Johnny Phillips: The caged wonderkid who tried to take his own life

Tigers is the story of Martin Bengtsson, a Swedish footballer who made a dream move to Inter Milan at the age of just 17 but found himself out of the game a year later, battling depression after a failed suicide attempt.

Bengtsson was a typical football-mad kid, but what separated him from the rest was his precocious talent.

“I got into football around five or six years old, the Swedish national team was doing well and I also followed Italian football on television, I loved AC Milan and Marco van Basten,” he explains. “By nine years old I was practising hard and wanted to achieve the goal of becoming a professional football player.

“I remember reading an article about the Brazilian forward Ronaldo and the training routines he did so I tried to make my own training programme after that.”

Bengtsson was 15 years old when Orebro SK signed him in 2001 and his name was soon on the radar of some of Europe’s top clubs, including Chelsea and Ajax Amsterdam.

“In the summer of 2003 I played in a tournament with the Sweden Under-17s team and Inter watched me at that and then invited me to Italy to train with them for a week,” he continues. “The week went well and they offered me a contract.

“The first month there was great, I had a good time on the pitch. I was a very technical player and they could play me as a winger, a number 10 or holding midfielder.”

There were early warning signs that all was not well when Bengtsson found out he could not continue his education, despite promises that a school would be found for him in Milan.

Cocooned in an environment geared solely towards producing elite players at a top European club, it was a minor injury some months later which proved a turning point.

“I was out for two weeks and during that time something quite existential happened,” he adds. “I had valued myself on my performances so when I couldn’t play I felt terrible.

“I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t playing football. Most young people at that age go through questions like this about who they are becoming, but I had been living my dream up until then so it challenged me.

“During that summer I fell in love with a girl and she introduced me to different things, like music, and for the first time I felt like a normal teenager. When I went back to Italy I had these other interests in my life.

“We went on a summer training camp in the mountains and at the end of the training camp three of the younger players were kicked out for smoking marijuana.

“When we came back to Milan the rules were made even harder, we were not really allowed out of our accommodation.

“You went from football to the shared house every day and nowhere else.

“In order to stay sane in this locked-in environment I started to play the guitar. I got into poetry too, I just needed an outlet.

“For a while it was a good balance. Then I went to play in a tournament with Sweden and found that all my poetry had been thrown away.

“They went into my private life and I found it very hard to take. From that moment the depression started, I felt the pressure of being there.

“It was all building up and I couldn’t find a way out, it went downhill very quickly.”

Bengtsson feels the system in place failed him. The struggles and anxiety that followed resulted in a suicide attempt.

“I regret that part still because it hurt my family,” he admits. “But I was young and didn’t know a way out.

“I felt so ashamed for feeling that I couldn’t stand my life any more. I wish it had never happened like that.”

Still a teenager, Bengtsson returned to Sweden and his former club, Orebro, in an attempt to pick up the pieces of a career that still had so much promise, while continuing to work on his mental health.

But after a short spell back in the game he realised that football was no longer what made him tick.

“I was doing a lot of writing at the time and it started to take over and became a new interest,” he explains. “Now it has become my career. I work as a scriptwriter in Swedish television, I’ve been doing it for the last five years, it’s really enjoyable.

“Writing helped with my depression and it’s been a good journey for me.”

Tigers is a collaboration with his friend Ronnie Sandahl, the film’s director.

The title comes from a reference in the script to a caged tiger in a zoo having no control over its own destiny.

Bengtsson’s desire to reach the top as a young kid was strong but in the end the environment became too much for him.

If there is just one message he wants to get across to the football industry it is a clear one.

“We need to create a sustainable environment for young players, how they can become better human beings,” he insists. “That will make them better players on the pitch, too.

“Clubs have to look at the mental health side of it and the structures they have in place for young players to help them develop properly.”