Opinion: Paul Pogba's depression discussion should force change in how we view sports stars
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Published 23/03/2022 at 16:18 GMT
"All top athletes go through these moments but few talk about it. Inevitably, you will feel it [depression] in your body, in your head, and you may have a month, even a year, where you are not well." Paul Pogba has opened up about his struggles with mental health and Ibrahim Mustapha looks at when we should temper our demands of sports stars as a result.
Manchester United's French midfielder Paul Pogba is pictured during the English Premier League football match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford in Manchester, north west England, on March 12, 202
Image credit: Getty Images
Paul Pogba is the latest big-name athlete to speak candidly about mental health and depression while trying to perform at an elite level.
The Manchester United midfielder has opened up while on international duty with France revealing his struggles began during a testing period at Old Trafford.
"I’ve had depression in my career, but we don't talk about it,” he told Le Figaro. "Sometimes you don’t know you are, you just want to isolate yourself, be alone. These are unmistakable signs.
"Personally, it started when I was with Jose Mourinho at United. You ask yourself questions, you wonder if you are at fault because you have never experienced these moments in your life.”
The Frenchman was one of Mourinho’s first signings at Old Trafford in 2016 but things evidentially turned sour between the pair, culminating in a training ground disagreement that was caught by the cameras in the weeks leading up to the Portuguese manager’s sacking in 2018.
Pogba’s time at United hasn’t exactly been one of glittering success with injuries and indifferent form, as well as very vocal pronouncements from his agent Mino Raiola about his client wanting to leave the club.
Add that to United's continued on-pitch failings, and the club’s record signing is often seen as a lightning rod for criticism when things go wrong.
There is a long-standing internet meme featuring Sky Sports pundit Graeme Souness which captures the Liverpool legend snarling, mid-rant with the radial blur effect around his head indicating his anger.
The image is almost always captioned with a tongue-in-cheek criticism of Pogba based on the perceived heavy-handed take Souness can be accused of when discussing the player on TV. Souness and other pundits have been accused of targeting Pogba unfairly.
Pogba’s off-field actions also regularly come in for scrutiny, with his dress sense, hairstyles and general jovial nature on social media often used as a stick to beat him with if his performances aren’t deemed up to scratch.
It’s almost as if his character comes under attack if he isn’t delivering perfection on the pitch every single time.
And while the spotlight does often fall on Pogba, he isn’t the only one to face such criticisms as his fellow United players have discovered just this week.
Off the back of their Champions League exit to Atletico Madrid, players were presumably given time off ahead of their next league match against Leicester on April 2nd - a full 17-day gap.
However, after players – and manager – were pictured attending concerts and other sporting events, former Red Devil Gary Neville launched into a tirade calling them ‘tone deaf’ and suggesting they ‘lie low’.
In his interview, Pogba poignantly pointed out that footballers are “not superheroes, but only human beings” which may or may not have been an indirect response to Neville’s rant.
A poor performance shouldn’t require locking yourself away from society, nor should failure invite the levels of criticism and abuse that seems to flow so freely these days.
A video circulating recently showed Pogba's United team-mate Marcus Rashford reacting to being heckled by his own supporters after the Atleti defeat, prompting the England forward to feel the need to explain his actions on social media when he probably wasn’t in the wrong.
A further inescapable fact is that Pogba, Rashford and others are bombarded with abuse on social media if they perform poorly - a lot of the time, the abuse being of a racist nature.
Away from football, tennis star Naomi Osaka recently broke down at Indian Wells after suffering abuse from a member of the crowd.
Osaka has been very vocal about her own mental health issues in the past highlighting the kind of pressure top level athletes face to be the best.
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Paul Pogba
Image credit: Getty Images
Fellow tennis star Nick Kyrgios has also spoken about 'dark periods' while snooker legends Ronnie O'Sullivan and Mark Selby have also recently spoken out about their struggles.
"All top athletes go through these moments but few talk about it," Pogba added. "Inevitably, you will feel it [depression] in your body, in your head, and you may have a month, even a year, where you are not well.
"But you don't have to say it. In any case publicly."
Thankfully, Pogba and others have started speaking publicly and these admissions ought to get us as fans and observers to re-assess what we can reasonably expect and apparently ‘demand’ from sports stars when we are unaware of what is going on under the surface.
Like Pogba says, being good at sport doesn’t make you a superhero and perhaps there requires a little more empathy and understanding that people in these positions can suffer like anybody else.
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