"I started drinking at 13" – Football

On the occasion of World Mental Health Day, Timm Klose, a Swiss international defender from Norwich, discussed his problems, including alcohol, and how he managed to cope after escaping a heart attack .

On Thursday, the World Day of Mental Health, the Norwich club gathered a player of the first team, Timm Klose, another U23, Tom Scully, and his former French midfielder, and big hope Bordeaux, Cédric Anselin, fallen into depression, to evoke the subject. The opportunity for everyone, and especially Klose (31 years), to confide in his own difficulties.

From a privileged background, the defender Swiss Canaries, he joined in 2016, admits that outside football, he did not really know what to do with his life. "Then I fell in alcohol, He says. I think I started drinking when I was 13 years old. My friends were a little older than me and they drank, smoked, and did all kinds of things. I always wanted to become a footballer and I was in the youth teams of FC Basel. But I had problems going, I got fired from three schools and I was drunk most of the time. And during breaks, I was going to smoke. "

He then announced to his coach that he stopped the football: "I said to myself: "I'm free." But soon after, I relapsed and started drinking again, and smoking even more. Once, I almost had a heart attack. I found myself on a bench somewhere next to a lake, I do not know where, and I woke up alone, still drunk. And I thought I needed to wake up. " Klose, who met his wife at the age of 16, was then able to cope and leave Switzerland to join Germany and FC Nuremberg.

Without being totally rid of his problems. Especially when he was criticized on social networks. "I completely shut down, not to be seen as weak"still explains the one who set up a routine, immersing himself in the Fifa video game until the early morning after training so as not to have to think of anything else. But the encounter with a mental coach, with whom he is still in touch, has changed his life: "It's good to talk to a completely neutral person, who will not judge you and repeat you: "Everything will be alright.""

If he says himself today "happy" to be able to speak about his career, Klose, currently wounded on one knee, does not say however safe from a relapse: "When I hurt my knee, it brought up so many bad memories …"