‘I thought I could no longer put on football boots’

Alvaro Morata has spoken candidly in an interview about the mental problems he has been experiencing in recent months. “It was a very difficult period. I thought I would no longer be able to put on my football boots,” the captain of the Spanish football team said on radio station Cope.

“When you are depressed, there is always someone in your head that you have to fight against,” says Morata, who won the European title with Spain last summer.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of work you do or what situation in your life you are in,” adds the striker, who also divorced his wife this summer.

According to him, the mental problems caused him to move from Atlético Madrid to AC Milan last summer. “It was best for me to leave Spain, I couldn’t bear it.”

The 31-year-old Spaniard has been receiving a lot of criticism for his play for years, including during the last European Championship. Because he was often approached on the street about his achievements, he was ashamed to go out with his children, who in turn did not want to go shopping with him. “Things a normal dad does with his kids.”

According to Morata, the comments were not always malicious, but he found it difficult to constantly be confronted with his work.

According to Morata, the mental problems already existed before the European Championship. He says he thought for three months that the tournament would be in jeopardy for him. “I realized that I had come to hate the thing I love most. That’s very complicated.”

For example, the attacker sometimes had panic attacks when he put on his football boots, but things improved with the help of Atlético coach Diego Simeone, his psychiatrist and teammates Koke and Miguel Angel Gil.

80-time international Morata already announced during the European Championship in Germany that the criticism in his own country affected him a lot. “I feel happier abroad. People respect me there.” During the European Championships held in 2021, he even received death threats.

Morata made his debut in professional football with Real Madrid in 2010. He then played for Juventus, Real Madrid again, Chelsea, Atlético Madrid, Juventus again, and then returned to Atlético Madrid. So now he plays for AC Milan.