De Sciglio’s mental coach: “Mattia was one step away from depression, but now we can say he’s happy again”

Mattia De Sciglio’s mental coach has explained the work he’s done with the fullback as the player seems to be on the rise after a few disappointing seasons.

De Sciglio was called ‘The New Maldini’ when he was promoted from the Primavera to the first team but in the last couple of seasons, the promise that once was seemed to had been vanished as the player suffered from poor form and several injury set-backs.

Despite all that, Antonio Conte showed faith in the 23-year-old and took him to France for the Euro’s. De Sciglio is repaying Conte’s belief with good performances and will look to keep up the level he showed against Spain when the Azzurri face Germany on Saturday evening.

De Sciglio spoke this week about all the ‘sacrifices and the effort I made to return to the top‘, saying ‘this is a small reward for what I went through‘ and that he’s understood that ‘for many people you can be a champion one day and then be nothing the next. Now, I’ve found my balance.’

This ‘new’ version of Mattia can also be attributed to the work he’s done with mental coach from the Catholic University of Milan – Professor Stefano Tirelli, to whom he was sent by his parents. Tirelli, who worked in the past with David Beckham, Michael Essien and John Terry, spoke to La Gazzetta dello Sport about the work he’s done with the Rossoneri’s youth department product.

“At our first meeting Mattia had dull eyes. He was not depressed but yes, he was one step away from depression,” Tirelli said. “He suffered criticism from fans and the press and was hit by injuries. He would even feel guilty if he went out in the evening for a pizza with his girlfriend.

“His father Luca told me: ‘there’s Mattia the footballer who isn’t the biggest concern to me, and then there’s Mattia our son, who we love. Give us back his smile, and we’ll be happy.’ We started to work, a couple of sessions a week. We went on to explore motivational impulses and we unlocked the energy levels in the channels [that exist inside the human body according to Chinese medics].

“Our body is like a sea and is crossed by various currents. Those of De Sciglio were blocked. We liberated his energy channels and we restored his spark. We reactivated his feet, legs, and arms, using the system of acupuncture but with fingers instead of needles.

“Humans don’t have just muscles and bones. we have energy channels too. I realized that Mattia had made it [the change in himself] when I saw him fighting to stay in the match against Verona, in spite of the wound on his face. Bleeding, feeling pain, he would not come out but he had to be replaced.

“When I met him, I told him ‘This scar makes you more of a man, it shows how the new Mattia was born.’ Today we can say: Mattia is happy again.”