É 1991 e um jovem Mickey Bennett está surfando na crista de uma onda.

A pacey winger, he is already a crowd favourite among the Charlton Athletic faithful. He has just returned from an England under-20s tour of Brazil. A call-up to the senior international squad could soon be on the cards. He’s also just bought himself a new flat.

Life couldn’t be better.

Bennett tem 20 anos e joga um jogo que lhe é fácil quando entra em campo contra o Queens Park Rangers numa tarde de sábado. Pouco depois do pontapé inicial, ele recebe a bola que um jogador adversário prontamente antecipa. Mas o pé do adversário não apenas tira a bola, mas também o joelho de Bennett.

It soon transpires that Bennett has ruptured his anterior cruciate; his cartilagem pulped. A prognosis of six weeks out soon turns into nine long months. It’s the first time the young player has ever sustained an injury. Suddenly, high hopes for the future are submerged by a torrent of fears. He wonders whether he’ll be the same player when he returns – will he be as quick? Will he ever play football again? How will he keep up with the mortgage?

Alguém para conversar

Recounting the story some 27 years later, Bennett – who now goes by the first name of Michael – says what he needed more than anything during those dark days was simply someone to talk to; a sounding board to help work through a confusing melange of fears and anxieties.

“Não havia ninguém com quem conversar”, ele recorda. “Eu tinha passado de entrar no time principal do Charlton e jogar pela Inglaterra para me perguntar se teria que me aposentar aos 20 anos. Isso afetou enormemente meu bem-estar emocional e tomou conta da minha vida.”

While Bennett recovered from his injury, and went on to represent the likes of Wimbledon, Millwall and Cardiff City, he was never the same player. But the experience left an indelible imprint on him around football’s uneasy relationship with male mental health. Having retrained as a counsellor in the early 2000s, Bennett now works at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) as its director of player welfare.

Bennett heads up um departamento offering mental health and emotional support to both current and former players. Since his appointment in 2011, he has helped establish a nationwide network of counsellors, as well as 24-hour helpline. Last year, the PFA delivered its primeira conferência sobre saúde mental e bem-estar at St George’s Park.

“It’s about making players aware of the support available to them,” explains Bennett. “We’re aware that of a lot work is done in a physical aspect at football clubs, but nowhere near enough when it comes to the emotional and mental support side.”

That said, the traditional walls of stigma around mental health in football appear to be crumbling. The suicídio do técnico do País de Gales, Gary Speed, em 2011 at the age of 42 can be seen as a watershed moment of a hidden crisis within the game. Since then, a number of players have gone public with their struggles, from former England goalkeeper Chris Kirkland to ex-pros Clarke Carlisle, Leon McKenzie and Jason McAteer.

This has also been reflected in a sharp increase in players making use of the PFA’s counselling service. Last year, 403 players approached Bennett’s department, up from 160 in 2016. This year already, “we have passed the 400 mark”, says Bennett. The PFA has also increased its pool of counsellors to 187; when the department was first set up, there were only 28 at its disposal.

“O jogo mudou drasticamente desde quando eu era jogador”, diz Bennett. “Os jogadores agora estão se sentindo muito mais à vontade para falar sobre seus problemas.”

Gary Charles broke into Nottingham’s Forest first team in the last 80s – around the same time as Bennett did at Charlton. While also unlucky with injuries, Charles still managed to amass over 300 professional games – he went on to play for Aston Villa, Benfica and West Ham – including five cup finals and two England caps.

It’s the kind of CV most aspiring professionals would take at the drop of a hat, yet for Charles it tells a story of what might have been. The final years of his career were beset by injury, coupled with a growing dependency on álcool, which culminated in jail term for drink driving.

As coisas poderiam ter sido diferentes, pergunto a ele, se ele tivesse o mesmo apoio disponível que os profissionais de hoje podem recorrer quando precisam?

“I get asked this quite a lot,” he says, “but it’s one of those questions I’ll never know the answer to. But if I’m brutally honest, I probably only achieved 50% of my potential. The drinking culture has definitely shifted from when I was playing. We didn’t have welfare officers. If you had any problem, you went to the physio and that was it.”

Charles is now over ten years sober and runs his own organisation, GCSportscare, which provides advice and support for sportspeople experiencing mental health problems, as well as addiction problems.

He agrees with Bennett that there is a growing awareness around mental health in football, but argues that much more still needs to be done to ensure those affected are seeking the help they need.

“Acho que os jovens jogadores – e os jovens atletas em geral – ainda acham difícil falar sobre seus problemas,” diz Charles.

For all the talk of progress made, and various awareness campaigns, football can indeed be an unforgiving arena. In February, David Cox, who plays for Scottish League Two Side Cowdenbeath, descreveu ser rotulado como um “psicopata” by both fellow players and fans after opening up about mental health struggles.

Há também a questão da privacidade. Como qualquer outra pessoa, quando um jogador busca ajuda de um profissional de saúde, isso será sempre completamente confidencial. Mas, enquanto alguns jogadores podem estar dispostos a falar publicamente sobre suas próprias experiências de saúde mental mais tarde, outros não estão.

Isso não é por vergonha, diz Charles, mas sim porque os jogadores querem lidar com as coisas em seus próprios termos.

“Em alguns casos, nossos clientes preferem manter isso em sigilo”, ele diz. “Se você está sendo tratado para depressão ou alcoolismo, a transição de estar em tratamento para ter que sair e jogar na frente de 60.000 pessoas é realmente difícil – especialmente quando há pessoas gritando coisas realmente horríveis das arquibancadas.”

But as the UK’s national sport, footballers and football clubs can use their brand status to help bring about change beyond the pitch. Everton was the first Premier League club to appoint a mental health coordinator, and last year won the Beyond Sport Global Award for its work promoting better health in the local community.

“Football clubs are very much seen as beacons within their communities, drawing people together in ways not many other things can do,” explains Johnnie Garside, the club’s health and wellbeing manager.

“No Everton, levamos a sério nossa responsabilidade com a comunidade, especialmente quando se trata de conscientizar sobre questões sociais pertinentes. Temos sido apaixonados pela área da saúde mental por mais de uma década e, durante esse tempo, usamos nossa plataforma para afetar positivamente o estigma que existe na sociedade em torno da doença mental.”

Since 2008, Everton has run its Imagine Your Goals programme, consisting of a range of football therapy sessions, coupled with mental wellbeing-related education and personal development workshops.

“A principal maneira pela qual tentamos influenciar isso foi falando abertamente para ajudar os outros a se manifestarem e buscarem o apoio de que precisam”, diz Gartside.

“By creating a specific mental health coordinator role to help drive this agenda forwards both internally and externally, we have managed to pioneer a number of flagship community-based mental health prevention and support programmes that have played a significant role in improving the quality of life of many vulnerable and at-risk individuals.”

A Coping Through Football project was also launched in 2007. Set up in tandem by two sporting charities, the London Playing Fields Foundation and Leyton Orient Trust, the initiative works with the NHS to help young people and adults experiencing mental health issues use football as a platform to increase their self-esteem and confidence, and get their lives back on track.

While consisting of six football sessions a week based in Redbridge and Waltham Forest, northeast London, chief executive Alex Welsh is quick to stress that Coping Through Football is not a football project, but a social inclusion project.

“Este não é um projeto de futebol - apenas usa o futebol para promover a inclusão social e resultados de saúde,” ele diz. “Trabalhamos em estreita colaboração com o NHS e somos baseados em fundamentos clínicos, incluindo um sistema de contato e encaminhamento, bem como avaliação e revisão.”

A common session, Welsh says, entails “a warm-up, some technical stuff, some skills – where they have to concentrate – finishing with a small-sided game”. With 40% of service users having a diagnosis of esquizofrenia, competitive, hard-fought matches – as are commonplace in grassroots football when sometimes frayed tempers spill onto the pitch – are out of the question.

“Não podemos permitir que as partes ruins do futebol se infiltrem no que fazemos”, diz Welsh. “Você entra lá e é envolvido por calor, simpatia e um comportamento inclusivo e sem julgamentos. Em última análise, queremos ajudá-los a levar vidas mais independentes.”

Back in the professional setting, people in their millions will tune in to watch this summer’s World Cup in Russia – the apex of the sport. As usual, it can be expected to contain feats of sporting brilliance, as well as the odd moment of disgrace – think Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt on Marco Materazzi in the 2006 final.

A habitual peça teatral de heróis e vilões se desenrolará. Jogadores serão momentaneamente elevados em pedestais; enquanto outros serão submetidos ao fogo e fúria que apenas os fãs de futebol podem dispensar.

But below the pomp and preening and bling and bravado, the beautiful game consists of players no less immune to mental health issues than any member of broader society – in which um em cada quatro de nós across the world will be affected by mental disorders at some point in our lives.

Como Bennett coloca: “As pessoas esquecem que os jogadores de futebol são apenas seres humanos que jogam futebol. Eles enfrentarão os mesmos problemas e questões que qualquer um de nós pode enfrentar.”