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Exploiting Gary Speed’s Death: How Many Footballers Will Die?

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Exploiting Gary Speed’s Death: How Many Footballers Will Die?

WE do not know why former Leeds United footballer and Wales manager Gary Speed died. The coroner has yet to rule that it was suicide. Yet the Daily Star manages to produce a front-page headline that warns:

SPEED: FIVE MORE FOOTIE STARS ON BRINK

On brink of what?

Jerry Lawton has news:

TEN top footballers have begged for help fighting depression following Gary Speed’s shock suicide.

First up: we do not know that Gary Speed suffered from depression. Unless a medic who was prescribing him treatment steps forward, or Speed’s wife choses to say something, we never will. We don’t need to know. We are nosy and curious. But knowing is none of our business. Secondly, Lawton’s opening line makes it sound as if the root of the ten footballer’s depression is Gary Speed’s suicide.

The desperate stars contacted Tony Adams’ Sporting Chance Clinic after the Wales manager was found dead at his £2million mansion.

Gary Speed drove them to it? 

The players, who have not been named, complained they had been secretly struggling to cope with the pressures and stress of the game at the highest level.

So. Speed’s death did not make them suicidally depressed. Is it that their work, in this case football, making the 10 grown men suicidally depressed? But how do we know there are “ten top footballers” battling mental illness? How do we know they have “begged” for help.

Last night the Professional Footballers’ Association revealed the 10 could be just the tip of the iceberg. They fear that many more are too scared to come forward in case their problems are exposed to team-mates, rivals and fans.

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Posted: 30th, November 2011 | In: Sports | Comments (4)