From time to time, Maxine Langton digs herself up by opening the door on the most sensible of the stairs. Something attracts her, however difficult it may be, sitting on the edge of a bed in which we have slept for almost two years.
For her husband, Simon, it is still too raw to enter their son Matthew’s room. The last time before the funeral, when he had to play a role that no parent ever imagined and decide on his son’s clothes. For Simon, it is too painful, too overwhelming, to open this door again.
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Maxine, however, enters, though she says she requires strong breathing each time. Everything is as before. Your bed is made. His robe is there. His football team, his stuff. And those are the moments when so many things go through your mind. Regards; So many satisfied memories. But there are also so many questions that will never be answered correctly.
“Even now, there are times when I rank for a note,” he says. “Although the police have already intervened, I am still waiting to locate something that will give me an answer. “
On the floor, the dining room is filled with photographs of Matthew from happier times. One of them shows him winning a trophy at a tournament organised by Nottingham Forest. Others date from his years as a player at County Derthrough Academy and then in the Mansfield Town youth system. There is one on holiday in Portugal. One wall is occupied by a painting of Matthew with his sister, Amy.
Maxine opens the way to the garden, where there are several enclosures for the circle of the relatives pets, six guinea pigs, to walk. There is a well-kept lawn area where Matthew learned to kick a ball as a toddler. , on the other hand, the circle of relatives created a memorial in the place where its frame was found.
A poem is near:
I sit in my garden
And yourself for a moment
Remembering glorious moments
Mi becomes a smile.
It was in February 2021 when Matthew committed suicide, an elderly man of 20 years, and it does not take long for his parents to understand why, in his investigation, the coroner insisted that he had a loving and supportive family.
That didn’t stop them from asking some tough questions. Like all parents in this situation, they will want to be able to communicate with their child when depression strikes. No matter how much help they have offered, they will torture themselves with questions about what they could have said or done differently.
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But they also have tough questions about football as an industry and how, in Simon’s words, so many “clubs treat those guys like cannon fodder, chunks of meat. . . They have no idea what the child is going through. They don’t care. ” They’re just for the next big player they can point to to lose and make money. “
Maxine and Simon decided it was time to go public because the sport in general, and the academy’s formula in particular, wants to be re-examined in depth.
This will make it difficult to read in relation to Ligue 2’s Mansfield when there is a direct allegation of his care, or alleged lack of care, and what Matthew’s parents see as the club’s shortcomings.
But it may also be the stimulus that some clubs need. Maybe this will save some other boy in Matthew’s position.
“It’s not about blame,” Maxine says. Although I blame Mansfield to some extent and I think they played an important role, it’s about getting the football total right. We don’t need to have that kind of pain anymore.
Every school tends to have one: the talented kid who wins each and every race, who excels at each and every football game, who has been known as the star of the sport for as long as you can remember. In the babies of Banks Road, Matthew that child.
His mother is a Forest fan, his father supports County Notts and he grew up in Toton, just outside Nottingham. But it was the staff of the Derby academy who contacted him first. Matthieu seven years old: blond hair, a charming smile, so young that he still lost his baby teeth.
Football came to shape Matthew’s life. He had his dreams, his ambitions. That was all he knew, from a young age. But it also meant that, later, he struggled to adapt to everyday life when football was taken away. Simon says, more than once, that he wishes he could pass. “When you still accompany your child to school, holding his hand, it’s bad, in retrospect, that football clubs accept young people of that age. “
During Matthew’s last year at Derthrough, he was disappointed through a manager who is no longer at the club. “This coach on the sidelines, scary and blinding, abusing those guys,” Simon said. Children, who are 15 and 16 years old? As a parent, you must say something, but you are afraid to open your mouth in case you are considered a troublemaker.
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Overall, however, reports of Matthew with Derby were positive until it became clear, at age 16, that he would not be part of the small percentage of academy players who would succeed at the top. Football had given him confidence. He made new friends, visited many places, created all kinds of memories.
It was later, with Mansfield, that his relatives began to notice a repositioning in his behavior. Matthew applied for a position in a two-year residential course, which meant staying Monday through Friday at the same place where he had trained, at Brooksby College in Melton. As a component of the curriculum, players studied for a point 3 of extended BTEC in sport.
“Something went wrong that time with Mansfield,” Maxine says. I don’t know if it was an accumulation of everything or if something happened. I don’t know, because I wasn’t there. But his intellectual capacity deteriorated throughout that time.
“We used to bring him back on a Sunday and he would say, ‘I had a strange feeling, like I was hunting outside. ‘If their football deteriorated because of that, wouldn’t they have noticed (Mansfield)?
Matthew was not drugged, as autopsy toxicology reports prove. He hadn’t been drinking either. You had symptoms of a dissociative disorder known as derealization, which can cause you to feel disconnected from the world around you.
As for why no one from Mansfield seemed to realise his problems, Simon’s verdict is that the club “did nothing, as far as I know, with Matthew when it came to intellectual health. He was just a small player for them. They had nothing in place. “
To this day, the circle of relatives has never spoken publicly about their fears. They needed time for grief and, as Maxine says, she didn’t need to communicate with Mansfield when everything was forged and moved so much that she didn’t know how it would go.
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However, it is an inescapable fact that Matthew’s parents have come to see Mansfield as a complicated environment for a child with health problems, who lives far from home and needs support. They also spoke with Matthew’s former teammates who share this view and are willing to say so publicly.
One story goes back to the release of 18-year-old Matthew from Mansfield. He invited him to a parent party and, perhaps for the first time, complained about how he felt ignored and underestimated by some staff members. Maxine with him. One of the coaches, he said, replied, “Damn, then you have it. “
Back home, Matthew sank into depression. He stayed in his room, glued to his phone. His friends noticed he was online but didn’t respond to his messages. Police later discovered self-help notes on his phone.
A few weeks before his death, a flurry of snow fell and he went to the grass to participate in a snowball fight. Maxine is overjoyed that old Matthew is soon back.
He worked at his local Tesco supermarket. He worked a little. His father took him for a pint and play pool or had him wash the car: the same old things between father and son.
The tension can be heard in Simon’s voice. “We went to eat once, at the local pub, and I said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you need to be a garbage dump or an astronaut, you’ll have a house here. “I said, ‘Man, we love you, I know you’re going through something, but never think we don’t need you here. ‘
Maxine did everything she could to succeed in her son. She called her friends and said she was worried. He called Matthew to the doctor, where he prescribed antidepressants that he never took.
You may only see the sadness in your eyes. “He was delivered to the point where he only had skin over bones,” she said. His former teammates had gone on new adventures, some as professional footballers. school or took jobs. No one from Mansfield, as far as his parents know, called him after his release.
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Matthew had gone through the formula of the Derby youngsters a golden era for the academy that saw Lee Buchanan, Max Bird, Louie Sibley and Jack Stretton among the players who made it to the first team. He began betting on Long Eaton United, his local club, in the Northern Premier League. This was also cancelled when COVID-19 shut down the league and the lockdown caused its own commotion.
More than once, Maxine says she can’t blame football alone when there may be other points that caused her son’s depression. Without a suicide note, he can only put the clues together in combination. “I still don’t think football is the main reason. “It actually contributed, the way he tried. “
One day, Matthew disappeared in his car. No one knew where he had been driving, only that he had left two hours ago. When they took him home, his mom was alarmed to notice that his shoes were soaked. His explanation that he had sought to clear his head.
Some old friends convinced him to stop with them at the University of Sheffield, but found him unusually withdrawn. When asked if he was okay, he said he was okay. In the middle of the night, he was found walking around the house.
Soon after, Matthew, running in the afternoon in Tesco, left early at 5 a. m. M. y took a long walk. His sister noticed that he looked like when he talked to him, shortly after 6 a. m. , in the hallway. The first time anyone knew what they had done was when Maxine looked out the window later that morning. And Simon, a firefighter with 30 years of service, will never forget his wife’s call.
“The initial horrible pain,” he says. I crawled on the ground, I couldn’t move.
“Every day now is a war with yourself. You have desperate moments. Can you believe telling your parents that their grandson is dead?It was horrible, unimaginable. Maxine’s parents were on the floor. My parents were on the floor At least Matthew doesn’t suffer anymore, but now we have the pain.
Sitting on the couch, two of Matthew’s former teammates pay attention to each and every word and interfere with their own reports on why they, too, believe Mansfield could have done more.
Kamen Cashmore drove from Leicester. James Tague is from Derby. They were academics in the Mansfield youth system, also founded in Brooksby, and they still settle for wasting their friend.
“Derthrough contacted us after Matthew’s death,” Simon continued. “I spoke to Darren Wassall (director of Derthrough Academy) and they were very good, to be fair. They held a minute of silence on the education floor and another in Pride Park. It’s a very big tribute, with Wayne Rooney (then coach of the first team) and the whole squad by his side.
Mansfield posted a message of condolence on Twitter, but the Langtons thought it would happen the day after Derby and Long Eaton posted triyets. It also didn’t help that Mansfield tried to get Matthew wrong, saying he was 19. In pain, Maxine went online to care for them properly.
“Matthew had spent two years with them, but they were talking about someone they didn’t know,” Simon says. “It was terrible for us; very painful. Mansfield didn’t touch us at all. Surely they didn’t do anything. “
Kamen is at Loughborough University, where he studies sports training and physical education. He is writing a thesis on intellectual fitness disorders in football and the effects of a pitch.
He and James have fabulous memories of living with Matthew and the other Brooksby boys, especially in the early days when everything was new and exciting. What he saw as the old-school mentality of some coaches. “I called my mom one night and said, ‘I don’t think I can do this, I need to go home. ‘I stayed, but I had reached this point.
James, England’s former under-15 international, with Matthew at Derby’s academy and still accepts that “the happiest kid I’ve ever met” is no longer there.
Now a semi-professional in Belper Town, James acknowledged through his peers that he had the mindset to deal with harsh criticism. Sometimes, that encouraged him to play better, as if to disappoint them. However, he has also become disillusioned with football because of his reporting with Mansfield.
He also remembers a parents’ evening in Mansfield when the very direct and personal complaint, he says, left him in tears.
“I don’t have the precise words but, to put it that way, my mom and I ended up crying in front of them. I’m not even an emotional person. My father was angry. He was like, ‘We have to think about what you’re staying here, I’m not sure it’s smart for you, they can’t communicate with you that way. “It was bad. In any other industry, you wouldn’t be allowed to do it. “
Maxine wears a hoodie for Young Minds, an intellectual fitness charity for children, youth and their parents. He attends monthly SOBS (Survivors of Suicide Mourning) meetings and has won at Sport Against Suicide. He is helping to organise a charity suitable for Young Minds, who will take up position in Long Eaton on April 30 and organise the London Landmarks Half Marathon to raise more funds.
He also wrote some vignettes about how he would like the formula of young football to be, if the game is willing to listen at all.
It is also unfaithful that, as a non-intern, Matthew cannot opt through the Professional Footballers’ Association for the tests that are organized for players discharged from the EFL.
James and Kamen had the opportunity to impress potential employers in games organized through Burton Albion. This opportunity never presented itself to Matthew and his former teammates ask how it can be fair. “In football, you either sink or you swim,” James says, and he shakes his head. “There is no middle ground and you have to pass. “
The Langtons know the story of Jeremy Wisten, who committed suicide at the age of 18 after battling depression after being released by Manchester City.
They also meet Rheiss McLean, 23, who started in Burton’s junior formula before age 4 in Mansfield, aged 15 to 19. His body was discovered in his hometown of Leicester in November and police say there are no suspicious circumstances. The investigation will take position later this year and, although no one needs to relate it to football when all the main points are not yet known, it is another tragic story of a shortened young life.
“We want all football clubs to read this and say, ‘What have we implemented?'” says Simon. “They want to have trained and knowledgeable counselors to communicate with young people and look for intellectual fitness issues. Well, why don’t they communicate? Is something wrong?How can we help them when they are released?
In Matthew’s case, or Langy, as his teammates called him, the coroner concluded that “like many young people, (he) didn’t need to overwhelm the other people closest to him. “
In Tesco, where he worked, there is now a wellness room named after him. “Asking is the first step,” says the wall. You are more valuable to this world than you will ever know. “
Another of his former teammates, Josh Randall, contacted The Athletic a few days after this interview. Josh, now in the RAF, was also at Mansfield, where he struggled with his own intellectual fitness issues. He and Matthew have become close friends and opened upstairs.
“Matty comes from Derthrough Academy, which is one of the most productive in the business. I had this dream, which was also realistic coming from a high-level academy, to be a footballer. So he had this initial blow of being released through Derthrough, and then this double blow, after falling in Mansfield, of being absolutely released. My challenge (with Mansfield) is that we’ve learned more about potential opportunities and headed towards new careers, so you’re not that lost.
GO FURTHER
Matthew Langton: The tragedy of a former Derby player who stored lives after his death
Mansfield, like all EFL clubs, has adhered to new rules that provide medical care to players in their youth formula and have a designated worker who screens those who have been released.
In a message to The Athletic, the club said: “Everyone at the club was deeply saddened to have been informed of Matthew’s passing and our sincerest mind remains with Matthew’s loved ones.
“The club remains committed to providing a positive environment for all its players and takes its duty to care for young people and other young people very seriously. The club strives to provide a welcoming environment where all its players are valued and supported.
During Matthew’s time at the club, Josh says he didn’t know Mansfield’s under-18s had access to a qualified counselor or intellectual abilities. If there was anyone, he says, more has been done to let players know.
“When Matty needed it, he might not have met someone there. If Matty had talked to someone, he could have helped. You probably would have benefited from talking to someone whose task it was to perceive this issue. I wouldn’t have felt guilty about overwhelming them, as I would have if it were a member of the circle of family or friends. If there had been someone and they had been informed, they may have replaced many.
As for Matthew’s family, they must remain in the space where, upstairs, their bedroom door is normally kept closed. Some other people ask if they can move. But it’s not something they plan. “Because he died here, I feel like he’s here,” Maxine says. I feel like if I leave, I would quit and I can’t do it yet. Even five years later, I may feel different. But I stay here because he died here and I feel like I can’t leave him.
Mathieu a midfielder. He had a keen eye for passing, a good first touch and was never afraid to make a tackle. Most importantly, it is a son, brother, grandson, nephew, friend and colleague.
Enjoyed. ” That was the last thing I told him,” Simon says. “Before I went to work, I would yell at him, ‘I love you, buddy. ‘I’m still thinking about it; It means a lot. I told him I enjoyed it every day.
Whatever happens, you can call the Samaritans of the UK for free at any time, from any phone, on 116 123. Click here to play them from the United States.
Young Minds also provides other young people in the UK experiencing an intellectual fitness crisis to text YM to 85258.
(Top images courtesy of Langton family; design: Samuel Richardson)