On November 19, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, the national teams of Germany and the Netherlands met. The final score is 2-2. However, the purpose of this publication is not a technical or regular review of the match. At the end of the match, the leader of the Dutch National Team, Virgil Van Dijk, consoled the first referee of the match, Ovidiu Hategan, who had lost his mother a few hours earlier. Beyond the cynical pursuit of material rewards in sport, such as money, but also rewards at the competitive level, such as big wins, qualifiers, and titles, there are profound human needs and manifestations.
The science of Sports Psychology provides many tools with which we can explain and process the behaviors and situations that are formed in the field of sports. In this case, we can roughly relate Van Dijk’s behavior to the Self-Determination Theory and identify internal motives in his move to embrace the Romanian referee. However, apart from the correlation with specific theories and techniques in the field of sports psychology, in every sporting event, a deeper and more thorough psychograph of the respective protagonists is appropriate and necessary in order to explain more broadly the respective human behaviors.
In our case, we can talk about the attempt of the Dutch defender and leader of his country’s national team to behave as a protective father. Without having enough information, we can assume that he had this predisposition to take on leadership roles even before he decided to take up sports, based on the way he was raised and what he experienced in his close family environment. Someone else may try to give a different explanation for Van Dijk’s behavior but also for the emotional needs and the process of mourning in the referee’s psyche after the loss of his mother and how this can affect his performance.
In any case, to be more precise in our formulations, we need more information about the life experiences and behaviors of these two people. In order to obtain this information and to be more valid in our findings and effective in our support methods, we need to have close contact and cooperation with the people of sport: athletes, coaches, executives, parents, and a close environment of athletes and fans. In any case, the psychological analysis and support of the people involved in sports are, on the one hand, interesting, on the other hand, necessary for the smoother operation of the entire sports context. The provision of psychological support services in sports has a reason to exist and there is no reason to undermine and blame it. All this under one condition: whoever practices it must be a conscientious, confidential, and scientifically trained professional.
Vasilis Xernos
Psychologist-Sports Psychologist-Psychotherapist