Footballers are human too.

Gary Speed and Robert Enke are the most notable footballing tragedies to hit the footballing sphere. Suffering from underlying depression that not even their families noticed. Both tragically committed suicide.

It’s almost been a year since Gary Speed took his own life, with Robert Enke’s death coming to 3 years now but as the footballing world still comes to terms after what happened, we as fans, officials, Chairmen and managers still are oblivious to how some suffer in silence. A day before Speed committed suicide, he was on Football Focus. I watched the weekly instalment that day and as a viewer I saw nothing to force me into thinking he suffered depression or harbor any other suicidal thoughts. “What does he have to be depressed about? He has money to burn and has a family”, I hear some people say. But what we don’t understand is how it feels to be a professional footballer or coach, like Enke and Speed. The pressures you go through, day-to-day, match by match, season by season; the pressure is uncomprehending to us as normal people.

Football, like many other contact sports, is a game of egos. Some trying to defend their ego and some trying to attack others egos’. Testosterone flying around like birds in the sky. Each man trying to prove they’re as macho as the next average Joe.With so many emotions running through players and managers alike, there is reason to be sympathetic to the higher earners. Just like us they are human and just like us they have emotions. Chanting songs like, ‘it should have been you, shot in Angola, it should have been you’ [to Adebayor], can turn a man crazy. In an age where we can get treatment for anything, there still seems to be a taboo around mental illness in sport. Senior officials will scoff ‘there’s no such problem’ but the alarming case is that there is a problem and a huge problem at best.

One case that I have seen is the Darren Eadie case. Once a £3.5 million man, bought to former Premier League outfit Leicester City by Martin O’Neil turned depressive. A niggling little knee injury turned into a career-ending injury. So bad was his depression, that he couldn’t even go into the sea with his children and would start to panic for no reason whatsoever. A man that had dedicated his life to football, lost it as his body failed on him. Many players that retire always wonder what they will turn to next. In many cases, they go to punditry or coaching but for the rest they are left with nothing but pure fantasies of what could have been.

The main problem in football dealing with depression, is a societal aspect. As society expects us to act in a certain manner and behave accordingly. The society in football does not change this stigma. “MAN UP! GROW SOME F******G BALLS!” It’s a question of masculinity hence why the many undetected cases of depression in football. Take a moment the next time you curse a manager or player and think what if that was your dad, brother or uncle. Depression can lead to suicide and football knows it. Some deal with it differently. George Best and Paul Gascoigne turning to alcohol. Justin Fashanu, a gay footballer, Robert Enke and Gary Speed tragically turning to suicide.

All boys and men know that the number one rule in football is to not show your weakness. Attack any flaw that we see in our opponents. Brutal. War-zone? Not quite. What we do know but choose to hide, is that footballers do suffer in silence. All of 50,000.

Petrit Loshaj.