Depression and burn out in football

But why would one want to commit suicide if they were said to be gay?

I guess cause within the football world its ''embarassing'' ''looked down on''...men sports etc..

Other gay footballer justin fashanu killed himself cause gay stuff.

But by this regard every gay man should be suicidal? Or just gay footballers?
 
I'm very curious to know what really happened with Speedo! Why would he do this? He seemed like the guy who has it all! I'm shocked! And no note? Nothing strange about it? No homocide? Why then? why leave his family a month before X-mas through suicide? This is all very strange!

Some say he appeared on a footy show the day before his supposed suicide looking like his usual self. Cool, confident, composed.

I wonder what really happened... what was going through his head?
 
http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/12010/7339449/Speed-s-family-grateful-for-support

Look at the comments from McAllister and former team-mates and close friends like Robbie Savage.

That's what's weird about all this! There were NEVER, ANY signs of anxiety, trouble, despair or anything with Gary. He was his usual self. One of the few guys universally admired!

I loved watching him in Newcastle in particular! that was his peak I think! Him and Shearer were awesome and so consistent! Even later on during his Bolton days, he was older and not as good anymore but still very useful and experienced and became captain.

At least with someone like Robert Enke, it was later revealed that he had long suffered from depression and anxiety and different problems which had gone on and off over the years. But with Speed, no one right up until the DAY of his death had seen a single sign of what was to come...

That's why I'm fascinated by this shocking tragic story! What led to it... was it an accident? How can you kill yourself accidentally though? Had he long planned this?

And about the homosexuality thing, until further evidence, I simply don't buy it. For one thing, he was the last guy you'd think was maybe gay and he's long been married to a beautiful wife and is a family man with children! We'll find out more hopefully though over the coming days.
 
he had no reason to kill himself basicly..nothing is worth this :/

it might have been an accident.. to bad nothing will bring him back
 
Last edited:
This guy was universally appreciated.
He seemed solid as a rock to me. An intelligent person with a strong personality.
IMO football players should be role models, but few are. This guy was a role model.
I think it's important that somebody finds out what happened, of course for his family but also for the football world. His death has shocked lots of people, it was an issue even here in Belgium. Our national coach was flabbergasted since last week he had a meeting with Speed (and other national coaches) to negotiate the playing scheme for the WC qualifiers...Speed was his usual self: a real gentleman, self-assured.

PS: the book about Enke yesterday won the award for the best sports book of the year (it's a very weird timing)...it's not only the best sports book of the year...IMO it's the best book i've read this year (and i read a lot, at least one book a week).
 
Eloquent and sensitive story does justice to Robert Enke and his illness

Award-winning book looks at a sportsman ravaged by depression and self-doubt
  • <LI class=share-links sizset="59" sizcache="6">
Robert-Enke-007.jpg
Robert Enke had to cope with the loss of his first daughter as well as depression. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

When the announcement was made on Monday afternoon that Ronald Reng had won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for A Life Too Short – The Tragedy of Robert Enke, the biography of his friend, the former Benfica, Barcelona, Hannover and Germany goalkeeper who killed himself in 2009, the poignancy that such a distressing, affecting and important work had achieved its due recognition the day after the death of Gary Speed was palpably raw.
Two of the previous three winners of sports publishing's oldest and richest prize, Marcus Trescothick's Coming Back to Me and Brian Moore's Beware of the Dog, were fearless accounts of the ravages that self-doubt and depression can wreak on elite sportsmen. Reng's acutely observed book completes a trilogy of required reading not only for those who have been flippant and unsympathetic to the issue of mental health among well‑rewarded professionals in the past.
Reng had sporadically covered Enke's performances during the early part of the goalkeeper's career with Borussia Mönchengladbach and Benfica but the two developed a friendship when both were living in Barcelona in 2002. Reng had co-written a superb book, The Keeper of Dreams, chronicling the fortunes of another goalkeeper Lars Leese, whose transfer to Barnsley in 1997 catapulted him from German amateur football into the Premier League. It portrays his shock at the prevailing English football culture with candour, wit and a growing sense of incredulity.
Enke admired Reng's work and when the author bashfully tried to deflect his compatriot's praise by saying they should write another together, the goalkeeper latched on to the idea with an unshakeable conviction. "Today I know why the biography was so close to his heart," Reng writes. "When his goalkeeping career was over, he would finally be able to talk about his illness. In our achievement‑orientated society a goalkeeper, the last bastion in defence, can't be a depressive. So Robert summoned up a huge amount of strength to keep his depression secret. He locked himself away in his illness. So I will now have to tell his story without him."
It would be glib to suggest that Enke's treatment by Barcelona was the beginning of his illness – he had suffered from fear and insecurity before – but his experience at the Camp Nou did become a pivotal point in his sense of what was subsequently diagnosed as "alienation".
He made his debut for Barcelona in a Copa del Rey match against third‑division Novelda after a troubling series of training sessions where he found it difficult to adapt to the unfamiliar distance between himself and the remarkably high line adopted by Barça's back-four which was an integral part of Louis van Gaal's coaching philosophy. He had already been unnerved by Van Gaal in a telephone conversation when transfer negotiations over his move from Benfica had hit a hitch and he asked for some reassurance that he was still wanted. "I don't even know you," the manager said, a perception, or lack of it, shared by Barcelona's coaches who seemed baffled by Enke's preference for using his hands instead of his feet.
When Barcelona were defeated 3-2 in the cup game, the club's captain Frank de Boer laid the blame for two of the goals on Enke, later claiming he had been misquoted but he never apologised to the goalkeeper. "He was thrown to the lions," says Victor Valdés, Barça's current No1 whose emergence that season kept Enke on the sidelines.
He played twice more for the first team in meaningless Champions League group ties and found himself gradually ostracised by the Dutch coaching staff. His wife Teresa and agent Jörg Neblung attempted to help him snap out of his "dark mood". "I was so preoccupied with myself that I'd closed myself off to the world," Enke wrote in his notebook and no amount of well-intentioned invitations to play golf or enjoy the company of friends helped. Finally he was persuaded to see a psychotherapist who said Robert was suffering from "a deep melancholy of a kind many people experience after a bereavement, after being fired from a job, or after being bullied".
In traditional sports biographies, indeed sports lives, the way in which Enke rebuilt his career back in the Bundesliga with Hannover and fulfilled his youthful promise by becoming Germany's goalkeeper, would be interpreted as a kind of redemption. Knowing how Enke's life concluded, however, the interior story told so vividly and movingly by his father and wife, his colleagues and, most resonantly of all, his own words provide a stark contrast with the expected consequences of success.
The stress of maintaining his position and a fear of mockery and losing the confidence of his coaches would return intermittently and heighten his anxiety. "Robert had this way of thinking, that if I'm not the best, I must be the worst," his father, Dirk says. "And that's a fundamental aberration."
The friendships he struck had clear boundaries and no one, apart from his family, knew of the turmoil he suffered. The couple had to cope with the loss of their first daughter, Lara, with a heart defect at the age of two in 2006 and though they subsequently and joyously adopted Laila two years later, the account of Lara's life and death and the hope they treasured after seemingly successful operations makes you want to weep for what his soul had to endure. All the while he painted on his brave face in public until that November day in 2009 when he stepped in front of a train and the secret he guarded so gallantly was laid bare by the bereavement of a loving family and the brave determination to comfort other sufferers.
"I admired the author immensely," says John Gaustad, the chairman of the judging panel since the award's inauguration 23 years ago. "It is a brilliant piece of work, understated in a sense. He uses very few adjectives and tells it with great restraint and a sensitivity and dignity for its subject. It could not have been done better."
"It would be too much to hope that the illness will be understood all of a sudden," writes Reng. "But perhaps this book will do something to help depressives find more sympathy and understanding." Consolation must be scant for an author who wishes he had never had to write this story in these circumstances. If solace is to be found, though, it is in that he has done Enke and his illness such justice.

'He had that ability to appear in control'

Extracts from Ronald Reng's book about Robert Enke

"In the autumn of 1998, when Borussia Mönchengladbach couldn't stop making mistakes and had a seven-game run of losses, Robert turned himself into an individual sportsman. The loneliness of the goalkeeper has often been exaggerated and lamented in literature, but for the goalkeeper in a declining team, loneliness is a blessing. He plays his own game and finds victories in defeats … There is little that moves the football‑going public as much as a rookie goalkeeper among hard men; he's celebrated for saves that experienced goalkeepers barely notice"

"For the first time in ages, he felt inwardly how he seemed outwardly: now he was also considerate and sympathetic to himself. The narrow‑minded eagerness of youth had made way for a healthy ambition; the hunger young sportsmen have, their total focus on being the best, had made way for a certain serenity. He had often wondered what it would be like to go through life with blinkers on, absolutely convinced about himself and his work. Perhaps then he would have been a better goalkeeper. But maybe, he said to himself now, it wasn't that important after all to be the very best goalkeeper"

"A goalkeeper is trained all his life to give no sign of despair, disappointment or fear. That ability always to appear in control of things helped Robert to live on when depression took hold of him. And that gift became his fate when the illness led him to seek his own death: he concealed his intentions so well that no one could help him any longer"
 
pes4lyfe said:
Other gay footballer justin fashanu killed himself cause gay stuff.
Click to expand...

No he didn't, Justin was "out" a long, long time before he killed himself, he committed suicide after an accusation of sexual assault in the US and he believed he was going to be assumed guilty by everyone and thus bring shame on his friends/family.

For such a serious subject as this you should check your facts before posting or just stay out of the thread altogether.
 
Placebo said:
No he didn't, Justin was "out" a long, long time before he killed himself, he committed suicide after an accusation of sexual assault in the US and he believed he was going to be assumed guilty by everyone and thus bring shame on his friends/family.

For such a serious subject as this you should check your facts before posting or just stay out of the thread altogether.
Click to expand...

I was correct I said gay stuff.

I didnt say cause he was gay.

It was possible gay sexual assualt charges.

Loadsa footballers get sexual assault charges these days, its the norm and they dotn top themesleves.

however, add in ''gay'' and I guess this is the sucidal factor.
 
Nice posts Gerd.

Now I have to read that book especially since it's been translated to English.

As far as Speedo goes, you're absolutely right. That's why everyone's so shocked and wants answers.

It has been proven that it was indeed a suicide for sure though right?
Even then, they don't say how... did he slit his wrists? Did he drown himself in a bath ? How?
 
BobbyBox said:
I thought they said he hung himself?
Click to expand...

That is also what i heard.
I'm sure it's a matter of time before we know what happened. And if it is relevant, then why not a book about Speed...not that i want sensation. I want a book like that about Enke or about the cricket player who suffered from despressions or the rugby player who was abused as a child.

Books like that show the dark side of sports. All those super heroes are sometimes far from super heroes...we forget that basically they are people like you and me. That's why i also like books about sports "failure". Of course Speed and Enke did not fail...they were successfull. But i'm thinking about the fantastic book about the national team of Liechtenstein and their qualification campaign for the 1998 WC. This is IMO one of the best football books ever ("Stamping grounds"). Since then i'm a Lichtenstein fan...in the paper i always search for their results.

Oh and if you read that book you will agree that that is not about failure either...their match against Spain in that qualification tournament was even one big triumph...even if they got trashed. But you should read the book to see why.
 
Look if he hung himself, he had the reason.. if he was alone - let´s use word normally hanged - (sorry for the term) and it look like something he did alone, then he definetly had a reason to do it.. if he didn´t want to share it with anyone, it´s his choice... There is always something..people can look normally and in reality they are thinking of suicide... not even friends and close family know it..

The suspicious thing is why? why he did it.. we might find out, or we might never know... the second is very bad, becouse we could prevent it happen in future if we knew why it happend obviously..
 
Remembering Gary Speed
star-left-on.gif
star-right-on.gif
star-left-on.gif
star-right-on.gif
star-left-on.gif
star-right-on.gif
star-left-on.gif
star-right-on.gif
star-left-on.gif
star-right-on.gif

Monday 28 November 2011 13:26


speed470.jpg


The Premier League Legends were in Barbados this June to play in a 7-a-side tournament and meet old friends and foes over a dark rum and coke.
I was there to work. Well, sort of. When you tell your wife that you “have to go to Barbados with ‘the footballers’ for a job” you can imagine the reaction. Work involved getting 16 interviews done over five days on the beautiful Caribbean island. Some interviews would be easy as I knew the players, others less so. I didn’t know Gus Poyet, Gianfranco Zola, Frank Leboeuf, Alan Shearer or Gary Speed and needed to speak to all for FourFourTwo magazine.
A few days into the trip and the players were leaving the hotel at 5pm for a bus to the stadium. I got to the reception at 4pm and waited. The players started to pass by. They had nothing else to do and many stopped to make small talk. Most knew I was a journalist, which could warrant a blanking, but they liked FourFourTwo. Besides, I’d been invited by a player and was considered ‘safe’ and ‘trustworthy.’
“What if I meet a bird on the beach then you pop up with a camera?” asked one single player to a tabloid journalist. But even he knew that journalist and it was said half in jest. The mood was good.
The ex-pros also inevitably gossiped about what X or Y was up too. There were as many negative stories as positive ones. Divorce, gambling, financial problems. It’s not all milk and honey just because you used to be a football star.
I needed to speak to some of the Chelsea and Newcastle lads, that’s why I sat in reception waiting. The Happy Mondays might have done it, but returning from a work trip in the Caribbean with no work was not an option.
I saw Gary Speed approach through the palms. I’d always admired him from afar as a player. He scored well on the grapevine too. He wasn’t a big-time knob. He’d looked after himself after finishing playing, his good looks hadn’t faded and he still dressed well. He was also the current manager of Wales, more reason to interview him.
You sometimes think that you know famous people through their public persona. You don’t. So never take anything for granted when you ask a straightforward question.
I told Speed that I was from FourFourTwo and that I’d like 15 minutes of his time to talk about tactics at some point over the next two days. He said it would be fine and we arranged to meet at breakfast the next day. He was busy having breakfast with Shearer the following morning so I didn’t bother him, but I did see him later on. He said meet in an hour. He wasn’t there in an hour.
He turned up half-an-hour later, apologised for being late and then said that we should do the interview in his room rather than a public area. I walked with him to his room and made small talk.
Mentioned that I’d interviewed Danny Collins, one of his Wales players, a month before. Collins had fallen out with the Wales manager John Toshack before being recalled by Speed for the Euro 2012 qualifiers.
“I’ve really enjoyed playing under Speed,” enthused Collins. “The training is great and he’s really professional. I also respect the fact that he’s played over 500 Premier League games. If we can get our full squad out – which we need – then I think we can give it a good go at reaching the 2014 World Cup finals. I hope to still be playing then. I was a late starter so I’m not ready to give up yet.”

Speed reckoned Danny was “a good lad.” Such phrases oil and uphold reputations within football.
We got to his room and both sat on a sofa by the side of his bed. He wore an understated Rolex and a Ralph Lauren polo. I put a tape recorder between us and spoke about tactics for seven minutes, specifically scoring from a free-kick from near the touchline, in line with the edge of the 18-yard box. He was serious and went into precise detail.
Then we talked about what to say to players when they are underdogs, before a match and at half-time. One passage stuck out, with Speed saying: “Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t work hard – that’s what I tell my players. The best players, the most talented ones, usually work harder than anyone. We have to better that work rate.”
That philosophy was paying off for Wales.
Then we did an interview, called: ‘At The End of the Day’. I looked back through it when I heard the terrible news of his death on Sunday. Some lines stand out a mile.
“I was heartbroken the day I left Newcastle, but football breaks your heart all the time,” Speed said.
Asked for his proudest moment in football, he said: “Being captain of my country, Wales.”
He still regretted not taking that penalty against Romania in 1993 and said: “If I had missed then it would be easier for me to live with it…”
There were more questions, like: “One thing you couldn’t live without?”
“My kids,” replied Speed. “I’ve got two at 14 and 12.”
The final question was: ‘What item do you cherish most?’ Sometimes footballers go onto auto-pilot in interviews. They talk clichés, niceties and nonsense. Speed paused for a good 30 seconds.
“Certainly nothing material,” he replied. “I don’t even know where my championship medal is from Leeds. So I’d say family. We’re an item and they mean everything to me.”
I thanked him for his time and wished him well, only pausing to remind him that he’d ruined the summer of an 18-year-old in 1992 by winning the league with Leeds. He smiled and said: “I think you’ve seen your team win enough. That was my only trophy in football.”
I left the room with a positive impression of Gary Speed being a well-rounded individual who had made a great success of his life through a combination of hard work, dedication and talent. No different from the many people who have worked with him in football and are likewise stunned and saddened by his death.

Blog from FourFourTwo's Andy Mitten
 
:(

His impression of Speed is pretty much exactly what I and I think most of us thought of him.

He'll be greatly missed! A true EPL legend!
 
mind stops..i just can´t understand why..? he had family, life, fame, money.. what happend god damn? what else a man could want in his life than this three things to achieve?
 
well, i supose the unhapyness being the motive for his suiccide, but what´s unhappy on the fact he had family, fame, money, respect...? he could do whatever he wanted...
 
Very good article.
He makes some good points.
The Belgian linesmen's suicide attempt had nothing to do with football but with the separation from his girlfriend...he was inspired however by the suicide attempt of the German ref.

I don't want to condemn Joey Barton, i can see his point when he says that suicide is selfish, but i don't agree with him. I think as a human being you have the moral life to stop out of this world. Nobody asked you if you agree to be born (this sounds silly, i know). Of course it is harder and seems more selfish if you have a family and consider this family the most important thing in your life (what Speed said in the FourFourTwo interview, but did he mean it....isn't that what we are supposed to say as husband and father?). But maybe Speed came to the conclusion that he had nothing to offer (anymore) to his family. This is almost certainly a wrong conclusion, but maybe that was is honest view...
The book of Enke shows that his wife thought that things were getting better a few days before his suicide. Enke went with her to her favourite pastry shop, something he hadn't done for a long time. Afterwards she realised that for the first time since long he was happy because he had made his decision...
All this moves me because of the suicide of one of my best friends' daughter. My friend is a very succesfull and intelligent person. He is Belgian ambassador in Cuba (a dream position in one of the most beautifull countries in the world), but on december 6th 2010, his daughter (18 years, the age when everything seems possible...if i had the choice to return to a period in my life, it would be that age) decided that she had enough of it...nobody understood why. She had depressions since her childhood, but when being in Cuba she seemed happy for the first time since long...at the moment nobody understood...at a moment she finally seemed at peace with herself, she decided to commit suicide...One could call it a selfish act seeing the enormous grief her parents and her brother suffered (and are still suffering). I don't agree...but i don't understand either.

Sorry for this personal touch.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom