Former Liverpool midfielder Jason McAteer was moved to tears as he recounted his battle with mental health following his retirement. After hanging up his boots in 2007, McAteer revealed in his 2017 autobiography that he grappled with depression and suicidal thoughts post his football career.
The 53 year old recently joined ex-Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre on an episode of beIN SPORTS’ Tales, Tears and Trophies podcast. In a poignant moment, McAteer shared how he once prevented himself from taking his own life and expressed how much he misses playing since retiring.
“I just had no purpose, mate, it was no structure,” the former Liverpool star confided to Silvestre. “The TV stuff, I mean I wasn’t working every day of the week.
“It would be like maybe one show a week or maybe two shows a week. It was very sporadic. Days and days and days with nothing to do, yeah.
“And I got to the tunnel, that tunnel between the Wirral and Liverpool. My child, who I was keeping this relationship with under difficult circumstances, lived on the other side of this tunnel.
“And I was driving through the tunnel, and it upsets me, because it takes me back to this moment because I can feel it. And as you go out the daylight into the tunnel light, it’s like this kind of light.
“I remember thinking to myself, I’m just going to swing the car here and just end it. That’s how easy it is. And I was fighting myself not to do it, fighting going ‘do it, do it, do it, do it do it’. And I’d be like, ‘no’. ‘Do it’. ‘No’. And I’d be fighting the steering wheel and I remember coming towards the end of the tunnel and it was like the daylight was opening up.
“And I remember coming out the tunnel thinking ‘thank God, just thank God’. And I went to get my little boy, because I always used to take him to the pictures. I took him to the pictures and I drove home.”
“I got to my mum’s. My mum lived 10 minutes around the corner and I knocked on a door and I remember just saying, ‘I can’t do it anymore. That’s it, that’s it’. And I was just at that point.
“Oh man, it was tough. Just like everything had gone… I don’t half miss it. I miss… I miss everything about playing. I miss it. Yeah, I just miss it. Just like running, just running out, just running out, just free on a footy pitch. No problems.
“I need to sort myself out here. No problems, nothing in life is a problem for that 90 minutes. It’s just the best. It’s just the best.”
McAteer’s career saw him join Liverpool from Bolton in 1995. He went on to make 139 appearances for the Reds, scoring six goals and providing 18 assists, before moving to Blackburn in 1999.
