Anthony Knockaert is the latest high-profile player to reveal depression and challenge the stigma of mental health

The Brighton midfielder has opened up on the torment he went through after the death of his father and going through divorce weeks before Brighton’s first Premier League campaign began

Anthony Knockaert has opened up on his struggles with depression (Reuters)

After his father died in November 2016, Anthony Knockaert travelled home to Leers, a tiny French town close to the Belgian border. He was told his manager Chris Hughton and captain Bruno would be flying out to attend the funeral, so he was surprised and overwhelmed when he saw the full Brighton team arrive at the church. “I still don’t know even now how to thank them,” Knockaert later reflected.

Hughton revealed that he had sensed his midfielder needed the support of his teammates. “He’s quite an emotional young man and we knew how close he was to his father,” he explained in an interview with the Guardian, and so perhaps it is no surprise, when Knockaert was struggling with depression last season, that he felt comfortable speaking to his captain and later his manager as the club helped him to recover.

This week Knockaert opened up on the torment he went through after the double blow of losing his father and going through divorce the following summer, weeks before Brighton’s first Premier League campaign began.

“My wife left last summer during the pre-season, for some reason, and I just realised that I wouldn’t be with my little boy anymore,” he said. “When I lost my dad, the most important thing for me was my wife and my baby. They were the people that I needed and six months later, I realised that they weren’t here anymore and just went through a depression.

“I didn’t see it coming. The first month, August, I was sad but I was thinking, ‘come on, you will be back’. In September and October it was just getting worse and worse until I had to say something to the club. I spoke with Bruno last December and said ‘listen, I can’t keep going like this’. And Bruno went to see the manager, the manager came to talk to me and said we are going to get you a counsellor, and since it happened I’ve started to be a bit better and better, she helped me a lot. I saw her for a good few months and since then I’m really happy again.”

Anthony Knockaert is a popular member of the Brighton squad (Getty)

It is to the credit of Bruno, Hughton and Brighton as a club that Knockaert felt he could open up about the innermost thoughts and fears which were troubling his soul. He is the latest in a string of high profile players to be movingly candid about their mental wellbeing, like Tottenham’s Danny Rose and Barcelona’s Andre Gomes, who prove that even the wealthy and successful, particularly playing a sport in which the adrenaline-filled highs and very public lows intensify the higher you climb, are not immune to emotional distress.

“That was the worst for me,” Knockaert said of the public scrutiny he faced. “To see some comments, some people, some media, saying I’m not at my level, I’m a Championship player. It was really hard to take, because I knew there was a reason. I was just not able to tell why and say to people what happened.”

Mental health issues permeate every part of the game, like Billy Kee at Accrington Stanley who has spoken openly about his bipolar diagnosis, and Notts County’s Matt Tootle who has used social media to reveal the devastating effects of his decade-long gambling addiction. Recently-retired players are particularly susceptible to depression, with more than a third facing divorce within 12 months and similar numbers facing bankruptcy within five years. But high-profile players are the ones with power to forge enlightenment in sport and in wider society, which is why the stories of Premier League names like Knockaert are so important in breaking the stigma.

“You don’t really take it seriously until it happens to you, then you realise what life is about because you are going through the worst period of your life. That’s why it was important in my eyes to let other people know, if they are going through stuff like this, to help them, to let them know there is no shame and to talk to someone because you never know what can happen in your life. One day you can be successful and one day you can become no-one and life can turn like this (clicks fingers) and switch on like this and switch off like this.

“It was important for me to give this message and obviously even more to help people, if it happens in their life, and let them know there’s no shame to go and talk to someone.”