Poetic licence pulled Sordell back from edge
SINCE poetry, according to playwright Somerset Maugham, wears the crown of literature, Marvin Sordell must be the king of football.
When depression was suffocating his career on the pitch, Sordell wrote a poem called ‘Denis Prose’ – an anagram of depression.
Sordell’s talents withered after he was sold by Watford to Bolton for £3million on deadline day in 2012.
Denis Prose was an imaginary car passenger, Sordell’s morbid alter-ego, on the drive home from training.
The journey starts in bright sunshine before storm clouds gather and he is consumed by darkness.
Seven years ago, Denis Prose almost had the final say. Alone and miserable in a hotel room, Sordell attempted suicide. He was surprised to wake up.
It was three years before he published the poem – an honest reflection of his battle with mental health problems – on Twitter.
If Sordell’s fellow professionals were circumspect at first, he is now an influential crusader tackling mental health in football after retiring aged 28 and setting up a TV production company.
Sordell – once the best young prospect in the Championship and a Team GB forward at the 2012 Olympics – says football is facing a tidal wave of serious mental health cases, with far-reaching effects beyond a pandemic.
His latest project, Football Exposed, a 10-part series due to be aired this summer in collaboration with Yahoo, pulls few punches.
Sordell, 29, said: “We tell the story of a player at a big club struggling with a knee injury, and despite several operations it wouldn’t heal. His club put him on antidepressants because they thought it was all in his head. Years later, it transpired the surgeon did the wrong operation at the outset, which is why the problem never went away.The player was right all along.”
The stigma of mental health would once see you shunned in sport. But as Olympic gold medallist Victoria Pendleton, England cricketer Marcus Trescothick and boxing champions Tyson Fury and Frank Bruno found, it can be dark and lonely at the top.
Sordell said: “My experience of mental health issues shaped me into the person I am – without going through all those really low lows, my outlook would not be as positive.
“But we have a long way to go in football. On more than one occasion I was struggling and was basically told to ‘man up’. One manager threatened to make my life a misery if I didn’t take a pay cut and leave.
“Danny Rose tells it like it is – people should listen to him, even if they don’t like the bluntness of his message. If he was playing in League One he would be a hero for speaking out... but because he earns big money in the Premier League, in some people’s eyes he is a whinger.” Poetry, learning to play the piano and cook all helped to keep the demons at bay for Sordell.
But he warned: “Denis Prose could be the passenger in any footballer’s car.”