‘The clubs view the player as an asset – not as a human being’
Amelia Sordell’s lasting impression of the professional football industry she directly experienced for more than a decade is withering.
“The player is an asset – not seen as a human being,” she says. “They don’t care whether you have good or bad mental health. They are happy as long as you are scoring goals or stopping them from being scored.”
Amelia knew little of football when she first met Marvin Sordell. He was starring for Watford in the Championship. They fell in love and it was after a £3.25million move to Bolton Wanderers, when he was just 21, that his mental health difficulties emerged. He arrived in January 2012 during an unsuccessful battle against relegation, and their account of what happened over the next 20 months remains shocking.
“We couldn’t talk to anyone about what was going on in his head, or personal life, for fear of being dropped,” says Amelia. “You don’t know who you can trust. It was almost like a dirty little secret.”
Amelia became so worried that she found a psychiatrist and drove him to the appointment. “The psychiatrist recommended inpatient facility treatment. She was worried about him being a danger to himself or someone else.”
Amelia says that the information was relayed back to a club medic and that a Bolton official then telephoned Sordell’s mother. “He [the official] said, ‘If your son thinks he’s going into the Priory then he can kiss his career goodbye’,” says Amelia. It is understood that the official is no longer at the club.
“He never ended up receiving that inpatient treatment,” Amelia adds. “It wasn’t long after that he tried to take his own life.”
The irony, says Amelia, is how clubs will rush to help with any physical ailment that might compromise a player’s immediate selection. “Hamstring injuries, foot surgery – no problem with getting access to medical care,” she says. She is also concerned at the wider use of painkillers within football and their potential long-term impact on a player’s health.
Beyond the richer, most enlightened clubs, Amelia’s experience is that a “very old-school” attitude still generally prevails. “A lot of these players are teenagers. Kids. There’s
no balance. They are thrust into big stress situations with no support, either going in or coming out. There’s a lack of duty of care. Football is stuck in the dark ages.”
And what was the attitude towards players’ wives? “We are the problem because we’re the ones saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’ Most clubs would like players to be married with kids and a wife who doesn’t say much and cracks on.”
Amelia and Marvin are now separated but remain good friends. She runs a thriving business but still meets preconceptions about footballers’ wives.
“Very few meet the stereotype we are brushed with,” she says. “Most are hard working, lovely, down-toearth girls. Some work. A lot don’t work because they can’t. You often have to choose between your life and theirs. It’s a very nomadic, unstable lifestyle. We moved 11 times in nine years.
“There is no one to support you because no one really gets it aside from the amazing [Lifestyled] community Maggie and Helen formed. It’s a community who are all in the same boat and can relate. It’s more than anything we’ve ever had.”