Fifty percent of Bundesliga stars face depression says Simunic


October 24, 2004
BERLIN (AFP) - Hertha Berlin defender Josip Simunic claims almost half of the players in the Bundesliga struggle to cope with the pressure that leads to the depressive state his former team-mate Sebastian Deisler is in.

Bayern Munich midfielder Deisler, 24, was readmitted to the Max-Planck-Institute for Psychiatry on Tuesday and Croatian international Simunic believes the pressure affects a lot more players.

"Many professional footballers can not cope with the pressure," Simunic told daily Bild. "I would say every second player in the Bundesliga has problems but are too afraid to admit them.

"Football is about having a clear head amd Deisler does not have that at the moment."

Simunic, 24, played with Deisler for two seasons at Hertha and himself suffered from depression when he was at SV Hamburg in 1999.

"I wanted to pack football in," confessed Simunic. "I was depressed and physically at my lowest level. At one stage I went a whole week without sleeping."

Updated on Sunday, Oct 24, 2004 8:55 am EDT


Too bad about Deisler's relapse, he is supposed to be a big talent...These guys should stop and think just how lucky they are to play the game they love and get paid extremly well in doing so...

On the lack of sleep, games like some debacles such as Mexico and Ecuador at the WC, the 2-0 loss in Bulgaria, the tie against the Swiss at Euro, and then blowing the Bulgaria game a few weeks ago....now those make me not sleep...

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I want my tractor back!

"You're five foot nothing. A hundred and nothing. And you've got hardly a speck of athletic ability. You hung in with the best college football team in the land for two years. And you're gonna walk out of here with a degree from Notre Dame. In this life you don't have to prove nothing to nobody except yourself. And after what you've gone through, if you haven't done that by now...it ain't gonna never happen." - from Rudy

Thats crazy isn't it???

You know, I would bet that Deisler has a family history of depression. But, the competition to get a spot on the first 11 on many of the major club teams is just incredible. They say that practices are harder than games because people are fighting for a spot on the team.

Sometimes I can understand what these guys go through because reading some of Dynamovac's posts, I would bet most of us here get depressed as well!

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I think Simunic is overdoing it with the 50% fact.

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You are just jelous of me because you ain't me.

In the words of the great P Diddy...

You just hate me, because I tell it like it is, while you tell it like it might be.

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by the title, I thought Simunic had depression.

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