Jamie Carragher admits spitting incident ‘knocked me for six months’ in candid conversation with Gary Neville
The Sky Sports pundit, who was suspended for five months, has opened up to Gary Neville on The Overlap
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Your support makes all the difference.Jamie Carragher has revealed that he saw a psychologist to cope with the aftermath of his suspension at Sky Sports for spitting at a car.
The Liverpool legend admits the incident “knocked him” for six months in March 2018.
And Carragher opened up about the difficult experience with fellow Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville on the latest episode of The Overlap.
“Coming home from Old Trafford and then when I lost my job at Sky - I’m someone who’s quite on the front foot, if someone attacks me,” Carragher said.
“But that knocked me for six months. For a good six months I wasn’t myself. I’d get up in the morning and just have that pain in my stomach, oh that did happen.
“I went to see Steve Peters [a psychologist] after it. I felt really bad, embarrassed, my family, my mum or dad. And the kids.
“I remember getting back to the house that night when I’d been at Sky. I haven’t seen the kids, they’re at school, and you just get back and we all sat together and it was tough.
“Even though we’re in the public eye, we’re not the royals, Beckham, big stars. You read them on the front page. When it’s you, everywhere I went it felt like people were looking at me.”
Carragher returned to his role with the broadcaster five months later and has since established himself as one of the game’s leading pundits each week, including the acclaimed Monday Night Football.
Carragher added: “It’d come back to me, but it was done. I owned it. I didn’t blame anyone else. I accepted it. I took my medicine.
“Whatever s*** is thrown at me I’ll take it. And that’s the way I was as a player.”
Carragher made a live television appearance shortly after the incident to apologise, admitting that the incident left him “devastated”.
Speaking in March 2018, he said: “Watching those clips back it feels like an out of body thing - just that moment of madness for four or five seconds.
“My biggest regret is for the 14-year-old girl to be caught in the middle of it. That devastates me more than anything.
“I have a young daughter exactly the same age and if somebody had done that it’s difficult for me to find the words to how I would react.”
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