An English Football Association trained football Psychologist, Kehinde Adeyemi, has urged the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to attach a psychologist to all our national teams while attributing the poor performance of the Nigerian clubs at this year’s CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup to psychological deficiency.
The don who is also the Director of Sports at the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) Ago-Iwoye, in his reaction to the exit of the duo of Nigerian clubs: Kano Pillars and Plateau United in the CAF Champions League and Confederation Cup respectively last weekend, claimed that the reason behind the inability of the teams to live up to expectations was due to anxiety and lack of psychological inventories among others.
Adeyemi, who worked with Gateway football club of Ogun-State for more than a decade as a psychologist remarked that the Nigerian teams were not mentally prepared for such big games at continental level. Speaking further, Adeyemi said the NFF should appoint qualified football Psychologists for all the categories of our National teams. These Psychologists could then be seconded to clubs representing Nigeria at the CAF competitions at different times for mental training.
According to him, “there are two types of preparation; physical and mental, while coaches or trainers handle the physical training, the Psychologists prepare the players mentally for optimum performance”.
“Physical and mental training complement each other for optimal performance. A team that is physically fit and mentally unfit will not perform at its best level, neither will a team that is mentally fit but physically unfit perform at optimal level”, the English FA trained Psychologist noted.
