In early 2020 it was reported that 22 percent of current or former players
polled in England and Wales had felt depressed or had considered self-harm.
This video will detail the stories of players who have struggled with their mental health,
and explore some of the reasons why.
Football players have committed suicide, retired when they were overwhelmed by panic attacks,
and fallen into long term depression For a game that doesn’t talk much about mental
health, football talks a lot about inner states. Mangers play mind games with each other. Players
do or don’t have the right mind set. The implied need for emotional resilience is everywhere.
So, what is going on in football players heads. It starts young. From the moment anyone starts
taking the game seriously, they are being monitored and measured.
Competition is not just with opponents, but with teammates fighting for minutes on the
pitch and in the academy systems. Of course, most don’t make it.
In 2022 the Premier League reported that of 4,109 former academy footballers, 70 per cent were not
even handed a professional contract at a Premier League or English Football League club. Only one
in ten has gone on to make more than 20 league appearances in the top four tiers of English
football. For the vast majority that do not make it, a deterioration in mental ill health awaits.
A study in 2015 from Teesside University found that 55 per cent of players were
suffering ‘clinical levels of psychological distress 21 days after being released from
an academy. In the most extreme cases that distress can spiral out of control.
Josh Lyons never recovered from being released by Spurs at 16, went on to struggle at Fulham
and Crawley Town and then walked in front of a train in 2013, at the age of 26.
In October 2020, 18-year-old Jeremy Wisten was found hanged in his sister’s bedroom.
A year earlier he had been released by Manchester City’s academy and, unable to find another club,
had withdrawn from the game and entered a depression that would see him take his own life.
For those who do make it into the professional game, things get harder not easier. The level
of scrutiny grows, failures and defeats become more public.
Tony Adams, England and Arsenal captain, was perhaps the first to lift the lid on
the mental and emotional turmoil of life in the game, and the desperate coping strategies
that many players employ. In his case it was alcohol,
so much that it nearly destroyed his game and his body, before he went sober in 1996. More recently,
former Tottenham centre back Steven Caulker has told the story of a career dominated
by his gambling and alcohol addiction. And if you can sidestep the addictions,
mental health can get you a dozen other ways: Danny Rose has spoken about how a damaged knee,
which had kept him out of the Tottenham squad for months, turned into a terrible depression,
much worse than the original injury. Former West Bromwich Albion and Burnley
player Steven Reid explained that he had experienced serious panic attacks in the
middle of Premier League games. Aaron Lennon, when at Everton,
disintegrated to the point that he revealed that was picked up by police on the verge of a dual
carriageway in Salford, and then sectioned. All of this is tough enough, but professional
football also has a culture that has made it almost impossible
for players and coaches to seek help. Football’s mythology has long celebrated a culture
in which youth is prepared for the professional game by a mixture of banter, punishments and
humiliations that, in any other realm – public schools and the military aside – would constitute
bullying and abuse, but are celebrated in the game as character-forming. Efforts to suggest
otherwise have often been met by the retort that the modern world has gone soft and that
modern players have become too sensitive. Martin Ling, an ex-player who suffered major
mental breakdowns when he was coach at Torquay and Swindon, reflected on how he thought about
mental health before experiencing it himself. "Seeing people suffer and feel they are weak
because of depression is so wrong. If someone had come to me with my illness,
I would have listened to him, then I would have gone into the next room and
said 'forget about him, he is not strong enough'. Ling is just one of many in football who has had
to learn the hard way. But things are changing. Tony Adams’s charity Sporting Chance has pioneered
help and support for professional sports people struggling with their mental health. The best
club’s are beginning to treat their care of duty more seriously , and coaching that is really
bullying is increasingly unacceptable In 2017 the Premier League deemed the
environment at Aston Villa’s academy as “toxic” and demanded reform. Craig Bellamy stepped down
from his role at Cardiff City in 2018 after facing accusations of bullying,
as did Peter Beardsley at Newcastle United. But above all football is changing because
it is beginning to exercise the mind ..and that means talking.
Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin admitted that doing so “helped save my
life” during a low-point in his career. “There is no shame in finding someone to
talk to and being open and honest with yourself about how you really feel”,
Calvert-Lewin posted on social media. To all the young kings suppressing emotion I
advise you to talk, to a friend, family member or someone that will listen, talking saved my
life. You’ll discover that the paradox of true strength is being able to face your weaknesses.”