It happened to me in 2000. I had an awful game against Vasco da Gama in the World Club Cup in Rio de Janiero, making mistakes that cost us the game. It preyed on my mind afterwards. The headlines the next day were: ‘Fiasco Da Gama.’ Stupidly, I read them and my confidence began to ebb away for months afterwards.
My passing wasn’t decisive, my tackling wasn’t as strong. Every time someone wrote about me, they would refer back to the Vasco da Gama game. All of a sudden I felt almost physically weaker. I had another nightmare against Real Madrid in the Champions League quarter-final three months later, when I wasn’t even showing for the ball on the pitch. I didn’t want it in case I made a mistake.
It was the first big setback I had faced in my career and I allowed the negativity to become all-consuming. At United’s training ground at Carrington, there is a picture on the wall of all the players jumping around and celebrating on the pitch at Southampton after winning the title in 2000. I’m there too, but to this day, when I see that picture, it reminds me of the emptiness I felt then. I didn’t feel as though I deserved it. I hadn’t contributed.
The feeling carried on through Euro 2000 under Kevin Keegan, where I had a poor tournament and then, a few months later, I had a relationship break-up which made my poor form even worse. I would be thinking about that during training or sat on the bench. I had allowed my mistake and my personal problems to grow into a nine-month career slump.
But, in time, I came out of that low period of my career. I learned from it and vowed never to let it happen again. I don’t mean the mistakes or the off-the-field problems, those disappointments are inevitable in any walk of life. I mean that I developed a mechanism so that whatever mistakes I made, I would bounce straight back. Whatever was happening off the pitch, I could put it to one side and maintain my form. Call it mental resilience or a strong mind, but that is what we mean when we talk about experience in a football team.
For sportsmen or women who want to be champions, the mind can be as important, if not more important, than any other part of the body. Nothing had changed physically about me in that period. There was no rational reason why a mistake should cause a collapse in form. It was the mind that did it. I was distracted.
Now think about the implication of that on a team. A collection of strong-minded individuals who have learned how to dismiss mistakes, disappointments and problems in their personal life make up a strong team. If the majority of the team have that then, as a unit, you are almost impossible to beat.
The two best teams I faced in my career were Juventus (1996-1999) and Arsenal (1997-2000). It isn’t so much the individual flair and skill that stands out, it’s the mental toughness. Think of the characters: Angelo Peruzzi, Ciro Ferrara, Paolo Montero, Antonio Conte, Zinedine Zidane, Didier Deschamps, Alessandro Del Piero; David Seaman, Nigel Winterburn, Martin Keown, Tony Adams, Emmanuel Petit, Patrick Vieira, Dennis Bergkamp.
You knew you would never break them mentally. If you have a core of characters like that, you win titles. You can carry one or two weaker individuals in a champion team, as I was carried in 2000, but not four or five.
And now we are at the stage of the season when we’re coming down to the sprint finish for the title and invariably the media will try to stoke up the issue of mind games. It is a phrase that annoys me. Mind games? This isn’t a game we’re talking about. People make it sound like hopscotch or an amusing sideline to the title race to entertain people. This isn’t a sideshow, this can be the main event. The mind can be the decisive factor in determining who wins the title. So stop using the phrase ‘mind games’, stop trivialising it.
We can all cite examples of teams losing their collective nerve, but let’s dwell on one because Rafa Benitez was saying this week that he didn’t think mind games were important in the title race.
I remember watching the press conference he was referring to, that infamous list of ‘facts’ he repeated, citing apparent favouritism shown towards Sir Alex Ferguson and United. We were in a head-to-head race with Liverpool for the title and, as I watched it, my first thought was: ‘That’s good for us. And that’s not good for you’. It wasn’t that we thought: ‘Rafa’s cracking up’. That would be crass. But he had created a hullabaloo and turned a minor issue into a major talking point. He had shown a chink in his armour. And if Benitez had allowed himself to become distracted, we knew some of his team would follow because the manager is the representative of the team, never more so than in press conferences.
Arsene Wenger once said the most important message he delivers to his team is not in his team-talks. It is in the two-minute sound bite he gives to television after the game. You’re not telling me Sir Alex doesn’t plan every headline he creates. He knows at this stage of the season, the pre- and post-match press conference are vital in terms of preparing the mind of his team and, yes, affecting the mind of the opponents.
After Benitez’s press conference, every headline, every media question, even the fans’ chanting would be dominated by the debate about whether he was feeling the pressure. And some of the players would start to believe he was and take their lead from that. Whether it was true or not doesn’t matter. I can guarantee you that if a footballer hears or reads something 100 times, a large percentage of them will start to believe it.
A coach once told me there are four factors that determine a players’ performance: his tactical awareness, his physical condition, his technical ability and his mental strength. Which is the only one that is variable at this stage of the season? Physically, the work has been done long ago to prepare you for this moment; technically, your ability is set in stone by now; and tactics, you can tweak a bit but you won’t make dramatic changes.
The one factor that is volatile is the mind of a player. And when does the mind start to play tricks on you? When you’re under pressure. And for footballers, that means in April and May.
It is true that injuries, refereeing decisions and sheer luck can play their part. But you can’t control those. What you can control, if you know how, is the mind. Every pundit, journalist, player or coach who is asked about Manchester United’s title chances will say something like: ‘They have the experience. They have the “know-how”. They’ve been there before’.
What they mean is they are relentless in hunting down titles and they have a manager and players with a collective mental strength to avoid distractions and overcome obstacles. Because there are signs that City are not as comfortable as they were a few weeks ago. Roberto Mancini missed the press conference after the draw at Stoke and he was critical of Mario Balotelli before and after the draw with Sunderland, which saw the striker arguing with his own team-mates. Are these the tell-tale signs that the pressure is beginning to affect them?
Mancini spoken about this issue a few months ago. He used an Italian phrase: ‘Avere il braccino,’ the arm becomes short, which is his way of saying the mind starts to play tricks on the body. ‘This is my worry for Manchester City,’ he said. Mancini knows all this. He has won three Serie A titles. And he also knows the title race isn’t over yet. But if his players are to win, they now have to demonstrate some extraordinary mental toughness.
