For Crystal Palace ’s international players, this was a successful summer, but it was also one they may look back on with a tinge of disappointment. Four players — Dean Henderson , Marc Guehi , Adam Wharton and Eberechi Eze — were runners-up at Euro 2024 with England . A further two — Daniel Munoz and Jefferson Lerma — were losing finalists at Copa America with Colombia.
Jean-Philippe Mateta experienced an extra-time defeat in the final of the 2024 Olympic men’s football final with France . Chris Richards , meanwhile, was in the USMNT side that failed to progress from the group stage of Copa America on home turf. Advertisement Their achievements in reaching the final of their respective tournaments should be acknowledged and appreciated.
Henderson and Wharton may not have had any direct involvement via minutes on the pitch, but they were in the England camp, around those who were playing and away from home for the tournament’s duration soon after the end of the domestic season. All of that is likely to have taken some toll on them physically and psychologically. It was not until the week before the season-opener against Brentford that manager Oliver Glasner had all of his squad available, meaning the majority of their season preparation was conducted without those key players.
Now they have returned, the impact of their relative lack of rest combined with the emotion of falling just short of tournament glory means it may take time for all of those Palace players to return to their highest level. That is something Glasner referenced when discussing his reasons for substituting Mateta, who scored eight goals at the Olympics , at half-time in the 2-1 defeat by Brentford. “It will take him a little bit to be completely back,” Glasner said.
“It’s a different rhythm that is played in the Premier League compared to the Olympics. “It’s not just the physical fitness, it’s also the mental fitness because he played a semi-final, a final, extra time and lost the final, and many things go on. “Maybe it looked like he wasn’t as fresh as he could be, but he will get all of our support.
I know he will take that to be on his best level again.” Glasner also revealed that England midfielder Eze was not supposed to play the entire match and none of those players who had been away with their national teams were likely to be at the top of their game, although he made the point that many clubs would face similar issues. There is a lot to consider when returning from a tournament as losing finalists.
Advertisement “A lot of it comes down to the environment you come into, in addition to whatever individual adaptations you can make,” Marc Sagal, a sports psychologist who has previously worked at Leicester , Liverpool , Manchester City and the England men’s football team tells The Athletic . “If you’re coming into a supportive, positive environment that is able to lift you and help you pull the pieces of the experience together, it can be confidence-building. For some of these players, the reality is it’s quite a success (to reach a final).
That might individually bring them confidence. “You have to be very careful about extrapolating the disappointment that they might experience. They have to find a way to take whatever positives they can and create a longer-term narrative for how that experience, disappointments and positives will contribute to their benefit.
“The players who do the best with this have the support of the club and have found their own way into a storyline for themselves. They take a different kind of approach than just that more micro perspective. “Perspective, narrative or framing are all proxies for how you have interpreted a particular event or a situation.
Clubs that are smart about this don’t leave the interpretation to chance, so there’s got to be a ruthless conversation with players about where they’re at. Recovery is such a massive part of psychology and it’s much harder to recover psychologically if you’re tired.” It is that support which has been important since Palace’s international tournament cohort returned.
Glasner’s optimistic, positive mentality will undoubtedly have helped. He has experienced success in a cup final as a player, twice winning the Austrian Cup in 1998 and 2011, but he lost the 2023 DFB-Pokal final against RB Leipzig while manager of Eintracht Frankfurt . Advertisement He framed his players’ experiences not as losing or as finishing runners-up, but as vice-winners.
“Everyone was very disappointed to lose the final, but after several days, they were very proud of what they achieved and how they performed for their country,” says Glasner. “This was the message, we told them to be proud. “It’s a very big success for everyone, getting vice-European Championship (winners), vice-Copa champion and vice-Olympic champion; 99.
5 per cent of all professional football players don’t reach this in their career, so you are very privileged to have this and they are still not at the end of their career, so have the opportunity to play more finals for their countries. “You can see the glass half-empty or half-full and I always see it half-full. I lost the cup final before I left Frankfurt as well.
(It was) the first final I lost and it’s very disappointing. It also makes sense that somebody says, ‘Come on, you reached the final’, because even if you want to, you can’t hear it. It takes a few days, maybe, for others a week before everything is settled — but then you realise it is a great achievement.
“Nobody is talking about that now, everyone is focused on Crystal Palace.” Transitioning back into domestic football can take time and it can produce both positive and negative responses. Following the 2018 World Cup, Croatia midfielder Luka Modric , whose side were losing finalists against France, told FIFPro — the global footballers’ union — that he “needed time to get back to my better level”.
“I had only three weeks of holidays,” he said. “The first week we spent celebrating in Zagreb and other cities. It was not easy to start again.
After all these emotional moments, you are drained completely.” While on international duty in November 2021, England striker Harry Kane spoke of the psychological impact of major tournaments, saying that “any chance you can just get back to what you know best is important”. “It is always hard whenever you finish a major tournament,” Kane said.
“The last two major tournaments, we’ve had a semi-final (in the 2018 World Cup) and a final (at Euro 2020) and it takes a lot out of you. Not just physically, mentally as well. Advertisement “Before you know it, you are back playing in the Premier League in a few weeks.
You never really have a chance to take it all in and learn from what happened, see what you did well, what you didn’t. “It almost becomes a bit of a whirlwind, so it is about just adapting to that, getting back into the swing of things as quickly as possible.” Sports psychologist Jeremy Snape, who hosts the Inside the Mind of Champions podcast and who previously worked with Palace and the England rugby union team, believes the environment players return to is key to how quickly they adapt to life post-tournament.
“It is like a live social experiment,” he says. “There’s a chance to reintegrate and support those who made public errors or to celebrate those who lifted trophies or scored epic goals. “The club culture often feels like a safe space where a band of brothers look after their own.
Great managers will be thinking of the social chemistry of the group and creating a safe space for re-entry. “For those who return as runners-up, they have the luxury of getting tantalisingly close but without the swagger of victory. They will be hungrier than ever to work hard again, to play for each other and to achieve the next step — silverware.
” (Top photo: Dan Mullan/Getty Images).
