Tottenham Hotspur and England full back Danny Rose made a lot of headlines yesterday, and for two very distinct reasons. The first narrative to emerge centers around his urging his family not to travel to Russia for the World Cup next week, due to concerns that they could be subjected to extreme racial prejudice. (We covered that in a second article linked here)
The second major story that broke on Wednesday relates to the England/Spurs back being diagnosed with clinical depression. Rose opened upon on his battle with the psychological affliction, and how it’s been affecting all facets of his life, both on and off the pitch.
Rose has been heavily linked with a move away from White Hart Lane, with the back pages often citing Manchester United as a potential destination for him. Danny Rose has openly criticized the club’s recent transfer spending practices, and that naturally created more friction between him and his club.
A BBC article, quoting an interview that Rose gave to several national newspapers, describes how his depression was articulated by a combination of injury and family tragedy.
“It’s no secret that I’ve been through a testing time at Tottenham this season,” said Rose.
“It led to me seeing a psychologist and I was diagnosed with depression, which nobody knows about.”
Rose said the treatment of a knee injury sustained in January 2017 – which saw him sidelined for eight months – was the start of a period of personal turmoil.
He added: “I haven’t told my mum or my dad, and they are probably going to be really angry reading this, but I’ve kept it to myself until now.”
“My uncle killed himself in the middle of my rehab, and that triggered the depression as well,” said Rose, who is expected to feature in England’s final World Cup warm-up against Costa Rica on Thursday,
“Off the field there have been other incidents: back home in August my mum was racially abused in Doncaster. She was very angry and upset about it, and then someone came to the house and nearly shot my brother in the face – a gun was fired at my house.”
Wow!
Seriously, this is a whole lot of adversity for any individual person to be handling all at the same time, but Rose had additional major issues to deal with. The 27-year-old also conveyed how his long injury layoff tested him further. He was sidelined by a knee injury for eight months, and that struggle was made infinitely more difficult due to his having to undergo surgery, after being first told that it wasn’t necessary.
So how has Rose persevered on despite all the serious obstacles he’s currently encountering in his life?
The help and support from from both club and country. Danny Rose expressed gratitude towards team doctors and medical staff from both Spurs and Three Lions.
“England has been my salvation and I can’t thank the manager and the medical staff enough,” Rose added.
“It was really hard, and being referred to a doctor and psychologist by the Spurs club doctor helped me massively to cope.”
England open up their World Cup campaign in 11 days, when they’ll battle Tunisia in group stage action. They face Costa Rica in their final exhibition, warm-up match today.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, NBC Chicago.com and Chicago Tribune.com, currently contributes regularly to WGN CLTV and the Tribune company’s blogging community Chicago Now.
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