Espanyol’s captain on his mental health, facing Barcelona and working through stress

“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.

“I wasn’t in a good place,” he says.

Today, he is. He is still working on it, but here he is, the place he always wanted to be and one so few reach. “I think I’m the only one,” Darder says.

– Stream LIVE: Espanyol vs. Barcelona, Sunday 2/13, 2:30 p.m. ET

Espanyol’s captain was 13 when he departed Mallorca to join the club’s youth system, leaving his family to live in a residency with dozens of other kids hoping to make it as footballers, the most competitive career on earth. Fifteen years later, he’s the only one left. Not just the only one playing at Espanyol, preparing for Sunday night’s derby against Barcelona at Cornellá, but the only one left in Spain’s first division. At least he thinks so, sitting in the stands and gazing across the grass at their training ground in Sant Adria de Besos, heading out of the city towards Badalona.

“Víctor Álvarez played in primera for years, but he’s gone: he’s in Cyprus. Germán [Parreño] the goalkeeper is at Ibiza, in segunda. Joan Ángel [Román] went to Barcelona B, Sporting Braga; he’s playing in Poland now,” he says. “I might have…