“I fell out of love with football for a long time,” Steven Caulker says. “When I was suffering from depression and addiction, I completely fell out of love. I couldn’t have imagined anything worse than still being involved. But I managed to rekindle that: I couldn’t really tell you how, it just kind of came back. It’s pleasing to get it back in a new way, a new form, and now I can enjoy the moment. I loved training this morning. We’ve got a game this afternoon. I just really like being here, being present.”
It is Tuesday morning and the former Tottenham, Liverpool and England defender, who now captains Sierra Leone, sits on a bench wheeled on to a blue track around the grass at the Enrique López Cuenca, a municipal athletics ground in the little seaside town of Nerja. To the right a woman launches a medicine ball. From the left a Dutch running club passes. “Life’s so random,” he says, gesturing beyond them. “My girlfriend lives not far away. Me and my little boy stayed in a hotel, not joking, two minutes down there.” Now it’s home, where Caulker has just become player-manager of Málaga City, in Spain’s fifth tier.
