When the most beautiful decor shows, for once, a darker side, it pushes the strongest body to show some signs of weakness.
Rough, upright and proud defender, Toby Alderweireld has, for the first time, revealed a part of the man hiding beneath the capacious. In the show “The House” broadcast on VRT this Tuesday evening, he revealed a side that we did not necessarily know about him: more fragile and full of questions.
Questions, ever more numerous, which perhaps pushed him to experience two panic attacks in recent years. Crises, which sent him to the emergency room, and which made him think. Even shaking the many pillars that littered his football career until then: “It was also because of the panic attacks that I left the national team” he confides without concession, thus lifting the veil on an international retirement that few had anticipated.
Following an interview with open hearts (and bodies), the former Red Devil (127 caps) returns to the first anxiety attack. That of February 2, 2023, which changed everything in his mind: “After the Cup match lost against Union, I was angry and frustrated. I couldn’t sleep that night and left for the club early the next morning. Before leaving, I took a caffeine pill because I don’t like coffee. In the car, my heart suddenly started beating a thousand miles an hour. I thought I was having a heart attack and that it was over, that I would never see my children again. I stopped, went into a furniture store and asked if they could call the ambulance,” he recounts.
A few weeks later, again, in the middle of the night this time: “What happened was that due to the increasing stress, I felt my heart racing. I had a panic attack, which made my heart beat faster. I was going crazy, thinking I was having a heart attack and dying.”
A few weeks later, he finally scored the title goal for Antwerp. A few weeks later, he will also retire internationally, to the great dismay of Devils supporters who hoped to see him bellow in the Belgian defense for a few more years.
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