Sitting on a simple bench in a tiny West London park – opposite a playground and yards from the River Brent that passes under the A4 – are two men. One is 23-years-old and dressed in jeans and a cardigan. The other is in his 60s and wears a flamboyant suit, bright green socks and a hat.
Fabio Carvalho is the younger man and a Portuguese footballer, once of Fulham and Liverpool and now of Brentford.
‘I love what I do and I’m blessed to do it but there is a misconception that every day in football is sunshine and rainbows and it’s really not,’ he tells the Daily Mail.
‘It can really test you to the extreme. There is so much backlash in football. Either not performing or being injured or not scoring goals or carrying difficult personal stuff that nobody knows about.
‘When you are doing well everyone loves you but when you aren’t it weighs on your chest. This is when you need someone.’
Carvalho’s significant other in this regard is Michael Caulfield, Brentford’s club psychologist. He of the green socks and warm smile.
Brentford star Fabio Carvalho, pictured alongside the club’s psychologist, Michael Caulfield, has opened up on the mental health struggles of a footballer
‘There is a misconception that every day in football is sunshine and rainbows and it’s really not,’ he tells the Daily Mail
The bench is significant. Not long ago, Caulfield introduced one at the club’s training ground a mile or so away from where we sit.
The club have called it ‘Michael’s Bench’ and it’s where the club’s players go to talk to Caulfield – in the open air and away from prying eyes of football staff – whenever they feel they have a need. It’s been so well-used that the club’s B team asked for one too. It’s called ‘Michael’s Other Bench’.
‘It’s good to have someone to talk to who doesn’t have the club badge on their chest,’ explains Carvalho.
‘As players we can be a bit cautious of what we say to people at the club as you never know what that can bring.
‘That’s one of reasons why a lot of players don’t like being open about what they are going through or feeling.
‘Most of the time Michael and I don’t even talk about football stuff.
‘It may be about Michael’s family, my family, our dogs! Football brings pressure and it can trap you a bit.
‘So it’s good to be free of that while you talk you know?’
Brentford have introduced ‘Michael’s Bench’, where the club’s players go to talk to Caulfield
Football in this country is slowly becoming a more grown-up place. There has been progress in conversations around mental health.
Nevertheless, weakness does not constitute a good dressing room look. The evolution has been slow in that regard.
‘I would agree,’ nods Carvalho.
‘I think it’s just being men in football. We don’t like to talk about feelings. Older players can help you and sometimes they do. But it can be tough.
‘You don’t always feel you can say what you wanna say.
‘People think we get money and that fixes every problem. It does fix a lot. But being honest and being able to share and carry each other’s burdens is still something that needs a breakthrough.
‘I feel this initiative with the benches has been huge. It’s really helped me and other players.’
Caulfield, persuaded by jockey Sir AP McCoy to retrain when he was chief executive of the Professional Jockey’s Association, says he has talked to most of the Brentford squad at some point in the last eight years. Topics can be weighty. Divorce, racism, anxiety and miscarriages.
‘You don’t always feel you can say what you wanna say,’ Carvalho adds of working in football
‘That’s just four of forty topics,’ Caulfield says.
‘The least discussed is 4-4-2 or 3-5-2 or inverted full-backs.
‘This is their chance to talk about the person and not the footballer.
‘Some of the things we discuss I will take to the grave as they are very private and personal.
‘Football is a hard environment and they need to know that whatever they say to me stays outside on the bench.
‘We are sitting here and it’s pretty unnatural surrounded my microphones and cameras.
‘But it’s still very easy because we are outside. If we were doing this now in the media room at Brentford, this interview would not be like this.
‘I would be careful and wary and so would Fabio. But because we are outside with trains and planes and birds and the rest of it, it feels very normal.’
Caulfield emphasises that the bench provides a chance for players to talk about the person rather than the footballer
There are benches old and new, and Brentford are hopeful that the wider community will benefit too
Caulfield’s first bench was – in his own words – ‘made of tin’. Now they are rather more bespoke. One of them was even placed on the field at the Gtech Stadium before a game against Chelsea.
Brentford hope the wider community will now benefit too. The bench we are sitting on is new and surrounded by flowers in club colours.
With the support of the London Borough of Hounslow, it is one of several the club have placed in the area. Each carries a simple plaque saying: ‘A Brentford FC Bench. Talking is the best tactic. If you need support, help is available.’ The appropriate telephone numbers follow. The club also make a habit of calling supporters they know to be vulnerable.
Asked what purpose he hopes the initiative would serve, Carvalho pauses.
‘Maybe to persuade people to have less time on phones,’ he says.
‘Just sit and talk and share feelings. An open conversation with no distractions. A cup of coffee or tea. Just talk.’
Carvalho’s own career has by his own admission stalled a little bit. He arrived in England as a young boy and was spotted by Fulham playing for Balham Blazers after his mother literally knocked on doors in search of a local football team.
Forty league appearances for Fulham led him to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool in 2022 where he appeared 13 times in the Premier League before arriving at Brentford two summers ago. He is currently on the fringe of Keith Andrews’ team.
Carvalho joined Fulham before moving to Liverpool, and is now on the fringe of Keith Andrews’ Brentford side
‘I went to Liverpool with high expectations and it didn’t really go to plan but I got to see how the best of the best perform,’ he recalls.
‘If I see someone like Mo Salah staying out and doing extras and being the first one in the gym, then I realise that I need to be in there before him.
‘If he is doing it, then why am I not doing it?’
It’s put to him that Salah is currently having a rough time of it in terms of scrutiny.
‘Everyone gets criticised,’ he shrugs.
‘Sometimes rightly so, sometimes unfairly.’
Not a great user of social media, the same can’t be said of his father Victor who suggested in Instagram a year ago ‘son you have to leave this club’ after he was left out of Thomas Frank’s team.
‘He is still on Instagram but I don’t look,’ laughs Carvalho.
His time with the Reds did not work out, but helped him in terms of leaning how the best work
‘It was quite funny really.’
Emotions are part of football, on and off the field. Carvalho’s friendship with Caulfield now runs deep enough that they expect to remain close even when their careers inevitably take them in different directions.
Carvalho says his first impressions of the older man were rather basic.
‘I was thinking: “Who is this bloke in the nice suit?”,’ he smiles.
‘It wasn’t forced upon me. He left me alone and that’s a good thing because then our connection was able to grow naturally.
‘He watches training as well so he tends to know how it’s going for me before I open my mouth!’
Caulfield recognises the details of the story because it was all deliberate. Emotionally, footballers can be difficult to reach.
‘Timing in life is everything,’ he says.
Carvalho and Courtfield are now good friends and expect to remain so when their careers inevitably go in different directions
‘A player can walk past me ten times and barely seem to recognise me.
‘But on the eleventh time he gives me the signal or the cue that he could do with ten minutes.
‘There is this wonderful thing still in the world called eye contact and we generally do less of it because we are always looking at a screen.
‘But if someone looks me in the eye or gives me a little nod – like an auctioneer does – then I know.
‘And if they don’t I will disappear. There are days when I am so unwilling to be seen I will hide round the corner until they have walked past.’
With the death of Ricky Hatton still raw and the football world processing the loss of former Liverpool coach Matt Beard, Caulfield considers the issues surrounding life after sport.
‘I don’t think there is anything so sad than that feeling of doing something all your life and then losing it and that sense of purpose and belonging goes,’ he says.
‘Ricky had a history of that. There is that line from an Irish song that says: “All your fears and worries attack when you are alone” and the idea of these benches is that you can sit down and strike up a conversation.
Courtfield explains to the Daily Mail how he gives players the option to come to him and when he feels they may need a chat
‘It’s not a solution but it’s better than being alone with your mind going like a washing machine. If one person calls one of the numbers on one of these benches then I will have done my bit.’
As Carvalho prepares to say goodbye, he stops to think about how he thinks his relationship with Caulfield and the calm it has brought him may benefit his football.
‘I can put all the outside stuff in the dustbin, brush it off,’ he says.
‘You aren’t carrying any extra luggage on the field. You focus on the football and feel free, just like I was as a kid.
‘Go back to that state of freedom, playing in the cages in Lisbon.
‘Not one worry in the world apart from when your mum would call you to come and have lunch or dinner.
‘Having to rush it so that you could come back out again and play. That feeling of freedom is what we all want isn’t it?’
TODAY is World Mental Heath day. Call the Samaritans on 116123 or Mind on 0300 102 1234.
