Totti returning to play: “anhedonia” and that very difficult transition for every phenomenon
In psychology the end of a sporting career, especially an elite one, is defined as mourning: «… understood as a change in one’s existential condition which requires a rearrangement in everyday life and the meaning that the person attributes to his existence. This feeling of loss can refer to the end of an experience to which one has been linked for many years (e.g. the conclusion of a working, sporting or professional career) and to the collapse of the image one had of oneself (e.g. “me” as a sports champion)», we read on the sports psychologists’ website. Incapable, many, fortunately not all, of not knowing how to manage that transition, a bit like a pension for mere mortals. Transitioning from continuous adrenaline rushes to anhedonia, or the total or partial inability to experience satisfaction, contentment and pleasure for the usual pleasant activities, such as food, sex and interpersonal relationships.
Totti’s return as a player
Why are we talking about this? Because it is news these days that Francesco Totti, during the presentation of a sports project, declared: «There have been teams that have called me and given me strange ideas. After all, it has already happened that players were called up after retiring. (…) I would have to train, but in two-three months I would be ready. I could play a good half hour or act as a locker room man and bring the Chinese players”, like “I would do anything to get back on the pitch”. A concept that makes one feel a little sad when faced with the class of Totti, world champion with Italy in 2006.
In the documentary My name is Francesco Tottiwho recounted the farewell to football of the eighth king of Rome, there is a fundamental passage: the face of the footballer before returning to the pitch to greet the fans of a lifetime. Upon closer inspection, there were all the signs of his current declarations: the fear, if not the terror, of being left alone with his own thoughts, the infinite melancholy of having to abandon the only thing he knew how to do best, the pain of “mourning”, sportingly speaking. All states of mind printed on the face of the Italian champion, because despite the indissoluble bond with the Giallorossi colors Totti is a tricolor heritage, fortunately for him and ours. Closing a high-level sporting career is never easy, especially for those, many (too many?) who have not thought of a plan B, what comes after; today fortunately less and less. And in this sense, footballers seem to be the ones most exposed to the ‘collapse’, because they are more talked about and idolized in the media than other athletes, who almost always know what to do. Alessandro Del Piero himself, to speak of the ‘Tottian’ alter ego par excellence, after having attempted to be a ‘missionary’ of football in Australia, accepted the job of an Indian team, playing 10 matches and scoring a goal, which due to the career he had had he could have calmly avoided, and instead…
Mental health
Then there is another problem, much more serious, too unspoken, hidden, not told, because we know sport must be a fairy tale and when it becomes reality the public follows it less: the mental health of athletes. A problem which, together with depression, thanks to professionals in the sector, sports psychologists on the front line, is fortunately being talked about more and more often. A swimming champion like Michael Phelps suffered from it, Gianluigi Buffon and many others talked about it. Fundamental coming outs are only to put these topics on the plate of the sports story, but also out of solidarity with those who suffer from them in the shadow of life’s spotlight, throwing suggestions rather than real help, which comes only and always with the therapy done by real professionals; because you can’t joke about certain things. And anyone who thinks it’s ridiculous that an athlete can suffer from it forgets the story of Robert Enke, German goalkeeper for Hannover ’96, former Borussia M’Gladbach, Benfica and Barcelona, among others: he committed suicide by throwing himself under a train on 10 November 2009. Enke, specifically, had been suffering from depression for about six years, a situation that worsened in 2006 after his two-year-old daughter Lara died due to a rare heart disease. Once upon a time, athletes, footballers, were abandoned to themselves and there were those who resisted and, perhaps, created a second professional life, in sport or elsewhere, and those who succumbed: how many died alone and in poverty…
Nostalgia
Today clubs have psychologists, there are federal and private training and support courses for life after sports, in short we have not remained in the stone age. However, not everyone has the same abilities and the same way of reacting. Returning to Francesco Totti, the moment I saw him, in the documentary, sitting on the steps leading to the Olimpico lawn, all his despair reached me and I wanted to hug him, reminding him what he represents for all the Azzurri fans , and that, somehow, he would make it; let’s just say that personal events didn’t help him. Michel Platini left at the age of 32, Francesco Totti at 40, attending two football worlds light years apart, but the Frenchman never went back, never had public regrets and then did something else, always remaining in the world of the ball, with rare abilities. Surely there will be the usual jokers who will say “whatever it is”, “with all the money he has earned” – and even on the management of assets there is and there would be a whole literature to dissect – but who likes their job , would those who feel eligible to do it despite their age and are forced to leave understand? Would we understand and, above all, will we understand how much it will affect us? It’s difficult to answer, however, these continuous returns, this nostalgia for times gone by, seem more like a “never ending” for those who remain imprisoned in their character and are no longer able to get out of it. I remember a nationally renowned sports journalist who used to say that one day he would even write on the walls, that is, he would do anything to continue writing, as if it weren’t a job, with its mechanisms, good and bad. Here, in a country that has a ferocious need for generational change, knowing when to leave, without regrets, would be a quality, perhaps without throwing the baby out with the bathwater: “What do you need, Fra’?”.