Soccer: Collymore: I hit Ulrika because I was depressed
Footballer Stan Collymore has admitted he hit former lover Ulrika Jonsson in a bar because he was suffering from depression.
The 30-year-old, whose career ended in February when he announced his retirement from the game, said he "lost it" as the couple spent an evening in a Paris bar during the 1998 World Cup.
In an interview with Marie Claire magazine, Collymore spoke about his hopes of conquering his depression.
Collymore, who became the most expensive footballer in Britain when he transferred from Nottingham Forest to Liverpool in July 1998 for a record £8.5 m, told the magazine how he felt a "mixture of jealousy and betrayal" over Ulrika the night he hit her.
The couple had been together 18 months when Collymore said he was taunted by hundreds of Scottish fans as he went into a bar.
When he got in, he saw Ulrika wearing a Scotland shirt, pulling pints behind the bar and warned her anyone could jump over the bar at her.
"I felt a mixture of jealousy and betrayal - lots of negative emotions rushed into my head and suddenly I hit her in the face ... I apologised to her, of course, privately, then publicly afterwards, although we split up back in London the next day," he told the magazine.
In January this year, Collymore left Bradford City on free transfer to Spanish side Real Oviedo, but that spell ended five weeks later.
Collymore said he thinks he was suffering from depression for the last months of his two years at Liverpool. He cannot pinpoint what triggered the illness, but said media intrusion was partly to blame.
The interview was done by the magazine on behalf of Depression Alliance - of which he is a member.
