental timeout is crucial after tortuous season
Whoever plays, England’s full squad will undergo a recovery programme to keep mind and body fresh
Four weeks after reporting for national duty at St George’s Park, England’s young lions will enter tomorrow’s first game as physically and scientifically prepared as any previous World Cup hopefuls. Dave Reddin, the Football Association’s head of team strategy and performance, and his medical and fitness team will now switch modes and focus on supporting the players to pace themselves through what, England fans hope, will be the next month of tournament play.
They will be required to deal with inevitable injuries, actively maximise physical recovery and combat mental fatigue.
Across the next few weeks, England will not seek to make their players “fitter” after a 10-month season. Rather, they will be trying to maintain it and make sure they are fresh, and focused on team cohesion.
The challenge is to keep all of the players at the same level of game readiness. In a squad of 23 players, there are up to 12 unused players to manage after each game.
The squad therefore will be split in two: the played group and the unused group. Those who played more than 30-45 minutes in a game will be included in the played group.
They would then operate on a pre-defined match-day schedule (match day plus one and match day plus two) schedule. By match day plus three, they will be back to normal squad training preparing for the next game.
On match days, the played group will immediately have ice baths, massage therapy, and focus on nutrition and rehydration strategies. The other players may do some physical work, although they will not be allowed back on the pitch, so that would have to be in the dressing room.
On match day plus one, the played group will do a light recovery session. This may be off-feet (in the pool or on bikes), may involve some gym work and would involve some form of cryotherapy and massage treatment.
The other players will train with a view to loading and stimulating them physically to mimic a match stimulus. By match day plus three, there will be squad-based training with a lighter session for those who played, with additional “top up” for those who did not.
The key, though, is not just physical recovery. Protecting the mental and emotional well-being of the players will allow maximal performance and reduce the risk of injury moving through the tournament. After a long, and often tortuous domestic season for England’s players, during which many will have been close to breaking point, the brain needs time and space to recover from 90-plus minutes of intense exercise and key decisionmaking under pressure.
Times have changed and, while it is likely that Gary Lineker in 1986 probably had a book and a load of coins for the pay phone, modern-day players have no shortage of activities that can lead to a sensory overload. The worst thing for mental recovery is to over-task it by playing computer games or being active on social media.
These type of activities will only drain the brain further and impede a quick recovery, and England should seek to limit the players’ time for these activities up to 48 hours after a game.
To ensure the emotional well-being of the players, they will need to build in some time away from each other, ideally with family or friends.
Cabin fever can pervade in these types of camps, and it can be expressed by extreme irritability and restlessness. Sometimes, something as simple as wearing their own clothes for an afternoon gives players their personal identity back, allowing them to be a normal human being and not having to manage the stress of projecting their “brand” image.
Winning a World Cup often depends on key moments in key games. As England will remember in South Africa, they were forced to play a third-choice centre-back due to suspension (Jamie Carragher) and injury (Rio Ferdinand).