The Crazy, Intense Insanity of the 'Football Team' Pressure Cooker

And how a summer break is good for everyone

Plenty of relationships – marriages, even – aren't as intense as the 10-month slog of a football season, shared between manager, team-mates and coaches.

They play or train together virtually seven days a week; often also shacking up in hotels after flights (often abroad) or coach journeys.

Everything takes place in public, with even training not guaranteed to be free from scrutiny.

There's the ever-greater media spotlight, and constant social media monitoring, should anyone step out of line, on or off the pitch.

Every touch of the ball in a game can be seen from multiple-angles; every time a player is on the pitch they are tracked 24 times per second. There's nowhere to hide, which weeds out the lazy, but also stresses the conscientious.

With ever-decreasing pre-season breaks, you have a big group of ultra-competitive men forced to spend time together for over 11 months, with maybe just three weeks off to decompress.

(I love the recent statistic I heard from the legendary anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, most famous for 'Dunbar's number'. He was talking about group sizes and how many people we can cope with in our lives, especially if living in closer quarters. He noted that once many close-quarters groups/clans/tribes gets to the size of 90, tensions get so high that there's almost a 100% chance that all deaths will be homicides. I bring this up simply to note how tensions will exist within football clubs, where, to my knowledge, most people stop short of murder.)

The longer the previous season, the more a sense of mental and physical exhaustion is likely to carry over, and both of those can lead to more injuries, which in turn means more injuries, which in turn means more injuries (and more fatigue for those few who are fit), and so on.

Liverpool played a record number of must-win games last season, as part of a run of 63 in total; then were back in the swing in almost no time, when clearly not ready. They started the season off the pace.

West Ham played 56 games last season, reaching the Europa League semis. They refreshed their squad this season with a big spend on a few players to take them to the next level, but have suffered badly. As I've noted, Declan Rice said he was still fatigued when this season started, almost playing in a daze.

Last season, Leicester reached the UEFA Europa Conference League semis, playing 58 games in all competitions. After several good seasons they collapsed out of nowhere like a pack of cards this season. West Ham and Leicester also started the season badly, as did Liverpool.

Both those other clubs were pushing to improve on 7th and 8th-placed finishes, to make the next step; but collapsed.

The trajectory was all upward, with European semis allied to good league finishes, but the fallout is rarely envisaged.

Often, overachievement is followed by a swift decline, as you've given too much, and rather than just revert to the norm, you can fall further and faster, as panic sets in and the pressure ramps up. (Liverpool after 2008/09 and 2013/14, for instance.)

Both West Ham and Leicester (recent FA Cup winners) have gone from Champions League hopefuls this season to potential Championship relegation.

You have to try and push yourselves, to win all you can; but there's a price to pay. It's not hubris to fly too close to the sun, but your wings may melt all the same.

Positivity cannot keep rising. There must be a fall. You ride the positivity wave, and then the negative cycle of the fall can be extra-viscous.

Social media ramps up all tensions, and brings barrages of hate and negativity to players, which cannot help their confidence.

There is what I'd call Goldfish Bowl Pressure, where there's constant surveillance, and it's also just a pressure-cooker environment in general, to be surrounded by so many people you cannot escape from (in contrast to a solo sportsperson). If things start going wrong, the walls close in.

There's little scope to just take a short break from one another.

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