The Mind Behind the Match: Ronald Hernández, Adrian Gill, and the Grounding Forces That Carry Players Through

Mental health is still a relatively new conversation in soccer.

Not because athletes haven’t been feeling the weight of pressure, anxiety, uncertainty, and identity for decades, but because the sport has only recently started to make space to talk about it out loud.

For a long time, the expectation was simple: play through it. Push past it. Be tough.

But toughness has never meant silence.

Photo: Sofia Cupertino

And the more soccer grows, the more the sport is realizing that the mind is not separate from performance. Confidence shapes everything. Headspace shapes everything. The way you feel internally will always show up externally, whether you want it to or not.

I think about that often in my own life. Anxiety is something I struggle with, and I know that if I’m not in the right place mentally before a broadcast, it becomes harder to be my best self on air. It doesn’t mean I can’t do it. It means I have to navigate it.

Athletes are doing the same thing, just on a much larger stage.

So the question becomes: how do they cope? What grounds them when the sport is built on volatility?

Last week, in our conversations with Ronald Hernández and Adrian Gill, we heard two different windows into the same truth:

The mental side of the game is not optional.

It is foundational.

Ronald Hernández and the Peace That Cannot Be Bought

Ronald Hernández doesn’t talk about faith and family like they are slogans.

He talks about them like they are survival.

Like they are steadiness.

In a career where everything can change quickly, from your role to your health, your body, and your future, he keeps returning to the same grounding forces. Not as an escape from soccer, but as something that allows him to keep showing up fully inside it.

What stood out most was how deeply he connected his growth in Atlanta to more than soccer maturity.

He spoke about learning “different aspects… emotionally, personal wise, mental health, day-to-day basic things.”

Atlanta, for him, has not only been a professional chapter.

It has been an emotional one.

That matters, because mental health is not a separate conversation from becoming a player. It is part of becoming a whole person.

And for Ronald, family sits at the center of that.

He talked about the responsibility of being a husband and a father, about needing to look after his child and his wife, about Atlanta teaching him how to be a leader in the most personal sense.

Not just in the locker room.

At home.

That kind of grounding is easy to overlook in sports coverage, but it is often where the real stability lives. When the game becomes overwhelming, family is the reminder that your identity is bigger than the match.

Then Ronald went even deeper.

He described faith not as something performative, but as something internal. Something that gives him peace in a way the world cannot manufacture.

“That connection or that peace that you feel,” he said, “you cannot buy that in the store.”

That is not a soundbite.

That is a man describing emotional calm in a profession that rarely slows down long enough to breathe.

Faith, for him, has grown through struggle. He admitted that openly.

“My faith has been growing lately with my struggles,” he said.

But what was even more striking was the honesty that mental grounding is not only for dark moments. Ronald challenged himself to seek God in good moments too.

That is emotional discipline.

That is mental health as daily practice, not emergency response.

And he also spoke about community.

About connecting with teammates through shared faith, about mentorship, about Bible study and conversation.

He said something that should resonate far beyond religion:

“Everyone has different issues. It’s how we face them.”

That is the core of this entire conversation.

The issue is not whether athletes struggle.

The issue is whether they feel allowed to face it openly.

Adrian Gill and the Psychological Side of Recovery

If Ronald’s grounding is spiritual and relational, Adrian Gill’s window into mental health comes through injury.

Gill is coming back from an ACL tear, and anyone who has experienced a major injury knows the truth:

Recovery is never just physical.

It is psychological.

The body heals, but the mind has to relearn trust.

Gill spoke about how an ACL tear can happen on something simple, just one movement, and then suddenly your relationship with your own body changes. The process becomes about trusting that it won’t happen again.

That is not just rehab.

That is rebuilding confidence.

That is anxiety living inside muscle memory.

It is the mental challenge of returning to a sport where your body is your livelihood, and one moment can reshape everything.

We don’t always talk about injury this way, but we should.

Because athletes aren’t just rehabbing ligaments.

They are rehabbing belief.

The Soccer World Is Starting to Speak

These conversations are becoming more visible across the global game, and they need to be.

Barcelona defender Ronald Araújo recently opened up about suffering anxiety and depression for more than a year, explaining that it led him to take a mental health break.

“I didn’t feel myself,” he said. “That moment served as a click to say: something is happening, I need to ask for help.”

That kind of honesty still feels rare.

But it is necessary.

In the women’s game, U.S. Soccer is now investing heavily in mental health research through the Kang Institute, recognizing that the next generation of athletes cannot thrive without emotional support systems.

Mental health is not a side issue.

It is a performance issue.

It is a human issue.

And it is an access issue too, because players should have access to the tools, professionals, and environments that allow them to be whole.

Training the Mind Like You Train the Body

There is still stigma.

There is still the outdated belief that mental health is not a priority, or that talking about it is weakness.

But the truth is simple:

You train for a match with your body.

You also have to train for a match with your brain.

You have to get into the right mindset to play.

Ronald Hernández is finding grounding through faith, family, community, and consistency.

Adrian Gill is navigating the mental side of trusting his body again.

Different journeys.

Same reality.

The mind behind the match matters.

And as soccer continues to grow in Atlanta and everywhere beyond it, these conversations have to grow with it.

Because the strongest athletes are not the ones who never struggle.

They are the ones who are supported enough to keep going.