Finding balance: How professional players can protect their mental health
Friday, October 10, 2025
Article summary
Finding ways to switch off and manage their mental health is more important than ever for professional footballers.
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"Cut off from everyone. Delete all apps. Be around nature." This is the advice of Simon Clifford, a leading football performance coach, who is guiding professional players on how to better recover and reconnect with breaks from the digital world during their demanding seasons.
"What I encourage them to do is have a break where they are with their loved ones and that’s it," Clifford explains. "They’ve got no communication with anyone or anything else. And they’re not thinking about football."
"Cut off from everyone. Delete all apps. Be around nature."
Danny Donachie, an experienced mental performance coach who runs the consultancy Stable and works with Premier League side Burnley, echoes Clifford’s view. "It’s difficult to find space for anything other than being a footballer. Everything they do is so prescribed and monitored and measured, and so they lose that spontaneity and freedom."
Donachie stresses that a footballer’s identity should not be entirely football-centred. "A lot of my work is trying to help players find that identity," he says. "You work on strategies to create an inner space where there’s freedom from the noise."
Drawing on his experience as a yoga practitioner, he recommends meditation, breathwork, and even simple recreational activities. He recalls one example: "With the player I was working with, I encouraged him to play tennis, which he loved to play but which he’d completely stopped doing. When he did that, he started to feel a lot freer in his game. That’s the thing with identity. When you define yourself as one thing, it feels even more important and psychologically it can be hard to bear this burden."
Recovery time must be factored in
Working with around 30 players and serving as a performance coach for Blue Sky Sports, Clifford has seen first-hand the pressure elite footballers face across the year. Even during the summer recess, players must follow strict fitness programmes, before returning to the relentless pace of the season.
As Clifford highlights, "the physical demands of football in 2025 – the kilometres covered, the high-intensity runs – mean training, in turn, is far more demanding than ever before. More recovery time must be factored in too."
But it’s not just the physical toll. "The microscope that footballers are under is not only from the public but within the club," he says. "You’ve got that many touch points every day, with sports-science staff and with technical staff. In the wider sense, it’s a very, very demanding existence. You’re being judged every day, you’re being evaluated every day.
"Also, there are constantly players coming in, and managers changing too. You’ve also got media commitments, you might have sponsors, and in the midst of that, you’re supposed to be able to maintain family relationships, relationships with friends, normal things like everybody else."
Tools for health and well-being
Introducing the ‘dopamine detox’ concept
Clifford builds on this approach by addressing the addictive nature of the sport’s highs. "You’ve got to pull them back from it all and, as much as possible, help them see that the world that they’re in is not actual reality. Reality for them is going to come afterwards. It’s their reality at the minute."
He introduces his players to the concept of a ‘dopamine detox’ and encourages them to practice non-attachment. "Attachment can bring misery because we’re fearful of losing something. What if we lose this? What if we lose the contract? What if we lose the match?"
On a daily level, Clifford urges his players to start their mornings with a ‘golden hour’." He explains: "It might be prayer, it might be meditating, it might be visualising, it might be stretching, it might be prehab activities." He also notes that young players are increasingly open to exploring their spiritual or inner selves, with journaling and film-watching often suggested as ways to gain perspective. "I talk to them a lot about movies. I’ll ask, ‘Have you seen this?’ I’m always suggesting films for people and the life lessons that come through films."
These lessons align with UEFA’s Take Care campaign, which emphasises holistic recovery, sustainable routines, and a focus on finding a healthy balance. Whether through meditation, time spent with loved ones, or even rediscovering the joy of playing another sport, Clifford and Donachie’s work shows how players can maintain perspective and nurture wellbeing in high-pressure environments.
Read more in Champions Journal
The information and quotes in this article are taken from a feature in the latest issue of the Champions Journal. You can purchase Issue 24 and all previous releases of the Champions Journal publication here.