Joe Hart - Confident but Realistic

Joe Hart keeps his feet on the ground after rapid rise to England No1
The Manchester City keeper established his supremacy over the past season but knows how easily fortunes can change

Joe Hart says that, despite the lucky breaks he has had, it takes only one slip to humble you as a goalkeeper.

Joe Hart may be forgiven for feeling bulletproof by now. This is a goalkeeper who has been transformed from a Manchester City loanee to clear first-choice over the past 12 months, a youngster who had in effect been a tourist with the England squad at the World Cup last summer but who can now consider himself his country's undisputed No1. Throw in an FA Cup winner's medal and the prospect of confronting Europe's best in the Champions League next season and his rapid rise is the stuff of dreams.

Yet, where others might have revelled in the perceived invincibility afforded by his new-found status, Hart remains bound by a sense of perspective. "When you list what's happened in the last year like that, quite a lot of things have gone my way," he says. "I've been lucky in a few situations, had breaks with key decisions. But it doesn't matter who you're playing against – I could be down the park playing with my nephew who's not even three but, if he kicks it in the corner, I can't save it. You can be humbled as a goalkeeper. You have to accept that."
Acknowledging as much will keep the 24-year-old grounded. Hart knew this had to be his breakthrough campaign, a year when he felt compelled to make his mark at Eastlands – displacing Shay Given, one of the Premier League's best and a man he considered his "hero", in the process – if he was to live up to the hype that had accompanied his junior career. He had undertaken his own pre-season training schedule while on a post-World Cup holiday in Marbella aimed at hitting the ground running. Those preparations have paid off handsomely. His selection for Saturday's Euro 2012 qualifier against Switzerland is assumed.
The other contenders have acknowledged just how much of a fixture Hart could become in the England jersey. Paul Robinson has long retired from this level; Ben Foster, Fabio Capello's favoured back-up, has taken a sabbatical from international football with little prospect of displacing the first-choice; even Rob Green, who began the World Cup as No1, has considered his future with England. "I must smell or something," Hart jokes when asked why his rivals were dropping like flies. David Stockdale and Scott Carson, the other selected keepers, do not yet have his aura or assurance. In the event Stockdale, reserve at Fulham to Mark Schwarzer, withdrew to get married today and Green agreed to take his place.

Not that Hart is taking anything for granted. A goalkeeper who made his senior debut at 17 with Shrewsbury Town – "At the time, that was as high as I could go" – will not rest on his laurels after one staggering campaign.
This year was a springboard not a finale. He accepts there will be mistakes on the way, so an ability to put those errors in the past and move on quickly is critical.

"There is a lot of pressure at this level but there is in everything you do whether it is at home looking after the family or playing in goal for England," he says. "You can't live in fear of preventing mistakes. You just have to try and do your best to move England forward.
"I was told I could play at the top long before I realised I could. A few people told me that. I've always had a 'name' and I don't know how I got it but I was blessed with people in the right situations saying good things about me.

"I never doubted myself as such but I did think people were getting a bit carried away. But they showed faith in me and I'm thankful for that. Now I just try to repay them as best I can by working hard and taking the opportunities which have been given to me."

He has done that impressively. He kept 18 league clean sheets this season – the most by any goalkeeper in the Premier League – to leave Given on the outside looking in as the club maintain their emergence into the elite.

Hart was a key player in their successes. The victory in the FA Cup, together with a top-three finish, duly established City's credentials and whet the appetite for the seasons ahead, even if Hart, as with his own progress to date, has already drawn a line under the side's achievements so far.

"Reaching the final – playing in it and winning it – well, you don't realise what you've done until some time afterwards," he says. "All the talk was about the 35 years thing [since City's last trophy] but it's not that. It was the experience bringing us together so much more than before. Before that match maybe we were a group of players. But it feels as if we merged together and realised what we could do together. It brought us on as a team and helped us in the run-in to the season.

"But at the same time we appreciate that, great as it was to win something, we're not just going to carry on playing well all the time. I'd just like to think that, if we do stay together, then, when required, that closeness will get us through a horrible game when we don't play well. That's what Manchester United and Chelsea have got – and you can't buy it. It gets you a 2-0 win and three points from a bad performance."

England would like to shine against Switzerland at Wembley and claim similar rewards but few in the national team, their goalkeeper principal among them, will be taking anything for granted. A sense of perspective persists.


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Mental Health Issues in Football

PFA tackles sensitive issue of mental health among footballers
The Footballers' Guidebook will be handed to every player in England's top four divisions next season

A copy of 'The Footballers' Guidebook - Life as a professional footballer and how to handle it', will be handed to every player in the top four divisions next season.

It is considered to be one of football's last taboos, an issue that is not understood and is dismissed far too readily in the machismo-filled dressing room, where weaknesses of any sort tend to be ridiculed. Professional players are not supposed to suffer from panic, anxiety, depression or any sort of mental-health problem. They are regarded as titans among men.
Yet the reality is that footballers display the same vulnerabilities as other young people and under the intense spotlight of the modern game it is natural and inevitable that some of them will feel overwhelmed. The suicide in 2009 of the Hannover and Germany goalkeeper Robert Enke, who had been depressed since the death of his two-year-old daughter, Lara, from a rare heart condition, was an extreme example but it raised the issue of mental health in football and the authorities in England have now acted.

At the beginning of next season players in the four divisions will be issued with The Footballers' Guidebook, which looks at the stressful situations that professionals face and suggests ways to handle them.

The concept was devised by the Professional Footballers' Association, in conjunction with the Football Association, and it has been brought to life not only by the author Susannah Strong but by Paul Trevillion, the legendary comic artist behind the Observer's You Are The Ref, whose strips within the 36-page booklet highlight various scenarios, from the depression that an injury lay-off can cause to the incomprehension and anger of retirement. Trevillion's sketches reinforce the overall tone of the work, helping to make a potentially heavy subject-matter accessible.

"Talking about mental-health problems has traditionally been one of sport's great taboos," Clarke Carlisle, the Burnley defender and PFA chairman, says. "When the boxer Frank Bruno was sectioned under the Mental Health Act, the press ran the headline 'Bonkers Bruno locked up' and, given this attitude, it is unsurprisingly very rare for sportsmen and sportswomen to 'come out' about mental ill health voluntarily.
"Many players may not actually recognise what it is or know how to seek help. I think this guidebook is groundbreaking for players and it takes the first steps towards talking about mental health in professional football."

The stigma that the issue has within the game is reflected by how few players have admitted to having a problem. Those who have gone public over depression include Paul Gascoigne, Andy Cole, Neil Lennon and Stan Collymore. Each is quoted in the guidebook. In some cases of mental ill health, release is sought through drink, drugs, sex or gambling, which can further hasten the individual's downfall.

"The attitude is so often 'pull yourself together'," Gordon Taylor, the PFA's chief executive, says. "It's like in the film, The King's Speech, where George VI's father has no understanding of the problems that he's had. When Stan Collymore sought specialist treatment for his depression, Aston Villa wanted to sack him.

"A football dressing room is a bit like being in a barrack room in the services ; it's about not showing mental weakness. Players have to put on a show but it's the ducks on the water; they might look calm on the surface but, underneath, they are paddling furiously.
"We are trying to change things and create an atmosphere of solidarity ... not to make players with these problems the object of ridicule but to appreciate their qualities and to want to hold them together for the sake of the team."

Mental-health problems affect one in six of the adult population at any one time, including professional footballers, and depression alone affects up to 50%, as well as every family at some stage. The guidebook outlines the factors that can lead to mental distress and places them in situations that will be familiar to players. One of the most stressful, for example, is contract-renewal time. Not every professional is on a long-term, multimillion-pound deal.
"For players in the lower leagues one-year contracts are commonplace and this results in annual negotiations, which can be unsettling," says Simone Pound, the PFA's equality executive who has overseen the production of the guidebook. "This is such a big issue and one of the five sections of the book is devoted to it."
The overriding messages are the need to seek help, immediately and without fear, if any set of symptoms sounds familiar and to recognise that mental health is just as important as physical health.
"We hear little about the lows players feel when unfit to play, the worry and anxiety that not being selected may cause them, or the depression and emptiness many of them face on retirement," Gary Lewin, the England physiotherapist, says. "A number of players have needed help but not known it and that's why this guidebook is so welcome."


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