FOOTBALL WAS BURYING ME ALIVE. I FELT ISOLATED AND DEPRESSED, SO I TOOK TABLETS FROM THE PHYSIO ROOM I TRIED TO END MY LIFE
Championship Manager will remain with me for the rest of my life – I’m honoured that people still talk and think about me like they do. I was probably the most famous England youth international in the country at one time, but I needed someone on my case because I was superior to everyone else in my age group. When a big move to Liverpool fell through, I collapsed on my kitchen floor and cried until I had nothing left. My appetite had gone. By the time I went to Spain in 2004, I felt like I’d failed in my own country. That’s when depression took hold. I didn’t want to be here any more. I wanted to end it all.
I’m 100 per cent a street footballer. It all started from there. You teach yourself and can be free to do what you want; to try things, whether they come off or not.
Opposite the house where I grew up in Gambia, there was this field. I played football non-stop, 24/7. I was six years old and living with my aunt and uncle, because my parents had already moved to the UK to get settled before the family followed.
Every day, they had to drag me away from the field. It may only have been a few months, but my aunt and uncle played an important role in my childhood, looking after me while my parents were away. To this day, I still try to take care of them.
We first lived in Watford, but soon moved to Peckham when my dad got a job in London. It was a very hostile place in the early-90s. There were drugs and gangs, so it was a tough place to be brought up, but all I wanted to do was go to the park
