Jason Steele says he reached a point where he “hated” football before rejuvenating his career at Brighton.
Steele has emerged as Europe-chasing Brighton’s first-choice goalkeeper under Roberto de Zerbi this season.
But earlier in his career he was at a “tipping point” and needing to find a way to fall back in love with the game.
“There was a spell where I was at the bottom, properly at the bottom, to the point I wasn’t even bothered about playing football anymore,” Steele said.
“I’m not scared of it. I know I can bounce back from that, so failure doesn’t scare me anymore,” the 32-year-old added, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club.
Prior to his move to the south coast in 2018, Steele had suffered consecutive Championship relegations with Blackburn Rovers and Sunderland.
Although he did not feature in Brighton’s first 22 Premier League games this season, he has since started all 11 matches that he has been available for to help his side’s push for a top-six finish, which would guarantee European qualification for the first time in the club’s history.
“It was a point when I hated football, I hated everything that came with it. It’s the mess social media causes – it plays with you constantly and you carry it around like a big massive weight on your shoulders all the time,” Steele said.
“You don’t act yourself and you are hard to be around and that’s what drove me to the point of not really loving football anymore.
“It was a case of that being the tipping point – it was like, how do I get myself back in love with the game?
“I’ve managed to do that down here.”
Steele was discussing the impact of social media abuse on players following a Leeds United statement condemning the “completely unacceptable online abuse” directed towards Patrick Bamford and his family.
The club called for such behaviour to stop, with the threats coming after the striker missed a penalty against Newcastle on Saturday.
“It doesn’t just affect us, it’s our families, kids and wives. People who are sitting there writing these things don’t understand the effect. We are all human, we all feel things, we all have emotions,” Steele said.
“I’m fully off it and I don’t need it. I’m old and wise enough to know when I’ve had a good game or a bad game. I don’t need people tweeting me and telling me this and that.
“You’d have a game and you’d look at your phone and some of the stuff that gets said… That’s 10 years ago and I think it has escalated so much recently.
“I don’t really know Patrick as a person but he hasn’t missed a penalty on purpose. He hasn’t done it to harm the fans. It’s just one of those things. It’s football. It happens week in and week out.”
