Bayern Munich and France defender Benjamin Pavard has revealed he battled depression during Covid-19 lockdown.
Pavard, a World Cup winner with Les Bleus in 2018, claims he lost his appetite for the game when football paused in February 2020 and resumed without fans in the stadiums in May of that year.
"In my head, things weren’t right, he told Le Parisien. "At the start, you say it’s nothing, that it will pass, but when you see that it persists and then you go to training and you don’t have a smile on your face, you have to react.
"Like everyone else, I’m human, and even if I have a beautiful house with a gym, I needed human contact. I woke up in the mornings, I didn’t have an appetite. I tried to take care of myself, to cook, to watch TV series."
And the former VfB Stuttgart defender, who started for France in their UEFA Nations League clash with Denmark on Sunday, added: "I don’t like the word depression, but it was that.
"I hid it from everyone but today I feel a lot better. I came out of it all a better man. It changed me."
