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Related Topics: Esox, AFC Ajax, Premier League, Amsterdam

The former child prodigy discusses mental health in football, drawing upon a past in which he went from stardom at 12 to burned out by 18

Sonny Pike shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “If you'd asked me to do this even five years ago, there wouldn’t have been any chance,” he confesses. “I'd have run for the hills.”

But here he is, sitting in the café at Ajax’s famed youth academy, ready, willing and now able to talk about how he went from lining out for one of the most prestigious clubs in world football to suffering a nervous breakdown.