Pau Cubarsi, a 19-year-old Spain defender and World Cup winner, is speaking out about professional football’s silence on mental health. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, the Barcelona player said young athletes should be able to seek psychological support without shame or judgment. That basic right remains far too uncommon in sports.
Cubarsi’s rise came fast. He debuted for Barcelona at 16 in January 2024, won his first Spain cap two months later, then played every minute of Spain’s World Cup-winning campaign. He anchored a defense that conceded only once and kept Lionel Messi’s Argentina scoreless in the final. Even at that level, though, he’s turned to professional help. “It’s the most important thing, I’d say – looking after it,” he told Reuters. “Working on your mindset, working on your mental health.”
This isn’t abstract talk for Cubarsi. He has occasionally sought therapy himself and credits a club psychologist with helping him handle the move to Barcelona’s senior team. His openness stands in stark contrast to decades of football culture that treated mental weakness as something to hide.
Breaking the Stigma
Cubarsi made clear what needs to change: young players must feel safe saying they’re struggling. “I believe that when someone feels the need to speak up because they’re having a hard time, they shouldn’t be judged,” he said. “They need to feel comfortable saying, ‘I’m going through a tough time, and that’s OK’.” This isn’t a soft take on mental fitness. He argued that professional support helps players examine their thoughts and spot areas to develop before a crisis hits—a preventive health model many clubs still haven’t adopted systematically.
Pressure itself isn’t necessarily harmful, Cubarsi said. “I think the pressure does actually help you improve every day, but you mustn’t get obsessed with mistakes or with things that perhaps haven’t gone your way,” he said. The problem starts when young athletes internalize failure instead of learning from it, or when clubs deny them the tools to handle the psychological weight of professional sport.
The Structural Problem
Cubarsi also pointed to a systemic gap in the way clubs develop young talent. Modern football brings matches every three days, strength training, dietary protocols and physiotherapy sessions—a full-time job for teenagers whose bodies are still maturing. Yet many clubs handle young players’ development ad hoc, rather than through a structured plan.
He spoke plainly about what he’s seen. “Every club should also have a development plan for young players, to work with them, to look after them and, above all, to help them improve,” he said. He called for more recovery time between matches, describing it as a matter of professional standards, not coddling. “When you’re not training or playing matches, you’ve still got to be professional,” he acknowledged. He isn’t asking for special treatment. His point is that developing young athletes takes deliberate systems, not just talent and luck.
Asked how he stays grounded despite his early success, Cubarsi rejected the idea that his World Cup award meant he had arrived. “It’s not something to rest on your laurels over, but rather to realise that you can also achieve great things individually and that you have to keep fighting,” he said. He also urged patience for young players who don’t get opportunities straight away, drawing on what he’s seen of peers who burned out under pressure or left the sport entirely.
Why This Matters:
Cubarsi’s call for institutional change reflects growing recognition that athlete welfare isn’t a luxury—it’s essential to sustainable development and human dignity. When professional clubs lack systematic mental health support and structured plans for young players, they fail their athletes and create conditions where promising careers derail and treatable psychological struggles become crises. His demand for development frameworks and recovery time challenges a sports culture that has historically treated youth workers as replaceable and their suffering as character-building. The facts he raises—sparse mental health infrastructure, grueling schedules and a lack of deliberate support systems—point to an industry where market forces and competitive pressure have outrun basic protections for workers who are often minors.