Brazil striker Richarlison has spoken publicly for the first time about his depression after the World Cup in Qatar. He was on the verge of giving up, said the attacker from English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur in an interview with the TV channel ESPN Brasil. “I had just taken part in a World Cup, at my peak. I reached my limits. I won’t talk about wanting to kill myself. But I was in a depression and wanted to give up,” Richarlison said through tears.
As title favorites, Brazil failed in the quarter-finals on penalties against Croatia. After the World Cup, in which Richarlison was Brazil’s top scorer with three goals in four games, it seemed “as if everything was collapsing. Even me, who seemed mentally strong. Before I went to training, I wanted to go home, I wanted to go back to my room. “I don’t know what was going through my head,” said the professional.
He also told his father that he couldn’t take it anymore. “To go to my dad, who was the one who pursued my dream with me, and say, ‘Dad, I want to give up,’ is crazy,” Richarlison said. He just thought about “rubbish, I even searched for crap on Google, I just wanted to see some crap about death.”
He found a way out of this negative spiral with the help of a psychologist. “I think the therapist saved me, saved my life,” Richarlison said. He strongly advised people who felt like him to seek psychological help.
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Before that, he also had great prejudices against psychologists. Some in his family would still think that going to a psychologist was “crazy and insane”. Richarlison has long since seen it differently; for him it was “the best discovery I have ever made in my life”.