“You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.” – Lou Holtz

The aspiration for social approval is all around us, in the skewed views of our lives on social media profiles, the desire to have as much or more than our neighbours (i.e. ‘keeping up with the Joneses’), and the constant measure of fans, friends, and followers.

Social approval is defined as the positive appraisal and acceptance of a person by a social group, and is ever apparent in sports.

A social group to a football player includes a wide range of people, from coaches and teammates, to parents and friends, to fans across the globe. In football psychology, mental toughness and football confidence can be strengthened by a healthy longing for social approval, but can hinder performance when not wielded properly.

The current landscape of social interaction is founded on social approval. Everywhere you look there are demands and cries for likes, retweets, views, and shares; our quantitative measures of social approval.

These measures can positively affect football confidence when paired with strong mental toughness, as long as we ultimately stay true to our goals and convictions.

The need for social approval has been shown by Dr. Papaioannou at the University of Thessaly to be at least in-part responsible for positive and negative effects on sports performance, particularly the approval of those closest to us. With strong football mentality and mental game, this approval will lead to improved football confidence and peak performance.

Emotions too have an ability greatly to affect the mental game in football and can depend significantly on the approval of players’ peers.

We see this most apparently through the use of ‘trash talk’ between plays and when setting up on the line, in an effort to affect ones emotions and hinder mental preparation.

When used effectively, trash talk on and off the field can infiltrate an opponent’s emotions, and translate to negative performances on the field.

With football, hundreds of highlights are uploaded each day to be viewed and judged by strangers who are quick to offer an opinion on an athlete’s performance.

Fragile football confidence can grow or dwindle in this environment, and only so much attention should be paid to faceless assessors to ensure strong football mental toughness.

It takes a very strong mental game in football to stay true to ourselves, as an unhealthy need for social approval can lead to improper conduct on and off the field.

While some would say that not caring is the key to success, in life and in football, the greatest players would disagree.

Humans are social creatures, and a healthy evaluation of social approval is essential to confidence in football, and in life.

A player can find the greatest satisfaction, not in reaching ten thousand views, but from a pat on the back from a teammate, or a slight nod from that stern coach.

At the end of the day, true football confidence comes from within, and with strong mental toughness a player can perform at their best. When social approval is considered only a secondary goal, it surely will follow.

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