Chris Kirkland: ‘I didn’t want to wake up in the morning. It just starts again’

The former Coventry, Liverpool and Wigan goalkeeper talks about dealing with depression, turning his back on the game and why it is important for other players not to suffer in silence

Chris Kirkland felt trapped, paralysed, desperate. But the former England and Liverpool goalkeeper was terrified that he might have further to fall. “What happened to Gary Speed was the thing that really worried me,” Kirkland says, with reference to the Wales midfielder’s death in 2011. “I didn’t know how far away I was from that. Hopefully, a long, long way.

“I always ask myself: ‘Would I have done something to myself? Would I have harmed myself? I like to think I wouldn’t have done. I certainly didn’t sit there one night, thinking, right, I’ve got to … you know. But you think about it. You do, yeah. Because you don’t want to wake up.

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