Ex-Manchester United hopeful Scott opens up on depression, gambling and finding football salvation in Hong Kong

Sitting in a coffee shop in Hung Hom, as fellow customers took pictures of the local football hero on their phones, Charlie Scott recounted his lowest ebb.

As he motioned with his hand to portray a car veering off the road, leaving the toughest words unspoken, it was impossible to ignore the contrast between today’s boy-made-good with Kitchee, and the lost soul following his release from Manchester United.

“A voice on my shoulder was telling me to [imitates crashing car] … it was like someone had hold of me and was trying to make me do something I did not want to,” said Scott, speaking days after International Men’s Day, which advocates discussions around males’ mental health.

“The music playing in my car brought me back. I stopped dead in the middle of this country road, and started crying. I do not know how long I was there.

“My parents were asleep when I got home. I burst into their room and was sitting on the edge of the bed in tears. They asked what was wrong, but I could not say the words.”

Kitchee’s Charlie Scott in action against Aston Villa during the Citi HKFC Hong Kong Soccer Sevens. Photo: HK Soccer Sevens

Scott had been returning from training on a Tuesday night with Chester FC. Previous trials with a succession of clubs, after being cast aside by United, had amounted to nothing. They were never going to. Scott was suffering with depression and no longer liked football.

He was drinking heavily because “it would help me sleep at night and take the pain away”. Gambling became a destructive habit. Scott would drive to a casino, “turn my phone off and sit there until 4am”.

He had no income, was trapped in a “downwards spiral”, and accumulated debts that required his parents to sell their car.

“My dad always used to joke that if I made it big, I could buy him an Audi SQ5, he always wanted one,” Scott said. “I did it, then I took it away from him.”

Scott retreated deeper into the drinking and gambling, shunning social contact. He was, he said bluntly, “an a***hole to everyone”.

“I pushed people away,” he said. “I did not want them asking if I was still playing football, or looking at me saying, ‘He was at Manchester United but threw it away, now he is on trial at Scunthorpe’. I did not even watch football.”

I knew when I was 18, I was unlikely to play for Manchester United’s first team

Charlie Scott

To convey the sense of disorientation he was experiencing, Scott said one Saturday he loaded his kit bag into the back of his car, then “remembered I was not playing football any more”.

Scott joined Manchester United, aged six, and travelled through the age groups with Marcus Rashford. Watching the striker score twice on his debut, persuaded Scott to sign professional forms in 2016.

“I knew when I was 18, I was unlikely to play for Manchester United’s first team,” Scott said. “But I watched Marcus’s debut, and thought, ‘You never know’.

Scott’s dad received a phone call from the club 12 months later, asking him to tell his son that he was being let go, something Scott said was “a bit disrespectful”, and contributed to his downward spiral.

Scott sought help from a psychotherapist, steadily overcoming an initial instinct to “hold back” in sessions. Still, he did not tell anybody about the counselling, nor the medication he was prescribed, and six months after leaving United, gave up on football altogether.

A lost year followed, before Scott began working with his dad and uncles, labouring on a building site. He learned to laugh again, but one day, after around six months, started sobbing his heart out.

“To this day, I do not know what happened, but something clicked in my mind, and that was it,” he said.

Kitchee’s Charlie Scott celebrates with his fiancee Ching Wu-yan after winning the Hong Kong Premier League. Photo: Instagram

Scott rediscovered the joy of playing with the non-league Newcastle Town, sourcing confidence from the realisation he was streets ahead of his contemporaries.

Thoughts turned to climbing the ladder in England, but an offer to play for Happy Valley in Hong Kong prompted a change of tack.

He quickly targeted a transfer to Kitchee, and after claiming the Premier League Players’ Player of the Year prize in his first season, fulfilled his ambition.

A court date on December 6, when Scott will try to obtain six months’ unpaid wages from Happy Valley, is only a small smear on a glistening horizon.

He was a treble winner with Kitchee last season, and is planning for his wedding next June to former Now TV presenter Ching Wu-yan. A banquet in Hong Kong and ceremony in England, will sandwich Scott’s stag-do, a golfing trip to Albufeira in Portugal with his three closest friends.

“I have paid for them, and made all three of them my best men, as a thank you for sticking with me and supporting me,” Scott said.

Scott has organised Zoom calls with some of the countless people suffering with poor mental health who have contacted him on social media.

“I am not an expert, but I can relate,” he said. “Sometimes we never speak again – but if it puts a smile on their face, and on mine, it is a positive thing.”

Scott remains in contact with his mental health professional, and “still has days when I sit on the bed and have bad thoughts”.

“But it is nothing like previously,” he said. “It does not last long, and one phone call, or conversation, is all it takes to be back to normal life.

“I am as happy as I have ever been. I am getting married, I speak to my parents every day, I am enjoying my football again, and I love life in Hong Kong.”