In an era when elite athletes are expected to perform under stadium lights and remain permanently available on a screen, Paolo Crepet has argued that success should not be measured by posts, followers or online attention. The psychiatrist and sociologist believes the pressure created by social media can distract from the work that defines a sporting career: talent, sacrifice and results.
The debate has become increasingly familiar across Italian sport. Some leading figures, including Juventus striker Dusan Vlahovic and Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs, have stepped away from social platforms. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc has removed apps from his phone to limit distractions. Julio Velasco, meanwhile, has advised his players to stay off social media during training camps.
Speaking at the Festival dello Sport in Trento, Velasco explained his approach to protecting players from the noise around competition. Crepet praised the volleyball coach’s position, describing him as an unusually clear-minded figure whose example deserved wider attention.
When the athlete becomes the brand
Crepet’s concern is not simply the presence of a phone in a dressing room or hotel. He sees a wider system in which top athletes are treated simultaneously as competitors, public figures and commercial brands, with agents, agencies, social-media managers and media outlets all contributing to constant exposure.
That machinery, he said, is difficult to stop once it is moving. In his view, a greater sense of proportion would help before the current cycle of attention reaches saturation point.
His central argument was that the strongest athletes have less need to promote themselves online because their achievements already speak for them. Greatness, he suggested, comes through ability and hard work rather than follower counts.
Crepet also warned that excessive self-promotion can sometimes reveal insecurity. Results still shape popularity and interaction, but he believes athletes can become more anxious about preserving online approval than driven by the desire to achieve on the field, track or court.
He acknowledged that there are exceptions, but pointed to Velasco as one: a coach who keeps winning without turning every success into a photo opportunity.
A crowded and increasingly unreliable space
Crepet suggested that much of the content rewarded on social media is often light on substance, even if this cannot be said of every post. A platform built around surface appeal, he argued, risks exhausting its audience when too much attention is given to appearance over meaning.
He identified artificial intelligence as an additional threat. Fake material can now be produced quickly and at scale, while corrections usually arrive after misleading content has already spread widely. For many users who scroll without reading carefully, repetition can make an untrue claim appear credible before any denial catches up.
The comparison, for Crepet, is with television’s old economy of visibility. Social media now offers many public figures a way to show that they still matter, much as former celebrities have long returned to television formats in search of renewed relevance. He believes the same dynamic can affect athletes whose sporting profile is no longer at its peak.
Ignoring the abuse
The online environment also carries the problem of abuse. Crepet said hostile messages affect both men and women, while those posting them come from both sexes as well, including within football’s online culture.
His proposed response was blunt: do not feed it. In that respect, he returned to Velasco’s advice to his players — distance from the screen can be a form of protection, allowing the sporting task to remain at the centre of the season.
