On Football and Depression
Sport and mental health affect one another every day. Where football and depression meet, risk and opportunity emerge.
My plan for High Protein Beef Paste is to poke around all the nooks and crannies of football and football culture that don’t often see the light of day. These parts of the game fascinate me more than anything that happens on the pitch.
By and large, I’ll also try to take the piss a bit. Not this week.
With apologies in advance, the following is very personal, quite serious and definitely a bad case of oversharing. But I think it’s an important topic.
Thanks for your patience and indulgence. I’ll try and include some knob gags next week. Promise. (It’ll be about Jordan Pickford so it should be achievable.)
On Football and Depression
If the point of writing is truth then I wouldn't be much of a writer if I ignored my experience of depression.
Long before any kind of diagnosis of my own I was moved by the story of Robert Enke. Enke was the goalkeeper of Hannover 96 in Germany and took his own life, aged 32, in November 2009.
Enke’s final years and months were candidly explored in A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke, the 2011 Sports Book of the Year by friend and journalist Ronald Reng. By now harbouring a passing interest in H96, I read a significant amount of it in the airspace over Germany and it hit me hard.
Enke suffered in ways I can only imagine. He went through things I hope to never understand. Yet in Reng’s research and recollections I unearthed a response in myself I hadn’t been expecting: recognition.
Among my friends there are more than a few folk who live with conditions typically classified as neurodiverse or neurodivergent. Without exception their lived experience of these differences are a positive influence on the personalities that make them the people with whom I choose to spend my time.
It’s not a case of hiding or overpowering diversity or divergence, but the plain and simple truth that they are who they are because of who they are.
As I’ve meandered through the first years of a diagnosed depression and anxiety disorder, I’ve come to see my mind in much the same way. I’m not my depression, but I’m also not not my depression. For better and worse it’s shaped who I am, how I see the world and how I navigate life. You’d better believe I’m not interested in changing that.
That’s the silver lining of a massive, thick, black cloud that undeniably fucking sucks. It’s hard work. It’s a horrible malignance that has to be managed and accommodated because there simply isn’t another choice.
Wherever there’s a demographic disproportionately vulnerable to it, we must find the will and methods to better protect them. Men – young men – are one such group. Sportspeople are another. The overlap between them is obvious.
I find solace in my family, my art and other people’s music. I also find it in football, which is a crucial front in the war against depression in its own right.
A few weeks ago, as I spiralled into the now familiar shadows once more, the i newspaper ran an interview with Danny Donachie. He has been a performance coach at Everton, Sunderland and Aston Villa – the club I grew up supporting – and speaks at length about the prevalence of depression among Premier League footballers.
Though the true depth of the issue would undoubtedly be alarming, it is one of the areas of a footballer’s experience that no longer seems to be quite the taboo it was a decade or two ago. There’s a long way to go.
Enke and Gary Speed, sadly, likely played a role in that enlightenment. Players who’ve spoken honestly about their own experiences – Clarke Carlisle, Jesse Lingard, Paul Pogba, Lee Hendrie, Danny Rose and Marvin Sordell are just a few of the names that spring to mind and the list is always growing – are doing their bit too.
Their bravery is impressive. It took me the better part of twenty years to understand and admit what happens behind my eyeballs, never mind seeking and embracing professional and medical support. To talk so openly in the public eye? That’s a courage I definitely don’t recognise.
Sport and mental health difficulties have a long and sad history. International cricketers have been recorded as dying by suicide (though the specific personal facts and indeed the overall data are disputed) since before football’s Sheffield Rules were developed.
While I was at university I was listening to the radio one afternoon and happened upon an appearance by the cricket writer and historian David Frith, who painted a vividly bleak picture of the correlation between cricket and suicide. By his count – and he’s better positioned than most – more than 150 cricketers had died by suicide by 2001.
My memories of Frith’s exact comments are essentially dust at this point and I have yet to bring myself to read Silence of the Heart, his book on the matter. But, whether imagined or not, what stuck with me was the idea that test cricketers are especially prone to depression in retirement because of summers and Christmases not spent in competition on the cricket fields of the world.
Outwith that psychological phenomenon that seems to exist somewhere between addiction and institutionalisation, the stress of being a professional sportsperson at the elite level, the pressure, comes with the territory. There are injuries, short careers and failure with which to contend. Different people handle them, or not, in different ways.
I’m not a sportsperson. I’ve scored a few goals, made a few tackles, but I packed in proper football more than half a lifetime ago and there was nothing elite, impressive or even mature about the way I left the game.
Football affects the mental health of supporters too. I speak only for myself when I say I’ve largely managed to eradicate the negatives from the game in that sense. Outside the 90 minutes, the match tends not to spoil even the drive home. The days of ruined weekends are long gone, but that’s my experience and mine alone.
The upshot is that being a football supporter is therapeutic for me. With the negatives banished, the positives are free to do their mental work. It’s easier said than done but my advice to fellow supporters is to brush off every defeat and celebrate every victory like it might be the last. Do that, and football is truly an energising force.
If you’re not familiar with depression you might not be aware of some of the advice and treatment that comes with a diagnosis. Therapy or counselling is generally part of the potion. Medication is optionally another.
But there’s also a bunch of stuff that seems simple but is often effective. Go outside. Do things you enjoy. See your friends. Belong somewhere. Do something. To me, as a supporter and a volunteer, that’s football. That’s why I’ll drag my arse all over the Midlands on Saturdays even when it’s spent the weeks in my hands.
Thus, our little communities are invaluable to those of us – supporters and players – who need a boost every now and again. Depression is a lonely place and even the best intentions of friends and family sometimes don’t get through.
The only suggestion I can make if you want to be there for your fellow supporters or team-mates is not to force the issue when they’re not ready to talk; be available physically and emotionally when they are.
There are organisations that offer support and information too. If, like me, you find yourself in need of help, or if you simply want to learn more, check out Mind and CALM as a first port of call.
“I think it just says everything that you need to know about gambling and football in that it basically wants to have its cake and eat it. It wants to rake in money to promote online casinos in front of millions of young fans whilst coming down hard on footballers who inevitably gamble.”
James Grimes of the Big Step campaign sums up the hypocrisy at the heart of football’s relationship with gambling in comments in an i report about developments in the Ivan Toney case.
Salty beef extracts
Just Fontaine obituary (The Guardian)
‘Project DNA’: How Japan’s J1 League became a ‘flair factory’ for Europe’s top clubs (i)
Mary Earps’ long road from Phil Neville reject to world’s best No 1 (The Observer)
Vinícius Júnior is essentially being hunted and hounded for sport(The Guardian)
Goal of the Week
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Have a week.