It's all about your head

It's probably no secret that in soccer you don't just have to train your muscles to be successful. For victories, promotions, cups and championships you need strong nerves.

The more important the game and the more decisive the character of the situation, the stronger you also have to be in your head. Two examples:

• It's probably hard to imagine how brutal Harry Kane's second penalty was in the quarterfinal against France. He had already brutely welded the first one into the left corner. And now - ten minutes before the end of the game - he's on the receiving end of the second penalty. The goalkeeper has also been his teammate for several years. Both know each other by heart - they see each other every day in training. He misses.

• The Croatian national team sensationally manages to equalize against the tournament favorites Brazil shortly before the end. When Zlatko Dalić, the Croatian coach, asked who was going to take the penalty, almost the entire team came forward. All of them score.

In today's blog post, we'll show you tips and tricks that you too can use in your game in the future to keep a cool head in tricky situations.

In a sport dominated by pressure to perform and succeed, mentally strong players have a clear advantage. And with suitable training methods, known as sports mental training, players can get even more out of themselves and their game.

This is not only true for professional athletes. Even amateurs struggle with problems that can be solved through mental training: a bad day, nervousness, lack of motivation, self-doubt, anxiety and other problems that distract or block us.

Sport mental training is not a laying on of hands: it means hard, intensive and continuous work.

With all this knowledge about the potential of psychological effects, the following is all the more astonishing:

Only five Bundesliga clubs have permanently employed a psychologist for their professional teams. Namely RB Leipzig, 1899 Hoffenheim, Bayer Leverkusen, Fortuna Düsseldorf and Mainz 05.

Elsewhere, however, psychologists are usually only used as a lifeline - on a freelance basis, of course. When things don't go as planned and a few games are lost, a psychologist is suddenly called in.

To clear the "heads of the players" with a magic hand - just like that, in passing. In soccer, however, you're dealing with people who all have their strengths and weaknesses. Especially when they learn to deal with their own fears and deficits, they can perform very well.

Sports psychology should therefore be just as much an integral part of training as physiotherapy, athletics, technique or tactics training.