West Ham United striker Michail Antonio admits he almost retired from football while with the Hammers following mental health struggles.
The seven-time Jamaican international is West Ham’s all-time top scorer in Premier League history. He has bagged 58 top-flight goals in 209 league appearances for the Hammers since joining from Nottingham Forest in the summer of 2015, including two goals in the Premier League this season despite losing his starting place to Italian forward Gianluca Scamacca.
Antonio has been in good form in recent seasons, ending each of the three previous campaigns with ten league goals, leading to him becoming the club’s top scorer in England’s top-flight.
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However, earlier in his West Ham career, Antonio admitted that after struggles for regular game time, which appeared to happen at the start of the 2019/20 season shortly before manager David Moyes’ return to the club, the former Forest forward admits he seriously considered retiring from the sport altogether.
Antonio, who was speaking on the Original Penguin X Campaign Against Living Miserably - Under The Surface podcast, said: I’m a person that normally bounces back from things, quite positive, and never let much hold me down. There was one time where it really affected me. I’m a person that likes to control things – if I feel that I can control things then I’ll deal with things. But this time where it did hit me, I felt like I fell into a depression.
“I started the very first game of the season. The next game, I wasn’t in the squad. The next game, I started. The next game, I wasn’t in the squad. Then I came off the bench. The next game I started and got pulled off at half-time. And that just kept happening. Even if I was playing well, it just kept happening to me. No matter what I was doing, I wasn’t good enough. If I was having a great game, it wasn’t good enough. So I just felt powerless, and there was nothing I could do.
“I’m a person that if I’m playing well, then I expect to play because I’m doing the job that you’re putting me out there to do. If I’m not, then it’s not a problem, I’ll be on the bench and wait for the opportunity and then I’ll take it and be back in the team. But the fact they were putting me in and pulling me out and just basically running me around the shops; I couldn’t deal with that because it was alien to me.
“There was one day where that kept happening to me, and I was just laying in bed and tears started streaming from my eyes and I couldn’t control them. I don’t like showing emotion and I like dealing with things, but tears were just falling from my eyes in bed. My Mrs was laying next to me in bed and I didn’t say anything, just tears falling – she looked up and said ‘Are you alright?’ and I said yeah, I’m fine, but she said ‘You can’t be fine, you’re crying’, and I just said ‘I don’t know if I want to play football anymore’.
“I’m a very positive person and if something is not making me happy but making me sad, then change it. Look for something that is going to make you happy, that is going to make you feel better – don’t keep rotting away in something that is pulling you down, because at the end of the day, life is short. It doesn’t matter how well that job is doing for you, it doesn’t matter how well things are for other people.
"If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. If it’s really affecting you and pulling you down, and it’s something that you can change, then change it. I said to her ‘I don’t know if I want to play anymore, I’m thinking about retiring’, because I knew if I went to West Ham and said I want to leave, they weren’t going to want to sell me. So I was honestly just thinking about leaving football and retiring.”
However, Antonio did change his mind after chatting with his partner, brother, and agent, the former Sheffield Wednesday forward decided to work at it and went on to have three straight seasons with double figures for league goals.
Antonio said the conversations he had with those close to him allowed the versatile forward to go on and have a successful career at the London Stadium
“Me talking to my Mrs, my brother, and my agent took a bit of the weight off me, enough for me to keep going to training and stuff like that, but what really made a difference for me was being able to go out there and play, and kept playing consistently,” added Antonio.
“It became more of a norm as a footballer – when you’re playing well you get your opportunity and you keep playing. When life and football became more normal, then I dealt with it and that’s how I managed to pull myself out. The football put me into depression, but the football also pulled me out.
“That one time, I needed to talk. Even though I didn’t want to because my wife had to say to me ‘ no, you’re not okay’ , but as soon as I spoke to her, the next day I spoke to my agent, and that same day I spoke to my brother and it did help me massively.”
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