Lienen: Football professionals “are being sucked dry”

Hamburg (SID) Long-time Bundesliga soccer player and coach Ewald Lienen blames the busyness of appointments for the footballers' mental stress. Players "now sometimes have to play over 60 competitive games per season, they are being sucked dry. This exploitation of the players' mental strength is irresponsible," said the technical director of the second division club FC St. Pauli to the news magazine Der Spiegel. After world champion Per Mertesacker revealed to Spiegel a few months before his announced retirement how he had suffered from the high pressure of professional football, Lienen also criticized the professionals' overloaded game plans. "We managed to expand the product in order to squeeze out as much money as possible. And that is done on the backs of the players," said the 64-year-old. In football, too little effort is made "to find out in a completely nonjudgmental manner what makes the players tick. As a result, a lot of things get lost in day-to-day business, and we have only now learned that the players "do a lot to hide their true feelings." Describing his personal situation publicly was a “very courageous decision” by Per Mertesacker, whose first professional trainer was Lienen. This has lowered the inhibition threshold to talk about the topic. But one shouldn't generalize that everyone suffers from the pressure in the same way. “Some people need it to achieve top performance, others get scared because of it,” said Lienen. That's what makes it so difficult for trainers as managers.

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Lienen: Football professionals “are being sucked dry”

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