Educação Física e Esporte

Cevnautas, recebi a boa notícia pela lista de discussão pioneira sportpsy http://bit.ly/sportpsy-L A valorização dos profissionais de ciências do esporte pode entrar na lista, ainda pobre, do legado dos megaeventos no Brasil. Laércio

de: MICHAEL L. SACHS
08:27 (41 minutos atrás)
para SPORTPSY
Greetings all.  Brazil's World Cup team uses a psychologist  :-):

Carpe diem, Michael

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With Pressure On, Brazil’s Coach Seeks Psychological Edge
Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

Brazil’s coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, has relied on Regina Brandão, a professor, to “understand how each player feels and how that affects the way they play,” she said.
By SAM BORDEN
Published: December 2, 2013 1 Comment

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — While all 32 teams that have qualified for the World Cup anxiously await this week’s draw to determine the groups for next year’s tournament, nowhere is the pressure as great as in Brazil.
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"Felipão, he helps us handle the feeling that people will die if we don't win." FRED, the Brazilian forward, about his coach.
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Careers for Brazil’s players, coaches and team officials hinge on whether the team lifts the trophy. Concerns about the astronomical costs of hosting the World Cup may be, at least temporarily, assuaged by victory. Even the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has a stake — political analysts believe that if Brazil wins, Rousseff may coast to re-election.

It is a load to bear, and at the center of it all is Brazil’s coach, Luis Felipe Scolari, an affable barrel of a man known as Big Phil. So far, he has embraced the pressure with his two sizable hands.

“We are the hosts,” he said, “so that means that the minimum we have to do — the minimum — is win.”

To help navigate his high-wire performance, he has enlisted the help of a surprising weapon: a psychotherapist. Regina Brandão, a professor at Universidade São Judas Tadeu in São Paulo, has been a member of Scolari’s team since the late 1990s. She may not be an expert in soccer strategy, but she has evaluated each Brazilian player to help Scolari sort 40 or 50 of the world’s most talented players into what he and Brazil hope will be an unbeatable 23-man team.

“My job is to draw up a psychological profile of each of the players,” Brandão said in a rare interview. “It is to help Scolari with the individual and the collective. It is to understand how each player feels and how that affects the way they play.”

Jurgen Klinsmann had his players work with a sports psychologist before Germany hosted the 2006 World Cup. And although it might seem counterintuitive to some coaches who seek to project their own attitude and expect — or at least hope — that the players will react to it, Scolari consciously strives to be a chameleon. Brandão is the one who helps him decide which color to be for each particular team and each individual player.

To do this, Brandão has Scolari’s players complete a series of questionnaires. A copy of one was shared with The New York Times, and its breadth is considerable. The players are asked to use a sliding scale to rank how affected they think they are by certain events. They rank their reactions on a numerical scale that uses a series of smiley faces to gauge positive reactions, or frowns to do the opposite.

Some of it seems basic — asking, for example, to rate how it feels to “score a goal against your own team.” The key, according to Brandão, is in the degree of each player’s reaction, but also in the comparisons that can be made with other players. As part of her work with Scolari, Brandão compiled data from players on the national teams of Saudi Arabia and Portugal — two of the more than 20 teams Scolari has managed in more than three decades as a coach. Comparing the player data, Brandão said, allows Scolari to draw on his experiences as he formulates a plan with his current roster.

Sometimes, the numbers are especially illuminating. For example, Brandão’s analysis indicated that Brazilian players and Portuguese players, who share a common language and are often linked culturally, handle most situations in opposite ways. Portuguese players generally were more neutral with their emotions, Brandão said, finding positive motivation in events that Brazilians typically said were clearly negative, such as being given a yellow card.

Brazilians, on the other hand, were more extreme with their emotions and more prone to distraction related to external issues. For instance, Brandão’s analysis found that Scolari needed to be more sensitive to players nearing the end of the contracts with their club teams; they might be concerned about their professional future.

Brandão’s data also provides guidance on more concrete matters. While some coaches — including Klinsmann, now the United States national team manager — like to keep their starting lineups secret until close to game time to keep their players motivated, Brandão advised Scolari to be open about which players would be starting. Her studies found that Brazilian players were more at ease if they knew their status earlier.

FONTE com fotos e links: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/sports/soccer/with-pressure-on-brazils-coach-seeks-psychological-edge.html?pagewanted=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131203&_r=0

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