"I thought I wasn't good enough. I'm no use; I can't be a footballer," Sergi Darder says.
The Espanyol midfielder isn't talking about the early days as a kid away from home, alone and trying to make it in the most competitive career there is, the doubts accumulating in his mind. He's talking about what he went through just 18 months ago, almost a decade after his professional debut; by then, he was captain of the club he left his family to play for. He doesn't want to call it depression, but it sounds a lot like it, as he reveals the pressure and the fear, how the game took over his life, how he locked himself away and eventually accepted that he had to look for help, the best way to hold on to let go a little.