“He was in the headlines before the game and now he is going to be all over the headlines again,” said former England winger Aaron Lennon on BBC Radio 5 Live following Onana’s errors against Lyon.
“I think he looks a bit silly tonight and Matic is probably the one who is going to sleep well,” added former Lyon and England midfielder Izzy Christiansen.
Moore, who co-hosts the What’s Your Goal podcast alongside former England midfielder Katie Chapman, says the brain is wired to pay specific attention to risk, threat and mistakes from an “ego, status and reputation point of view”.
“Given the fact he is a goalkeeper at a very famous club and there is a lot of pressure on shoulders anyway within that team, they have had a lot of negative media throughout the year, he is going to have a double whammy effect,” Moore says.
“What you are doing is signalling to your brain, rather than ‘how can I do well?’, is ‘how can I avoid a mistake?’.”
Matt Shaw is a chartered sports psychologist at InnerDrive, who work with players from senior internationals to academy level.
“We often talk about external noise and trying to limit it as much as possible,” says Shaw. “In some sense, it could be a coincidence those comments were made and then he had a poor performance.
“You might look at other times this season where no comments were made and he had good or bad performances after that as well.”
Shaw says what is being said off the pitch can often be “overhyped” because of its importance to fans and the media, rather than the players themselves.
“A lot of these guys, it is water off a duck’s back,” he explains. “When it does impact players it’s really interesting, because we often forget they are experts in what they do – experts can have poor performance – but also in terms of how they handle those situations.
“You see Onana pre-match going straight up to the fans in front of the net, where it looked like it didn’t really affect him at all. It can affect these guys, but often it doesn’t.
“When we are working with players, we are working with them all the time and trying to keep them at a baseline. It is easy to draw a straight line and say lots of stuff happened pre-match and he went on to make mistakes that led to goals. Whereas the chances are, once the game starts, it is very unlikely that is in his mind because he has way more to focus on.
“What we always want is players thinking in a helpful way, what do they need to think about and focus in order to perform well? Obviously comments beforehand about being United’s poorest goalkeeper aren’t the comments we want him thinking about. But I would be surprised if those were in his mind.”
