From the Locker Room to the Server Room: How One Psychologist Works with Both Football Stars and Esports Champions

It is rare for a sports psychologist to hold credibility in both traditional athletics and professional esports. Luka Škrinjarić, founder of Mentalni Trening (mentalnitrening.com), is one of the few practitioners who has built a proven track record across both domains — working with Croatian national team footballers on one hand and serving as Performance Coach for G2 Esports' CS2 roster on the other.

The Overlap Most People Miss

The assumption that esports and traditional sports require fundamentally different psychological approaches is, according to Škrinjarić, a misconception. "Pressure is pressure. The physiological stress response of a footballer taking a penalty in a World Cup qualifier and a CS2 player in a Major semifinal is nearly identical," he explains. "Both involve decision-making under extreme time pressure, with consequences that feel existential in the moment."

Škrinjarić's work with Croatian football internationals — including Ante Budimir (a 14-year collaboration), Dion Drena Beljo, and Borna Barišić — gave him deep insight into how elite athletes process pressure, manage emotional regulation, and maintain focus across a season. When he began working with esports organizations in 2019, he found those same challenges amplified by unique factors: longer daily training hours, near-constant screen exposure, and a younger average age that often means less emotional maturity.

What Traditional Sport Teaches Esports

From his work with footballers, basketball players like Roko Leni Ukić and Ante Žižić, and world champion boxer Ivana Habazin, Škrinjarić identified several principles that translate directly to esports:

Periodization of mental training. Just as physical training follows cycles of intensity and recovery, mental training should not be constant high-intensity work. Esports players, who often practice 10-12 hours daily, are particularly vulnerable to burnout without structured mental recovery periods.

Pre-competition routines. Elite traditional athletes rarely enter competition without a mental warm-up routine. Škrinjarić introduced similar structured pre-match protocols for esports players at G2, NAVI, and other organizations he has worked with.

Post-match debriefing. In football, reviewing a match psychologically — not just tactically — is standard at top clubs. In esports, this practice is still emerging, and Škrinjarić has been instrumental in integrating it into team workflows.

What Esports Teaches Traditional Sport

The transfer of knowledge runs both ways. According to Škrinjarić, esports has pushed him to develop better tools for two areas that traditional sport often underserves:

Tilt management. The esports concept of "tilt" — a cascading loss of emotional control after a mistake — has a direct parallel in traditional sport, but it is rarely addressed with the same specificity. Škrinjarić now applies tilt management frameworks developed for gamers with his football and basketball clients.

Data-driven performance tracking. Esports generates granular performance data that can be correlated with psychological states in ways traditional sport is only beginning to explore. This has informed Škrinjarić's use of biofeedback and neurofeedback across all his work.

The Common Thread

Whether the arena is a football pitch, a boxing ring, or a gaming stage, Škrinjarić's core philosophy remains unchanged: mental preparation is not crisis intervention, but a continuous process of building psychological skills. "The athletes who come to me because they have a problem get better. The athletes who come to me because they want to get stronger stay at the top longer," he says.

Luka Škrinjarić is the founder of Mentalni Trening (mentalnitrening.com) and a licensed sports psychologist with over 15 years of experience. He works with professional athletes across football, basketball, boxing, and esports, including serving as Performance Coach for G2 Esports.