Tragedy of goalkeeper Robert Enke's secret struggle

So simply playing the numbers game, there must be professional sportsmen and women who suffer. Yet we rarely hear about them.

That is what makes Reng’s book so powerful. He paints a vivid picture of the way in which the world of sport has few resources to cope with any kind of mental frailty – and what a terrible burden it was for Enke to have a talent which left him exposed to persistent and gnawing anxiety.

In one passage, Reng describes the goalkeeper’s feelings when he was playing for Barcelona, and was picked for a cup game against third division Novelda. “He could only lose ... If everything went as planned, Barça would win 3-0 or 4-0 and no one would mention the goalkeeper. If it went wrong, he would get the blame.”

In fact, Enke becomes so paralysed with fright that he makes a mistake, Novelda win 3-2, and Frank de Boer screams at him from the centre circle. “Robert Enke stood there, his face pale, eyes lowered and didn’t say a word.”

It is almost too painful to read the humiliation and self-doubt that followed. Everyone thought they were behaving well and professionally, but no one actually identifies the root of Enke’s problems.

But in the brutally honest and competitive world of top-level football, there seems to be little room for kindness and understanding so he hid his feelings, disguising them under an aura of calm – until he succumbed to absolute clinical depression, which left him unable to play, unable even to get out of bed.

Yet, as Reng points out, it isn’t football that is to blame. There is no correlation between depression, which is an illness that can strike at any time, and outside circumstances which may or may not provoke it.

Enke has his first bout of severe depression in 2003 after his unhappy time at Barça but then, in the midst of truly tragic circumstances when his first daughter is born with a disabling disease and later dies, he refinds his form and his focus.

And it is at the height of his playing success, when he was expected to go to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup with the German team, that his “black dog” returns.

Reng writes: “The first clinical depression had hit him when he felt worthless with FC Barcelona as a misunderstood goalkeeper. But this time he could see no similar trigger. He never did find a clear answer to the question of why the black thoughts returned that summer and no one will ever be able to give him an answer.”

This is the haunting question. Enke had a loving wife, a good psychiatrist, friends who wanted to help him. Yet when the German team’s sports psychologist asked him if he could be suffering from depression, he denied it. Months later he was dead.

Reading Reng’s account, it is impossible not to wonder whether there are other sporting figures who are suffering the same agonies as Enke – and hiding them, because to admit to them is to acknowledge something that is still seen as a stigma.

As he says in conclusion, after Enke’s death: “It would be too much to hope that the illness will be better understood all of a sudden, but perhaps this book will do something to help depressives find more sympathy and understanding.”

After reading it, I felt I not only understood depression a little better but also determined never again to believe the myth of the sporting superman, impervious to criticism or pressure.

If we allow our sportsmen and women space to admit weakness, then a tragedy such as Enke’s could in future be avoided.

новинки кинематографа
Машинная вышивка, программа для вышивания, Разработка макета в вышивальной программе, Авторский дизайн