It’s a first. For reasons mainly related to her mental health, Canadian goalkeeper Stéphanie Labbé is retiring from sport during the season following breaking her contract with PSG. This one ran until next June. He had been signed last August when she played last year in Sweden. Aged 35, the 2021 Olympic champion wants to give another direction to her life in order to preserve her mental health. A theme on which she already spoke last fall, on the return of the Olympic title won in Tokyo (Japan) with Canada.
After several months spent at PSG, a club in which she shared the position of number 1 goalkeeper with the Czech Barbora Votikova, Stéphanie Labbé therefore wishes to evolve away from the football fields. Upon returning from the winter holidays, she approached the Parisian management to announce her intentions. The Canadian explained to Ulrich Ramé, general manager of the women’s section, the reasons for her choice, guided by significant mental wear. Affected by Covid-19 just before winter, Labbé then went on vacation to Canada. Time for a moment of reflection with his loved ones, and in particular his companion, the cyclist Georgia Simmerling, Olympic medalist in 2016 in Rio (Brazil).
The decision somewhat annoys PSG, which loses a high-level goalkeeper for the end of the season. Labbé was named one of the three finalists for the Fifa The Best Trophy for the best goalkeepers of 2021. But the club also wanted to support her as best as possible towards this premature retirement. The early termination of the contract must still be initialed by all the parties, up to that of Jean-Claude Blanc, deputy general manager of the capital club. In a video of more than five minutes published this Wednesday evening, Stéphanie Labbé formalizes her decision. With her entourage, she had already prepared these announcements for her various social networks. A press conference must even see the light of day in the company of Canadian media.
As of Tuesday evening, Stéphanie Labbé had published on her networks an enigmatic message suggesting that an important decision would be taken soon. With PSG, however, nothing revealed such a sudden choice. She played six games, three in the first division and three in the Champions League, without conceding a single goal. With Barbora Votikova and the German Charlotte Voll, the competition was healthy within the club of the capital. But it is indeed in connection with her personal mental wear that Stéphanie Labbé decides to stop everything. “Football has caused some of the darkest moments of my life,” she says, tears in her eyes, in the video published on Wednesday.
In the fall, she had confided at length on the site of Fifpro, the international union of footballers and footballers. She explained that she had sympathized during the Games with the American Simone Biles, gymnast, and the Japanese Naomi Osaka, tennis player, two pioneering sportswomen on the issue of mental health. And despite winning Olympic gold in Tokyo, she mightn’t find happiness: “When the final whistle sounded and we won gold, I expected immense relief, but no, nothing … No matter how much I wanted to relax and party with my teammates, I mightn’t come down from that waking state, and I spent the 48 hours following the final lying in a dark room”.
In 2012, Stéphanie Labbé had already taken a break from her international career. She watched the Canadians win bronze at the London Games. “As soon as I committed to taking this break, I felt immense relief that I might choose to withdraw from an environment that was not healthy for my mental state,” she explains. topic. Labbé had finally returned to glean another bronze in Rio in 2016 and, therefore, this gold in Tokyo. Today, with PSG or Canada, the goalkeeper prefers not to tempt fate and stop everything. Meet on another road.
