The Football Mind

Last season, Steve Crossman sat down with Brentford midfielder Fabio Carvalho and club psychologist Michael Caulfield to discuss how the club’s culture of talking openly has helped their players. Michael installed a bench at the training ground, dubbed 'Michael’s bench', where players can discuss what is on their mind and share. It has been such a success that the club have installed three more benches at the training ground for their Academy teams and are now putting up more benches around the local community, encourage people to talk to help with their mental health.

In an honest interview, Fabio discusses the difficulties he faced as a young man moving from Portugal, how faith and removing himself from social media has helped him and how he thinks modern footballers could benefit from having deeper conversations and sharing their struggles.

[First published on 13/10/25]