Mental Goals
Early in 2020, a survey conducted in England and Wales of current or past footballers revealed that 22% had experienced depression or had thought about harming themselves. Focusing on the Premier League and English football, this article will cover the stories of footballers who have had mental health issues, along with an examination of some of the contributing factors, and the evolution regarding this topic.
Football players have gone on to kill themselves, retired due to severe panic attacks, and had chronic depression. Football is a game that rarely discusses mental health, but it does discuss internal states a lot. Managers play mind games with each other. Players do or don’t have the right mindset. The implied need for emotional resilience is everywhere. What then goes through a football player's mind? Well, it begins at a young age. Anytime someone begins to play the game seriously, they are being watched and evaluated. In addition to rival teams, teammates compete with one another for playing time on the pitch and in the academy systems. Naturally, the majority do not manage to go pro. According to a 2022 report from the Premier League, the top division of English football, of 4,109 former academy players, 70% did not even receive a professional contract at a Premier League or English Football League team. Out of the top four tiers of English football, only one out of ten players have more than twenty league appearances. The great majority who do not continue will see a decline in their state of mental illness. 55% of players experienced "clinical levels of psychological distress 21 days after being released from an academy," according to a 2015 Teesside University research. In the worst circumstances, that distress may become uncontrollable: Josh Lyons struggled at Fulham and Crawley Town after being released by Premier League team Tottenham at the age of sixteen and never recovering from it, and then, in 2013, at the age of 26, he walked in front of a train. Jeremy Wisten, age 18, was found hanging in his sister's bedroom in October 2020. After being let go by Manchester City's academy a year prior, he withdrew from the game and fell into a depressive state that ultimately led to his suicide after being unable to locate and find a new club.
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Things Can Get Harder in Professional Football
And things can get more difficult for those who do manage to break into the professional ranks. The degree of scrutiny increases, and setbacks and losses are made more public. The first person to publicly discuss the mental and emotional struggles of being a professional player, as well as the desperate coping mechanisms that many of them use, was probably Tony Adams, the former captain of both England and Arsenal. In his case, it was alcohol, which he drank to such an extent that it almost wrecked his body and his game, before going clean in 1996. In recent times, Steven Caulker, a former center back for Tottenham, has also shared his narrative of a career that was defined by his addiction to alcohol and gambling. Furthermore, even if you can sidestep the addictions, mental health can get you in a variety of other ways: former footballer 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. Steven Reid, a former player for Burnley and West Bromwich Albion, has also disclosed that he had suffered severe panic attacks during Premier League matches. Another former footballer, Aaron Lennon, when playing at Everton, he stated that he was so disintegrated to the point that he disclosed that he was picked up by police on the edge of a dual road in Salford, close to Manchester, and then sectioned.
Football Culture
Therefore, even though everything mentioned above is difficult enough, professional football, in addition, also has a culture that makes it nearly impossible for coaches and players to ask for help. The mythology surrounding football has long praised a culture in which young people are formed into strong characters through a combination of banter, punishments, and humiliations that, in any other setting, would be considered bullying and abuse. The response to it is that the modern world has grown softer and that the actors in it have gotten overly sensitive. This narrative has frequently been used to counter suggestions to the contrary. Martin Ling, a former player who experienced severe mental breakdowns while coaching Torquay and Swindon, pondered back on his conception of mental health before going through it himself. “Seeing people suffer and feel that 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 learn the hard way.
Things are Getting Better
However, things are changing. Professional footballers who are having mental health problems can now get the care and assistance they need thanks to Tony Adams's organization, "Sporting Chance." The greatest teams are starting to take their duty of care more seriously, and it is becoming less and less acceptable to coach in a way that amounts to bullying. For example, the Premier League declared the atmosphere at Aston Villa's academy to be "toxic" in 2017 and called for changes. In 2018, Peter Beardsley at Newcastle United and Craig Bellamy at Cardiff City both resigned from their positions following allegations of bullying. Football is evolving, but more than anything else, because it's starting to train the mind, which implies talking. At a bad moment in his career, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, a footballer playing in Everton, said that doing so, quote, "helped save my life." Calvert-Lewin wrote on social media, "There is no shame in finding someone to talk to and being open and honest with yourself about how you really feel. Talking to a friend, family member, or anyone who will listen can help all the young kings who are holding their emotions in. Talking to someone has saved my life. You'll learn that facing your weaknesses is the paradox of true strength."
