Friday February 17, 2023, Stéphane Dalmat gave an exclusive interview to the Parisian. For the occasion, the former football player wanted to come back to his particularly difficult end to his career.
A professional football player from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, Stéphane Dalmat experienced a turbulent career. For more than 15 years, he went through 11 different clubs, including Lens, OM, PSG, Inter Milan and Tottenham. After his career, he decided to quit football, before starting a long descent into hell.
In an interview given to Parisian and released on Friday, February 17, the 44-year-old revealed he was fell into alcohol and depression, a few months after the end of his career. “At first I took advantage then for almost a year I sank” he said before continuing: “My wife had left and I was alone in my house in Bordeaux. I pondered, I did anything with dark thoughts. I didn’t like myself. So I started drinking on my own. And pretty quickly, my daily life was waking up, champagne all day to get drunk and sleep. I was all the way down“.
Stéphane Dalmat: “I stayed in a coma for six days”.
Despite his time in many clubs, Stéphane Dalmat could not count on his former teammates to support him. Indeed, the sportsman had kept very few contacts from his years in the field. He recalled: “The phone didn’t answer, but I’ve always been apart in this environment where I haven’t tried to make friends. In sixteen years of career, I have maybe five friends“. Finally, it is thanks to his first love that he succeeded in go back up the slope and regain a much healthier lifestyle.
A few years later, in 2017, Stéphane Dalmat narrowly escaped death. He was the victim of a terrible scooter accident while driving in Bordeaux. “I was in a coma for six days and suffered two cardiac arrests. I almost died” he confided. After numerous fractures and six months in a wheelchair, the former midfielder managed to recover from his injuries. Today, he plans to come back to football and to create a big club in Tours. A beautiful project that could see the light of day in the years to come.