Category: Themes

I first saw ‘I Am The Secret Footballer’ last Easter in a bookshop in Norwich but I only just got a copy of it (for Christmas). I was really looking forward to reading this supposed insight into the real world of top-flight professional football but I found the book somewhat disappointing, largely because the anonymous author really comes across as being obnoxious and arrogant. A lot of the book is taken up with stories of how, with the vast amount of money that he earned, everything was possible – there are tales of trips around the world, always involving expensive restaurants, champagne and women – but The Secret Footballer always try to slightly distance himself from the worst excesses (but rather unconvincingly). In the final chapter we find out that he is pretty much out of money and depressed but it is impossible to have much empathy with his situation given what has happened before.

Ultimately this is all rather shallow and superficial. It tells you little that you couldn’t guess at and, perhaps because of the anonymity, doesn’t allow any real connection to be made with the author. I’d be fascinated to know who he is though…

Last week I finished reading “A Life Too Short” – Ronald Reng’s award-winning biography of the German goalkeeper Robert Enke. Enke was a top young goalkeeper in German football (at Carl Zeiss Jena and Borussia Moenchengladbach) before moving abroad to play in Portugal (Benfica), Spain (Barcelona), Turkey (Fenerbahce) and Tenerife before returning to Germany to play for Hanover 96. Whilst the footballing aspects of Enke’s life are interesting, they are really just the backdrop over which Reng describes Enke’s battle with depression – always simmering away but triggered most violently by the way he was treated during his time at Barcelona and his subsequent, rapidly curtailed, loan move to Turkey. Enke’s story is a cycle of ups and downs – (surprisingly) up at Benfica, down at Barcelona and further down at Fenerbahce, then slowly and surely back up again at Tenerife and Hanover before a final desperate spiral into irreperable self-doubt and darkness abruptly ended on the day that Enke walked in from of a train to end his life at the age of 32.

As noted above, this is an award-winning book, but it is not the writing as such, but the candid way that Enke’s life and his inner struggle is recounted (using his diaries which he kept so that one day he could write a book about his problems) – the story of the book, that makes it fit for an award. Reading about Enke’s career and home-life (“happily” married but losing a daughter, Lara, early in her life and adopting another, Leila, not long before he took his own), and in particular about the peculiar trials and pressures of being a goalkeeper, gives a sense that it is perhaps not surprising that even a talented top-level sportsman can suffer as Enke did. But the “story” and the issues are certainly transferable. There is one particular section, that describes how Enke felt about his work and the expectations that others placed on him, that seemed frighteningly like my own feelings about my work at times.

There’s no post-life analysis in “A Life Too Short”. The book tells the story of this tragic, flawed life and you know the way it ends from the outset. But then the end comes. The dark cloud descends and finally the pain is over, and no-one who is left behind, whether they knew Robert Enke or just heard his story or read the book, can really make sense of the life that was too short, but, sadly, in terms of its inner struggle, not at all uncommon.

I’ve just finished reading Somerset and ex-England cricketer Marcus Trescothick’s autobiography “Coming Back To Me”. I don’t tend to read many biographies/autobiographies but as a keen follower of Somerset dating back to my teen-age years and an admirer of what Trescothick has achieved as captain and with the bat in recent years this one has always been on my list of books to read. But in truth, the main reason I was interested in reading it was because Trescothick is perhaps now best known because of his dramatic returns from overseas tours with England due to severe bouts of depression and separation anxiety (from his family). This is a topic which fascinates me and I have often thought that it is mad to expect any individual to compete at the highest level with almost no breaks in the schedule and with long spells overseas away from home. So, really, it is amazing that a lot more players haven’t cracked in the way that Trescothick did.

I found his descriptions of how he felt during his darkest moments particularly interesting, having myself experienced a few spells that were not so different to the ones he describes and also his account of the typical person who suffers depression which was somewhat like reading a description of myself. Lucky, was a word that came to my mind, when reading his book and reflecting on a couple of my own past experiences…

I think he can only be admired, not so much for writing the book, but for getting to grips with the idea that his happiness and that of his family are more important than living up to the expectations of the professional game and society’s norm for a top-level sportsman. You can only do so much and the key is to ensure that the things you do are the right ones, based on the right values.