At first glance, it could have been an image from Pirates of the Caribbean, only with the buccaneers wearing neon bibs and kicking footballs around a field.
Instead, the setting was the Italian football federation centre in Coverciano, where coach Silvio Baldini had tasked his under-21 players with wearing eye patches during training ahead of upcoming games with Sweden and Armenia.
Tuesday’s training — which, according to Gazzetta Dello Sport, consisted of three 20-minute sessions — saw players, including goalkeepers, doing drills while wearing the patches. Although it may have been new for some of the squad, Baldini has done it before when in charge of clubs Palermo and Pescara.
But this is not a fancy-dress team-bonding exercise. There was science behind using the patches — a technique that also boosted the performance of World Cup-winning rugby teams, champion golfers and some of the best drivers in Formula One.
The idea is that wearing an eye patch helps develop depth perception and the sharpness of the dominant eye (the one a person’s brain relies on more for processing information). Most, but not all, people have an alignment between their dominant eye and the hand (or foot) they primarily use.
But helping an athlete become aware of which eye they are dominant in can unlock the potential to hone the speed and clarity of their vision under pressure on the field.
The first part of Baldini’s session involved the players wearing a patch over their dominant eye; the second part saw the other eye covered; and during the third session, they did not wear the patch.
“I want to encourage the boys to look at the field not just with their eyes, but with their minds and bodies,” Baldini said, in an interview reported by Gazzetta in their previous training camp in September.
Baldini, 67, is renowned for thinking creatively about his training sessions. In that September camp, held in the Tuscan coastal town of Tirrenia, he led recovery sessions at the beach. He has also reportedly dispensed with single hotel rooms for the team, instead making them double up and room with others in the squad who play in the same position.
Silvio Baldini is renowned for innovative training methods (Gabriele Maltinti/Getty Images)
Last year, Baldini said his inspiration for using the eye patches came from another sport.
“I don’t have the scientific basis to explain certain things to you properly, and I prefer not to say anything inaccurate,” he told Il Pescara. “I was coaching Catania, and I went to see a boxer in Syracuse. He used bandages; I was intrigued and did some research. And I started to propose that method too.
“But I repeat: if we weren’t first, I would have exposed myself to criticism by using bandages on the pitch. Not that I care, but it would have protected the boys. In any case, we’ll do it again.”
USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino is also an advocate of harnessing the science of optometry in sport. On Monday, the Argentinian revealed that he moved Tim Weah to left wing because of his eye-dominance.
Timothy Weah’s positional change is not down to tactics alone (David Berding/Getty Images)
“He asked what was my favourite position,” Weah said on Monday night in an interview with Soccer America. “I told him that I played my whole career on the right, but honestly my favourite position was on the left.
“He said, ‘Let’s do this test and try it.’ All I did was look through a paper at a badge, and I covered one eye, I covered (the other) eye, and I found out this (the left eye) was the stronger eye. I played on that side. It was fun.”
Pochettino emphasised the importance of the test. “It’s a dominant eye that brings you in a position to feel comfortable with the ball,” he told reporters. “We try to check, because we need to understand the player.”
Yet football is not the first sport to focus on vision as a performance tool, with professional teams first beginning to work on it in the 1990s.
The most high-profile expert is Dr Sherylle Calder, who has worked with three Rugby Union World Cup-winning sides, including England in the build-up to their 2003 triumph, the Australian cricket team, and golfer Ernie Els before he won The Open in 2012.
It was during a session with Sir Clive Woodward’s team in 2003 that she got players such as Jonny Wilkinson and Martin Johnson to train with the patches during a session at their Pennyhill Park training base.
“Back then, the idea was based around overload,” she says. “The principle was that by covering one eye, we were putting the visual system under stress and making it work harder.
“Then, when you take it off, everything feels easier and sharper. It’s getting the players to realise how much better it is to utilise both eyes. But the effects are actually pretty short-lived.”
Dr Calder went on to develop more sophisticated methods of enhancing performance through her own software system, but says the eye-patches had their place. “It was a fun thing,” she says. “An exercise to prove the point that if you really use both eyes, you perform better.”
Only this summer she worked with cricketer Dewald Brevis before the 22-year-old set a string of world records during a Twenty20 match between South Africa and Australia.
And she says players have usually been open to new ideas. “Even 23 years ago, the England (rugby) players were open-minded and up for doing anything to get better.”
Dr Zoe Wimshurst is a British chartered psychologist specialising in visual performance in elite athletes. She has worked with Premier League teams, Premiership rugby union team Harlequins and McLaren F1 driver Lando Norris, and is not surprised that Pochettino started by looking at his wide players.
“Imagine a right-winger in rugby who is right-eye dominant,” she explains. “His dominant eye is on the side of his head next to the touchline and the crowd. His left eye is on the side where he’s receiving the ball. The non-dominant eye processes information a split second slower, so there’s that extra chance they might drop the ball or mishandle.
“Obviously, it’s not exactly the same in football positions with full-backs and defenders, but there is still more awareness on the side of their dominant eye. You might notice that a midfielder will play more passes on the side of their dominant eye, and scan the pitch better that way.
“So if they wear a patch over their non-dominant eye, it will force players to get into a more effective head position to receive information quicker, more accurately and clearly.”
The patches also work by challenging depth perception: the ability to see and judge the distance of objects in three dimensions, length, width, and depth. Not everyone has it, with England Lioness goalkeeper Hannah Hampton revealing how not having depth perception has affected her career.
Hannah Hampton has no depth perception (Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)
“Taking that non-dominant eye out of the equation removes stereopsis, which is the primary way humans perceive depth, using a slightly different image from each eye,” explains Dr Wimshurst. “Instead, the brain will have to use alternative cues such as size or shadow, which is much more cognitively demanding.
“It can really improve a player’s perception of other things— for example, with balls played over their heads, or awareness of where their team-mates are.”
Ultimately, Dr Wimshurst, who has also worked with Cristiano Ronaldo on a documentary about his visual and eye-tracking skills, says it is about marginal gains.
“You’re talking about the dominant eye receiving information a split second faster and more accurately, but that makes a difference in sport,” she says. “Things like volleying a ball: timing is crucial and that split second might be the difference between rifling it into the top corner or into the crowd.”
It may have been eye-catching when the Azzurrini ran out to training this week, but Bandini’s players might just be seeing more clearly than ever.
