Seven years ago Léo Scienza’s life broke into a thousand small pieces. On his 20th birthday his father died and the young footballer locked himself in his room for two months, having lost the will to live. “You know when everything is bad and nothing makes sense any more?” the Southampton midfielder says. “My life had no meaning any more.
“Look, everyone has a dark side and I’m not the best person to talk about depression or what depression is. In fact, I only understood it later. My father died on my birthday – that will always be marked in my life. After he died I just wanted to stay in my dark room doing nothing. I didn’t want to see anyone, I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
The Brazilian can talk about it now but it is clear it remains a haunting period of his life. At the time, he was being rejected by most major Brazilian clubs and playing for £20-£40 a game, thinking he would never make it as a footballer.
A few months later he was convinced by unscrupulous agents to go to Sweden. They promised him a shot with a club in the top division, Allsvenskan, but he ended up at Fanna, in the fifth tier, about 80km north of Stockholm.
“My father’s death was hard but then the opportunity arose to go to Sweden and start a new life,” says Scienza, who joined Southampton from the Bundesliga side Heidenheim for about £8m last summer. “Everything bad had already happened to me. I wasn’t afraid of anything any more. I went to Sweden with all the positivity in the world, with many dreams, to escape what I was experiencing in Brazil. But it was shit. I went through every possible difficulty you can imagine.”
Among the toughest things to overcome was the lack of money. There was a problem with his salary and the living arrangement was far from ideal. “My dream turned into a nightmare. My dream of being a professional football player turned into working to have something to eat the next day.”
It led to Scienza feeling depressed again. “It’s difficult to explain depression,” he says. “It’s difficult to realise when you’re depressed. I cried almost every day. But I started to overcome depression in Sweden. Even though the league was awful I started to pick myself up. As difficult and complicated as that moment was, I learned and grew up a lot. If necessary, I would go through it all again, even for longer if needed.”
And there was a positive. “I still saw a light and managed to have fun. I only played at the weekends so you end up appreciating the little things, a new friendship, a positive situation, things like that. You start to forget the negative things and focus on the good things. And whether I wanted to or not, even if it was in a shitty league, I was doing what I loved, which was playing football. And we got promoted.”
To help against depression Scienza has turned to psychology. From an early age, after the death of a godfather, he started having panic attacks and had weekly therapy sessions. “My psychologist is one of the most important people in my life,” he says. “You need someone to talk to, to let your feelings out. You can’t keep thoughts, good or bad, in your head. Not talking to anyone is digging yourself into an ever-deepening hole. If you don’t seek anyone out, you won’t get out. Psychology has helped me understand the phases of life and accept them. There are things in life that we don’t control. But you can control how you react in each moment of your life.”
Scienza’s journey is remarkable. Despite all the problems in Sweden he scored 10 goals that season and attracted the attention of an agent with good connections at Schalke, where he went to play in the youth teams. But his escape wasn’t easy.
“I left the house where I was living in a hurry,” he says. “I grabbed my suitcase and left because I had a friend in Sweden who came to pick me up there, and we managed to get out of that house, where I was staying. I had to manage to find a way. I travelled to Germany to a trial at Schalke.”
Scienza won a place in Schalke’s B team and stayed for two years but did not see an opportunity to break into the first team. Leaving Schalke worried him. “I was afraid to go to the fourth, fifth or sixth division in Germany. And it’s not a wonderful life in those divisions. It’s amateur football, you can’t make a living from it.”
He went to Magdeburg in the second division. It seemed as if he was finally about to make it but it was not until he dropped to Ulm in the third tier that his career took off. He was the star player, with 12 goals, and received an offer to play for Heidenheim.
He quickly became a favourite and, remarkably, scored the goal that kept Heidenheim in the Bundesliga, a 95th-minute winner at Elversberg in the second playoff game. Southampton pounced and he is preparing to face Portsmouth on Sunday. It has not been the season Southampton had hoped for but Scienza is loving it. On Wednesday he scored the winner at home to Sheffield United.
“I am playing in the most difficult league in the world. It isn’t the Premier League. It’s the Championship. There are very big clubs, all of them with a lot of investment. Let’s say it’s a bloodbath. Very intense. There are two or three players on you all the time.”
Scienza has come a long way. Reflecting on those dark days in Brazil he says: “I had suicidal thoughts. My life had no meaning any more, I didn’t want to be alive any more. My father’s death was very difficult. Very difficult. But I chose to process what happened, accept that I have no control over it, and move on. Three months after his death is when I went to Sweden and started my new life.”
He is in a different place now and Scienza jokes his career resembles that of a Football Manager player. It has been such a journey that he does not have a clue what life will have in store for him from this point.
“Many friends have asked me if I dream of one day playing for the national team,” he says. “I think that’s crazy, but in a good way. It is not reality. I know how many good players there are in my position. But my life has been so crazy that I answer that I don’t know. It would be wonderful to play for the national team. But I know it’s more than a dream at the moment.”
