Depression and burn out in football

gerd

gerd

Retired Footballer
8 January 2002
Over the moon
KRC Genk, Spurs
It seems that the tabou around depression and burn out in football is getting broken in Germany.
This week Ronald Reng will publish what promises be one of the best football books ever: about Robert Enke and his depression, that lead to his shocking suicide. Reng (a former GK himself) was a friend of Enke and Enke's widow let him used Enke's diary. In Germany this book was unanimously lauded because it avoid a sensational approach and give insight about depression and the pressure professional football players are under.

This week Schalke coach Rangnick stopped because he is suffering from a burn out. A month ago the second GK of Hannover (once again Hannover) stopped his carreer becauser he suffered depression.

And then there was the player who used to be a promising player, got transferred to Bayern but also had to stop his carreer for mental reasons (forgot his name).

Most of us will have dreamed of becoming a professional football player, yet what occurs now in Germany seems to point out that there is a dark side to the football dream. Of course this is not only the case in German football...Think about players like Gazza or Best who someway or another also had mental problems and there must be others.

I was wondering if any of you have similar examples or have any thoughts about this...surely not the easiest subject. But IMO the dark side of sports is also worth talking about. The "failures" intrest me more than the success stories.
 
I don't see an exact relation between mental problems and sports alone. It's just life and just the person's character imo, if he's not enough resistant to problems, failures whatever you say, that naturally leads to mental problems mostly. Well, I can say the ratio of footballers suffering those kind of problems isn't abnormally huge comparing to people of other jobs.

To be honest, I don't like that kind of books. They just bring a trend that lives two years at most and after that time it gets completely forgotten. Only people like you, I mean, who are deeply into sports will value them forever. Maybe it's just me who reads the matter in a superficial point of view.

Btw, the Bayern player is Deisler, if I'm not wrong.
 
caused by the pressure on him and those never ending injuries. these reasons all together led him to leave the scene, I can say.
 
Good post gerd, i think with players like Gazza & Bestie it must of been the booze that caused a lot of problems as we know it is a depressant, although i have heard that Gazza suffers from OCD.

I think the problem is they have the world at their feet from a young age and it must have been very hard to handle, being in the spotlight all the time and possibly getting harrased everywhere you go, thus no private life.

Someone others who spring to mind is Paul merson & Tony Adams.

I suppose as well there is always the pressure to perform well in training and on the pitch. Then when they are injured for long periods.

I suppose some people would say they are well paid and all the rest of it but i could imagine living that kind of life day after day could become quite nightmarish.
 
great and very serious topic.. i noticed this chainges and news from Bundesliga lately, there is many going on... Bundesliga is very very competitive league..basicly you don´t know who will win it or qualify, so the vision of points and success is existing for more teams than in Spain where you know for sure wich teams (maybe 12 or more) won´t be champions..or won´t qualify..so their standard is lowered, for some just to stay in League i think...

this way the pressure on Bundesliga coaches, players is enorme.. i belive it´s also due to this..

also i think in other leagues burn out can be existing..
 
Nice topic Gerd and yeah that player is definitely Sebastian Diesler. He was depressed for awhile but I think ultimately it was his non-stop injuries that made him quit.

When is this new book coming out? And I wish it would have English version too but I doubt it. I'd love to read it.
 
The German version came out this week. There will be a Dutch version 9/30, so i guess there will definitely be an English version.
 
There was a very promising dutch player once, but he was depressed and he became addicted to drugs and alcohol. He tried to kill himself 2 times,but his older brother saved him. After all he died because of the alcohol and painkiller for his depresion. He was only 33 years old.
 
Who?

That sounds promising Gerd. Let me know if you find out there will be an English version.

I would've liked to read Phillip Lahm's CONTROVERSIAL book as well but I think that's in German only.
 
The player I was talking about was called Gino Weber. According to Martin Jol, who was a close friend of his, he was a cross between Cruyff and Best. He also had borderline desease.
 
He tried to rob a gas station but he got caught too. He asked his brother to kill kim once and he tried suicide once too. Quite tragic.
 
I'm not so sure football is the cause for many of these cases. A lot of the time, depression is predisposed genetically, and in other instances, the player's upbringing is the main cause for depression or similar conditions.

Burn out, though, seems to be getting more common. Some players show clear signs of burn out on the field too - they're just exhausted. These days players play unto 50 games a season, which can be ridiculous (although great for the viewers).
 
Stef, i did not start this thread because i think depression is related to football. What is interesting for me that finally sports "heroes" can show flaws...can you imagine a player like Cristiano Ronaldo or Zlatan Ibrahimovic with a depression?
 
Ahh, I guess I misunderstood the thread gerd. I was quite shocked about Enke and Deisler (his retirement at 29) when they happened. I suppose the feeling is sort of like when a football player you know passes a way, you can easily feel affected by it.
 
the cause...
Adrianos father died and like many others he suffered from a depression after that.


What i see interesting is that boys from (how i see it) rough childhoods and war etc. doesnt come up more often with posttraumatic stress disorders (maybe there is)... we just don't get to see them/or their talent.
 
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Robert Enke's life story should make us pause before we castigate

English football can learn lessons from the German reaction to the death of the international goalkeeper
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Robert-Enke-007.jpg
The goalkeeper Robert Enke in action for Germany against Belgium. Photograph: Torsten Silz/AFP/Getty Images

There was, very recently, a case in the Bundesliga of a player who wanted to kill himself. When it came to light, the club arranged for the player to be privately admitted to a clinic, they kept in regular contact with his doctors, and continued the full payment of his salary for the duration of his treatment.
Nobody can say for sure whether this would have happened were it not for the heartbreaking example of Robert Enke, the Germany goalkeeper who suffered from depression and took his own life two years ago. But it is clear that football in Germany is more enlightened about the psychological pressures on its elite sportsmen than most. There is now a network of sports psychiatrists available to the Bundesliga – a job description that did not used to exist – which works outside of clubs to help those afraid of being open about their problems. And there is less severity from the public when someone in football appears to be experiencing a hard time, as if there is a tacit acknowledgement that life at the sharp end is not necessarily the dream job that it is supposed to be, millionaire wages or not.
The writer Ronald Reng, who was a friend of Enke's and took on the task of accounting his story in the exceptional book A Life Too Short – The Tragedy of Robert Enke, has been taken aback by the reaction to this deeply personal memoir. The book became a bestseller in Germany straight away, and he cannot even begin to count how many people with depression wrote to him, and how many players and agents called him up to talk about issues so easily kept hidden that he had brought to the surface.
"The last wish Robert had was to write this book," says Reng. "At least there is an understanding of what someone suffering depression goes through. Through Robert's death there is in Germany a higher understanding that this is an illness and that people need help."
It is an extraordinary and vivid account, which evokes Enke's feelings of escalating anxiety in what might be perceived as everyday occurrences for a footballer. The stress of trying to avoid mistakes, the fear of public ridicule, the worry about the coach's decisions, the dread of moving to a new club and into the unknown. Reng recounts conversations between Enke and his friends and family, his team-mates and goalkeeping rivals, and what comes across so painfully is the way episodes of depression changed Enke from a warm, kind and thoughtful man into someone so troubled that he could barely face getting out of bed.
Contemplating Enke's worries as he begins training at Barcelona under Louis van Gaal, or his desperation as he sits in a room in Istanbul and realises he cannot go through with a move to Fenerbahce that all parties have agreed on, or his doubts about the competition to be Germany's No1 for the 2010 World Cup, makes you stop for a moment and reassess the criticism of footballers we dole out so freely, as media and as fans.
There is clearly an important distinction to be made between Enke, whose illness cost him his life, and those in football who are experiencing setbacks. But it is not so terrible to give some thought to the pressure-cooker environment high level sportsmen exist within. Footballer X misses the latest in a series of sitters? Manager Y has lost the game, the dressing room, and quite possibly the plot? Referee Z flunks the critical decision in the game? In English football the default reaction is to mock, to berate, to intimidate. After reading Reng's book I have looked in the mirror and felt ashamed about some opinions I have dived into. It is so easy to rush to judgment, to make a cartoon villain of someone or vent spleen from a position of the supposed moral high ground.
Reng, who worked in England for several years, is interested to note the cultural differences in terms of relations between the players and the public. "The image of the footballer in England is just terrible at the moment," he says. "They are just seen like prats, like young people misbehaving. It is not as cliched in Germany. It is not the case that you automatically expect a footballer to have lost contact with reality. In fact it is quite the opposite. The number of footballers in the Bundesliga who have done [the German equivalent of] A-levels is higher than the national average. They are much better educated, and in general have a much more positive image and are treated respectfully."
Reng's book has been translated into English and Dutch, and we can only hope that the message that has filtered through German football has a wider spread.

From the website of The Guardian.
 
PLF said:
Who?

That sounds promising Gerd. Let me know if you find out there will be an English version.

I would've liked to read Phillip Lahm's CONTROVERSIAL book as well but I think that's in German only.
Click to expand...

Hey PLF, it's already out. And if you're hesitant to try bookdepository - don't be. It's a great service with free delivery. Ordered loads of books from Romania :)

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Life-Too-Short-Ronald-Reng/9780224091657

Yeah, Lahm's book seems to only be available in german.
 
i'm currently reading it and it's a great book. It gives so much more insight in Enke's thoughts, in football life and life in the dressing room.
Enke really seemed a nice guy. Very sensitive.
 
He was a very nice guy and turned out to be an outstanding keeper and Germany's finest around 2006-2007.


Thanks for the link and the suggestion Teddy. I'll look into it. :)
 
Does anybody knows what happened. I know now that he comitted suicide and that he left no note...
Has this something to do with football? There is cearly something wrong lately, or maybe there is some sort of awareness or coming out after Enke's suicide.
There was the burn out of Schalke 04's coach Rangnick.
These was the second GK of Hannover who had some sort of depression or burn out.
There is the suicide attempt by a German referee.
This weekend there was also a suicide attempt by a Belgian linesman.
And now Gary Speed, another person who apparently was very succesfull, a great carreer as football player and now good results as national coach of Wales...or is a carreer as coach the next best thing for football players?

PS: if Speed's suicide has nothing to do with football, i don't think it should be discussed.
PPS: the book about Enke is out in English now...you should read it. It is the best and most moving football book i've ever read.
 
There is a rumour that there was a newspaper that was going to publish an article about Speed revealing that he was homosexual.
 
I've heard that rumour too on a Welsh football message board, and I don't believe the article story at all, and just goes to show how low some of these sick hacks will go in a bid to sell newspapers. This particular rag that the article with the allegation is said to have originated from is one that I will decline to mention because I hate the tabloid a lot, but I'll give you a clue - the paper is as equally hated by Scousers as it is by us Welsh. The gutter press in the UK are way beyond the bounds of acceptable morality. No matter if this article was a complete 100% fabrication the damage it would have caused to Speed's reputation and the grief inflicted on him and his family would have been irreparable, but tragically the events of yesterday were even worse, and the reasons for Speed taking his own life will never be known.

I'm still in absolute shock at his death and many fellow Cymros are too. Welsh football is in deep mourning.
 
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It's a shame because Wales were really looking good wth him as manager.
 
Yep indeed we were, he had steered us from the depths of 117th in the FIFA World Rankings right up to the top 50, we won our last three games and 4 in the last 5. Even the loss to old rivals England was a close one that we could have easily drawn (Earnshaw's glaring miss).

I hope that whoever takes the job as the Welsh national team manager continues the good work that Speed did before his untimely death. Right now though talk of Speed's successor is nowhere near many people's minds. Many of the players are still in shock and have vowed to do their best in Gary's honour. Only on the Saturday just gone he was talking about the World Cup qualifying campaign coming up, it would be very poignant if we do qualify where most certainly it'll be dedicated to him.
 
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