There is a lot of pressure on top athletes to perform. Some people cope well, others suffer, some become mentally ill. There were exciting insights at the TSG Hoffenheim business congress.
“Yes, the Per”. Oliver Bierhoff has to smile when he talks about Per Mertesacker, the 2014 soccer world champion. “It happened with Per that he sat in the dressing room and stared stubbornly at his shoe for four minutes.” Mertesacker was someone who was always in the tunnel before games. Even more. The giant national team defender was under immense pressure throughout his time as a professional footballer. Fear of failure tormented him. His body responded to stress and tension with nausea, insomnia and symptoms of complete exhaustion.
Soccer world champion Per Mertesacker suffered from strong pressure to perform during his career
IMAGO
Sven Simon
Almost everyone who has to perform in public knows the fear of failing or embarrassing themselves. This concern does not stop at highly paid professional footballers. Per Mertesacker is not an isolated case. Timo Baumgartl, Robin Gosens, Nils Petersen, Martin Hinteregger, Ottmar Hitzfeld and Michael Sternkopf also know about mental dry spells. This was clearly discussed at the first business congress of TSG Hoffenheim with the topic “Performance under pressure”.
Bierhoff: “You can’t look into people’s heads”
Oliver Bierhoff, manager and managing director of the German national team from 2004 to 2022 and a talk guest in Sinsheim, only found out about his suffering in 2018 through an interview with Mertesacker. He was scared. “Per was captain at Arsenal FC. I never expected him to take it all so seriously.” He had a close relationship with many players, but you couldn’t get into their heads. There are more robust natures and more sensitive minds. Every player deals with pressure in their own way.
Oliver Bierhoff at the TSG Congress (in talk with moderator Michael Steinbrecher)
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After the final whistle of the 2014 World Cup final in Brazil (1-0 win against Argentina), Mesut Özil came to him and said: “Now you can no longer say that we can’t win anything.” Then he noticed the pressure that had been lifted from the players. Bierhoff emphasizes that he hasn’t experienced any player who told him: “Oliver, I can’t do it.” The 1996 European champion adds thoughtfully: “I think a lot of people hide how they’re feeling.”
The expectations in competitive sports are enormous
Bierhoff himself never found the pressure to perform particularly stressful. He says becoming a professional footballer is a free choice.
Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they can stick with it. It’s high performance sport. If someone finds that they can’t take it, maybe they should take a different route.
The pressure in the competitive sports system is enormous. Top athletes push themselves to the limit of their physical performance every day; they battle injuries, lead a public life, eat healthily, maintain their weight and get enough sleep. You grew up in a performance-oriented environment and have a special position in your family and circle of friends. The expectations are enormous – from inside and outside.
Competitive athletes also suffer from mental illnesses
A large-scale survey of 1,003 Swiss athletes in 2022 showed that competitive athletes suffer from mental health problems just as often as the general population. 22 percent of respondents reported experiencing symptoms of eating disorders. 18 percent had sleep problems. Symptoms indicating depression were experienced by 17 percent, and 10 percent suffered from anxiety symptoms. A recently published study on the mental health of TSG Hoffenheim footballers came to more refined results: the levels of depressive symptoms rose continuously over the course of a season, while anxiety symptoms reached a peak in winter.
Oliver Roggisch, handball world champion in 2007 and sporting director of handball Bundesliga club Rhein-Neckar Löwen, talks in an interview with SWR about former national team colleagues who suffered from the great pressure: “They didn’t feel comfortable, they needed support. Back then they had “We don’t have the psychological knowledge we have today. Maybe we talked about it with the coach or at home. Ultimately, we decided on it ourselves.”
That’s exactly what shouldn’t happen today. That’s why the Rhein-Neckar Löwen hired a sports psychologist three years ago. Katharina Söhnlein, who also works with the TSG Hoffenheim footballers, looks after the handball players.
She has a great standing with us. Having a woman in men’s sports sometimes helps. I think players open up more easily to a woman.
Sports psychology has been given high priority at TSG Hoffenheim for many years. In 2006, the then head coach Ralf Rangnick brought the sports psychologist Hans-Dieter Hermann on board, and since 2021, an expert, qualified psychologist Jan Mayer, has been part of the management. There are currently three sports psychologists working at the Hoffenheim Youth Performance Center (NLZ).
Among the professionals, Mayer notices that more and more players are building their own support system around themselves. In addition to the consultant, the physiotherapist and the athletic trainer, this often includes a psychologist. Mayer tells SWR that this will remain an important contact for the athlete even if he changes clubs. Today’s generation of players is much more open to the topic of mental health.
It used to be a weakness if you went to a psychologist. Today it is unprofessional if you do not serve this area.
After all, there could still be a few percent of performance potential in this area. The psychologist hopes that more and more athletes will learn to deal with mental problems on their own initiative. “As a professional, I should have a few strategies ready so that I can deal with small crises. There are techniques that you can learn.”
If mental illnesses still occur, professional support is required. The problem: The waiting lists for psychologists or specialist clinics are often extremely long. “Here we want to build networks where this waiting time can be significantly shortened,” says Mayer.
Florian Mennigen knows all the ups and downs in the life of a competitive athlete. As a member of the German eight, the rower failed miserably at the 2008 Olympic Games. The German flagship boat came last in the B race. The great triumph followed four years later with Olympic gold in London. Mennigen studied psychology alongside his sports career. Today the 42-year-old runs a psychotherapeutic practice in Mosbach (Neckar-Odenwald district).
Many athletes come to him for help. The common ground as competitive athletes helps. “This quickly creates trust. This trust is extremely important so that the therapy can be effective and people are open to change.” Athletes come to him with anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic syndromes or eating disorders.
Even if Mennigen perceives greater openness towards the topic of mental health, he still sees plenty of room for improvement. There is still a way to go when it comes to acceptance in society, he says.
Around one in three people in Germany will suffer from a mental illness in the course of their life. That’s a lot of people.
The former top rower says that being open to mental health is essential in order to function better as a society.
