Benjamin Pavard made it through the corona crisis anything but easily. The Bayern Munich right-back, who describes himself as ‘hyperactive’, has struggled with the isolation that the pandemic has condemned him to. Although Pavard ‘has the word’ – he tells Le Parisien – he dares to call his state of mind at that time a depression. Talking openly about his feelings helped the Frenchman to find some spirit again.
The strict isolation rules in Germany have kept Pavard mostly separated from his family and loved ones in his native country in the past year. That was hard for the 26-year-old fullback. “It really didn’t go well with me,” he recalls in the candid interview with Le Parisien. “It didn’t go in my head. First you tell yourself that it’s nothing, that it will pass. But when you see that it sticks, that you go to training and you just don’t have the energy, you have to do something. “
His state of mind was reflected in his performance, says Pavard. “I’m just human, just like everyone else. Even though I have a beautiful house with a room full of weights, I needed human contact. I got up and wasn’t hungry. I tried to entertain myself, to cook and to series. But Netflix is fun for two minutes. I don’t like the word ‘depressed’, but I really was,” said the French international.
The open sharing of his mental struggles finally offered a solution. According to his loved ones, Pavard has become ‘more mature’ in the past year. “I have grown as a person through this period”, the back also thinks. “It changed me. I kept a mask on for others and today I feel a lot better.” Pavard is the next example in a school of (former) professional football players who come out for mental complaints. Gregory van der Wiel and Ricardo Kishna, among others, preceded Pavard.
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