Alphonso Davies: The Serious Warn About the Mental Health of Professional Players

The players who reach the elite manage to do so thanks to hard work, which requires enormous talent and strong sacrifices over the years. For this reason, there are few soccer players who reach the highest level, but fewer who manage to stay. What happens to those players who reach professionalism, but do not achieve their highest performance?

Alphonso Davies, a figure from Bayern Munich in Germany, would have revealed what would be a major issue in player's lifestyle. In the same way, it gave an alert to clubs and entities to begin to make this particularity visible and start working on it.

Problems in their life

Alphonso Davies decided to come clean in a broadcast on his Twitch account in front of tens of thousands of his followers. There, the 22-year-old Canadian star decided to address a personal problem that unmasked a strong problem in the world of soccer. “The life of a professional player is great, without a doubt. To relax and enjoy life. But after training and games there's nothing else to do, and we're bored," Davies confessed.

These words revealed how a professional soccer player has excessive downtime in his daily life. This, taking into account that a training session lasts between two and four hours, depending on the coach and each player. However, Davies revealed another factor that would definitely lead to players wasting their free time. “For me, since I don't have a family and my girlfriend doesn't live with me, I'm alone all the time. I don't even have friends, maybe five at the most. In fact, I am a popular loser”, explained the Canadian. Loneliness would be decisive in the mind of each player and in his actions during such moments.

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Finally, Davies expressed his unease about the lack of productive activities in his spare time and his loneliness. "It's a bit worrying not having anything to do, especially when all your friends have jobs," said the Bayern Munich player. In this sense, the lack of support from the clubs that own the players and from professional soccer entities or associations is clear. Likewise, it is evident how vulnerable the young promises of world soccer can be.

Soccer players possibly affected by institutional abandonment

Loneliness and frustration revealed by Alphonso Davies are dangerous elements in the lives of professional players. Consequently, players would be exposed to mental health disorders or recurring harmful activities in their lifestyle. For example, the International Federation of Professional Soccer Players (FIFPro) revealed in a study carried out in 2015 that 38% of active soccer players have suffered symptoms of depression with an evident lack of support from the industry.

On the other hand, the number of players whose talents could have taken them to the pinnacle of soccer, but their messy lifestyles prevented them, is enormous. For example, great players like Ronaldinho, Cassano, Wesley Sneijder, Paul Gascoigne, Mario Balotelli and Adriano, among many others, were unable to fully display their talents due to their wild nightlife. Finally, this behavior caused each of them to have alcohol problems and miss out on opportunities at clubs such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, Inter and Milan, among others.

The common denominator in all the aforementioned cases is the concern revealed by Alphonso Davies: excessive free time without professional advice or family support. Likewise, the absence of clubs, institutions such as FIFA and soccer associations stands out, who must develop support programs in the future to avoid mental health issues or training projects to prevent harmful behavior in their players.