Even the minds of the footballers “can get injured” by too many games

The president of the Italian Football Medicine Association, Enrico Castellacci, confirms what Pep Gurdiola said about the health of footballers: “”We talk about the welfare of players, but ours is the only league that does not accept the five substitutions. We only have three. How come? It would be much better for everyone, given the number of games we play. But the Premier League and some clubs have decided not to do it”. And Castellacci reiterates that “in this way, the players’ physique does not hold up and injuries increase. Either the mentality changes or the roses increase, but we know that coaches always make the strongest players play”.

To these correct observations I would like to add that playing too many games does not only cause physical wear and tear, but also mental wear and tear. It is obvious but it is remembered much less, perhaps because the body’s warnings are more immediately evident (injury and consequent inability to play) while the mental ones are less so, except when they manifest themselves in the form of psychopathology.

Samuele Marcora and colleagues in an article of 2009 reminded us that even the sports sciences have not dealt with this issue until recent years.

“Mental fatigue is a psychobiological state caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity and characterized by subjective feelings of “tiredness” and “lack of energy”. The effects of mental fatigue on cognitive performance and the skilled performance of drivers and air pilots have been extensively investigated. An increasing number of studies are also revealing the neural alterations caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity in both health and disease. On the contrary, the impact of mental fatigue on subsequent physical performance remains largely unknown. To the best of our knowledge, the only published observations date back to 1891 when Angelo Mosso reported in his seminal book on fatigue that muscle endurance was reduced in two fellow professors of physiology after long lectures and oral examinations.