Onana gets expert advice amid Man Utd worries after talks with legend Schmeichel
Andre Onana was heralded as a transformative player upon his arrival at Old Trafford, but the Cameroon international has endured a rocky start at Manchester United.
He has only made 11 appearances for his new club, yet major mistakes mean a spotlight is already firmly upon the United goalkeeper. Onana has gone into the international break ruminating on his sloppy mistake which allowed Mathias Jensen’s tame shot over the line against Brentford. He was fortunate that Scott McTominay came off the bench to score twice in injury-time, otherwise the scrutiny would have been even more severe.
But there is no doubt that the pressure is building on Onana, who has made four clear errors since donning the No.24 shirt at United. He was at fault in United’s 3-2 defeat by Galatasaray with a dreadful hospital pass to Casemiro which led to the midfielder’s red card and penalty. He allowed Leroy Sane’s shot past him in the 4-3 loss to Bayern Munich. And he was fortunate to get away with clattering Sasa Kalajdzic on debut against Wolves.
Onana is 27 years old, has 180 senior appearances under his belt as a professional and arrived at United on the back of an outstanding season with Inter Milan, which saw him reach the Champions League final. So why is he struggling for form and confidence at United?
Performance anxiety
Dr Josie Perry is a chartered sport psychologist and the author of Performing Under Pressure. She believes that the change in environment should not be underestimated, even for an elite-level athlete who cost United £47.2million this summer. Onana has only been a United player for 82 days and is still adapting to his new surroundings.
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“It makes a massive difference,” Dr Perry tells Mirror Football . “The culture of each club is different. The style of play they expect, the management style – all the little nuances: what time you train, when you eat, the S&C, how you’re expected to do things.”
Andre Onana has made some high-profile mistakes (James Gill/Getty Images)Dr Perry says perfectionists and intelligent people particularly struggle with performance anxiety. Athletes go through rigorous training to hone their skills and prepare for matches, but the mental side of things can go under the radar.
“Often you will never be able to fully prepare for it,” Dr Perry explains. “Often it’s about being able to take what happens and be willing to learn. That’s difficult when you also really need to impress. If what you’ve got in your head is ‘I must impress, I must win, I must do X, Y and Z’ while you’re also trying to learn and get to grips with things and how things work, that’s very tricky.”
Tasks not outcomes
Onana previously played for Ajax and Inter Milan – two of the biggest clubs in Europe – but United is a different beast. The club claims to have 1.1billion fans worldwide and has a unique feel to it where nothing slips through the net. That is not a good combination for some players.
Dr Perry says: “If your identity is ‘I’m a Premier League footballer’ and you’ve got everyone telling you: ‘This is a must-win game’ or you know the manager is watching you to see how you do and others are saying ‘he’s had time to settle in now, he should be playing brilliantly now’, that’s a huge amount of psychological threat. And when your brain is under threat it triggers certain chemicals which flood your body and they make you feel awful.”
Andre Onana has kept two clean sheets in eight Premier League games so far (James Gill/Getty Images)HAVE YOUR SAY! Will Andre Onana turn things around at Manchester United? Comment below.
Those chemicals can cause a feeling of sickness, increase the heart rate, affect breathing, tighten neck and shoulder muscles and even cause a loss of peripheral vision, with the brain going into threat mode. On top of all of that, goalkeepers perhaps have it tougher than outfield players. Dr Perry says that while outfield players make 12-20 decisions per minute and can therefore assess their performances more holistically, goalkeepers have a “very different psychological perspective”.
“A goalkeeper is in a different position – they may have only come into contact with the ball a few times,” she says. “It’s much more black and white, whether they are seen as having a good or bad match or not. It’s much more binary – did they let a ball in, or did they save it?
“When working with a goalkeeper, you would be very focused on helping them put any mistakes to one side – ‘I will deal with this afterwards. Right now, what I want to focus on is…’ You give them very clear instructions and tasks for what they need to be doing. It’s not about rectifying mistakes, because we want them to be living in the moment – we don’t want them to be thinking about what they’ve done in the past, or what they’re going to do in the future. We want them to think ‘In this moment, the actions I need to take are…’”
Schmeichel’s advice
Onana has spoken to one of United’s greatest ever goalkeepers about his issues. Peter Schmeichel has tried to help the club’s current keeper, telling Premier League Productions: “I think a lot of that [Onana's mistakes] is pressure. I spoke to him after Bayern. I spoke to him after Galatasaray as well and he was very down on the mistakes he made. I’m trying to speak to him about what it’s like being at Manchester United and why whatever [mistakes] you’ve made, you have to put it in a box and put it to the side.”
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While he is trying to help Onana, his advice might not be a good fit for him. “It really isn’t as simple as that,” Dr Perry explains. “The approach many sports psychologists use is called ACT – Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It’s about accepting that we’re going to mess up because it’s high-level sport. You can’t play safely, you have to take risks and put yourself out there. That’s scary to our brains, but the more we accept we’re going to make mistakes, the easier it is to focus on what you need to do.
“It’s not like you put it in a box, put the lid on and forget about it. Our brains don’t work that way. They want to be safe. They don’t want us to make that mistake again, so they’re going to remind us about it all the time. A much more holistic approach is to accept ‘I’m going to make mistakes because it’s a difficult thing I’m doing. But what I really want to focus on is accepting but focusing on this instead’. Forgetting about it and moving on doesn’t work.”
Peter Schmeichel has spoken to Andre Onana to try and help him adapt (Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)There are clear signs that Onana is following his approach. He has already fronted up and owned his mistakes in post-match interviews. “It’s a difficult situation for us, for me, especially because I’m the one who let the team down,” he told TNT Sports after the defeat by Bayern Munich. “This is the life of a goalkeeper.”
Erik ten Hag brought in performance psychologist Rainier Koers in December to work with his players and has also been unwavering in his support of Onana. He wants him to play out from the back and is accepting of the risks that come along with the rewards he is seeking. Dr Perry says that others showing confidence in you is a useful source of confidence in the short-term. But what United and Onana really need to foster are the more robust forms of confidence generated by brilliant well-rounded preparation and precedent, i.e. evidence you have risen above the pressure to perform in the past.
It is still early days for Onana at United. With the right support and the right mental approach, he can still reach the levels expected of him.
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