The ax fell in spring 2020, without notice or warning. A rupture of the cruciate ligament in his left knee while playing for Sporting CP abruptly ended Jérémy Mathieu’s career, eclipsing his dreams of extending the adventure on the pitch for two more years. For the former captain of FC Barcelona, winner of the C1 alongside Lionel Messi and Neymar, retirement was not written in the celebration of a jubilee, but in the violence of an abysmal void.
And while this fall he was content to modestly mention with lip service a “ little depression”, the former French international lifted the veil unvarnished in an interview given to So Foot on the descent into hell that consumed him for four years. “I had depression, we must not hide it”, confides today the native of Haute-Saône, devastated by the sudden end to his playing career.
“I missed the field, the locker rooms, everything we knew. I did not have time to prepare for my post-career because of this injury (…) Mentally, I had difficulty accepting the situation,” he explains. Cloistered between the walls of his home, the ex-defender sank into total inertia, an intimate slump shared by other football figures like Steve Mandanda.
“I stayed at home 24 hours a day”
“I was depressed for four years. Luckily my wife was there to help me get through it. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I was totally lost, he describes. For four years, I did nothing. I stayed at home 24 hours a day. I went out from time to time, but never for long… Even football no longer interested me. I watched a half and, if the match was drawn, I skipped it. I went around in circles: I got up from the couch, I walked around my house and I sighed. »
To break the spiral of isolation and face a heavy trial, Jérémy Mathieu accepted a job as a fixed-term salesman at Intersport in Plan-de-Campagne, near Marseille. An atypical reconversion which earned him his share of malicious reactions on social networks, but which offered him a much-needed breath of fresh air. “That’s when I had the trigger to get out of this bad period. This work allowed me to regain color, to find a social life and, ultimately, to live again”he analyzes lucidly.
Today, the former international definitively closes this dark chapter to turn to transmission. Committed to obtaining the BEF (Football Coaching Certificate) after failed or aborted experiences on the benches of Sporting and Sochaux, he now coaches the Aix-en-Provence U15s. “I want to work in a training center”he proclaims.
