Q&A: Jan Rosenthal: “It should be integral that people are not gladiators”
Jan Rosenthal when playing for SV Darmstadt 98
Jan Rosenthal was ahead of his time. The youngster who swapped the German countryside for Hannover’s academy was one of Germany’s rising stars but his love for the game wained the longer he was in it. Football demanded so much of him that there was little room for anything else.
“Every day you’re physically in the fight or flight mechanism. So much happens unconsciously that there’s no space to find a way through,” Rosenthal tells The Player Care Group’s students.
Today, Rosenthal is breaking down barriers by trying to work with individuals and clubs to make sure players have the space and time during their career that he never had to deal with feelings that impact both their lives and performance.
“I would give everything more awareness. It should be integral that people are not gladiators,” Rosenthal says of footballers today. “I would put a more holistic view on the player as a human with all their weaknesses and concerns because we are just humans like everyone else.”
Rosenthal stresses how important the emotional side is, and how big the impact on the body is. The connection between the two is often unrevealed, and then everybody is surprised when players are injured. Rosenthal himself can recall five examples of how his injuries were connected to his emotional suffering.
Throughout his career Rosenthal rarely had the time to consider the human aspects of his life. There was always another game, another training session. Hannover teammate and mentor Robert Enke’s death by suicide hit Rosenthal hard. At the time, he was struggling with injuries and his career was stagnating. The combination of it all left him empty.
Rosenthal felt he and Enke had the same problem with resetting their minds and that the ruthlessness of football had feasted on their sensitive souls.
“We often lost ourselves in our competitiveness and were really self critical.”
Rosenthal was forced to take a three-month break. He got support, but not from everyone.
“I understand clubs don’t feel the need to care for players when they leave but I think they have a social responsibility,” Rosenthal says. “They can’t just buy them free by paying them a big salary. They have to know it’s in their interest to take care of the mental health and wellbeing of their players, to have the whole person included in their performance.”
Perhaps the only time in his career Rosenthal felt that holistic approach was in Freiburg and later in Darmstadt. The smaller cities with intimate stadiums and visible values made the sensitive Rosenthal feel more considered as a person than the harsher, faster, performance-focused cities he had also lived and played in. In fact, Freiburg are proof that it is possible to balance holistic values and performance, making it no surprise that it was at the Black Forest club that Rosenthal formed a bond with the club’s legendary and empathetic head coach Christian Streich.
“The club [Freiburg] knew they were part of the performance because if the guys felt good at home they can do their best for the club…. Christian Streich was a kind of mentor in all thoughts, how he saw football, how he saw life and we connected.”
At 32, with injuries still a problem and his priorities shifting towards his family, Rosenthal knew he was done with the game. And with that decision came a striking realisation.
“This life I lived was so much in the fast lane I realised if I were to go back and look over my life I would now be able to live it emotionally.”
He needed two years to level out at the end of his 20-year career. Football hadn’t allowed him to take stock while he was playing, and much of that was subconsciously connected to the physical and hormonal elements of a life in professional sport. The space for feelings is just different in professional football.
“I wasn’t prepared at all. Problems with my relationships were revealed because I didn’t know what I was going through,” Rosenthal says, adding poignantly that the end of a footballer’s career also means a loss of identity, structure and sometimes purpose too.
Rosenthal believes in mentoring, wants a more holistic focus in psychology rather than just performance and has concerns about how well-intentioned agents are losing out contractually because their choice to act holistically doesn’t fit with a profit-driven world. All of this, and his own experiences, have motivated him to try and make a change, to put more people in place to help, listen and allow players to breathe out when things happen.
While acknowledging that his football career has brought a comfort and security to his life at 35 that few have, Rosenthal’s story is a reminder of how much football takes from those who play it. Now, post his playing career, he has found new levels of confidence in being a father, an artist and entrepreneur. He has finally embraced a built in sensitivity that has given his life a depth that he couldn’t have imagined during his career. His openness is refreshing, as is his quest to make German football do a better job of looking after the person behind the player.
Jan Rosenthal was speaking to the students & alumni of the ‘Certificate in Player Care’ on an exclusive live Q&A. For more information or to sign up to the next cohort, please visit our education page here.
Jonathan Harding is a sports writer who cares about the person and the player, the coach and the community. He speaks German, is a father and tries to look after the planet. Graduate of Cohort 3 of the ‘Certificate in Player Care’ and will be writing various articles for The Player Care Group.