The Championship Manager legend on how his career fell apart after a failed move to Liverpool, the day he attempted to take his own life and how he bounced back

Cherno Samba was isolated and scared, gripped by burning sweats and haunted by the sense he had failed. The striker had wonderkid status at 15, when a move from Millwall to Liverpool fell apart in heartbreaking fashion, while his abnormal promise would see him become a cult hero in the virtual world. Mention his name to any fan of Championship Manager and they know.

Samba was being treated badly by the real world. Aged 19 and after his release by Millwall in the summer of 2004, the Gambia-born Londoner found himself at Cadiz in the Spanish second division. He had felt dreadfully low at times during his final years at Millwall but the move to Spain quickly turned into a “living hell”.

Samba struggled to sleep, lying in bed with tears rolling down his cheeks and, when he did drop off, he would dream about the Liverpool deal and wake with a start. He says that the sport he loves was “burying me alive”, although he did not let on to anyone about the deterioration of his mental health. He bottled everything up and, pretty soon, he could see only one way out.

“I didn’t want to be here any more,” Samba says. “My thoughts were: ‘I just can’t take this any more. I want to sleep and forget about everything. And never wake up.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cherno Samba playing for England Under-19s against Germany in 2003. Photograph: Christof Koepsel/Bongarts/Getty Images

Samba had started to sneak into the physiotherapist’s room at Cadiz to steal small boxes of painkillers. After four weeks or so, he had resolved to take his own life. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Then fate intervened. Samba had a teammate who would pick him up each morning but the former England youth player did not meet him that day outside the apartment block or answer his phone. The teammate sensed something was wrong. He went upstairs, knocked on Samba’s door and then kicked it down. Samba would be rushed to hospital and saved.

“I was one of those people who said: ‘Depression will never happen to me,’” Samba says. “But you don’t know until it grabs you. After I regained consciousness, it really hit home that I was lucky to be alive. It was when I said: ‘This is not me. I have got to sort myself out.’

I tried to shush my mates and they were like: ‘Shut up.’ So I put Michael Owen on loud speaker. The whole bus went quiet

“I felt I’d failed in England and I had to run away to Spain. The Liverpool deal was constantly on my mind. It was a dark time in my life and being alone didn’t help. Everything just escalated.”

Samba tells a lovely story from the time when the hype around him was at its peak and it is no exaggeration to say that he was the most wanted schoolboy footballer in England. Manchester United – the club he supported – and Leeds were in for him but Liverpool had rolled out the red carpet when he visited them at Melwood. Samba wanted to join them.

“After I’d been to Melwood, I was on the bus with my mates and my phone rang,” Samba says. “It was Michael Owen. I tried to shush my mates, saying: ‘It’s Michael Owen,’ and they were like: ‘Shut up.’ So I put him on loud speaker. The whole bus went quiet. He said it would be great if I came to Liverpool. I couldn’t breathe when I came off the phone and I remember thinking: ‘This is happening.’”

Samba had moved to England from the Gambia at six, initially to Watford and then, aged eight, to an estate in Peckham, which had its problems. “If it wasn’t for football I’d be in prison or dead by now,” he says. “The gang culture was that bad in south-east London.”

Samba’s ability with a ball at his feet was freakish and he destroyed all-comers on the estates and for his junior teams. At 13, he scored 132 goals in 30 games for his school while he made his way at youth level with Millwall and England. He was picked as a 14-year-old for England Schoolboys. At one stage he would keep Wayne Rooney out of the lineup for England Under-17s.

Everybody wanted a piece of Samba. One well-known agent, desperate to secure him as a client, offered his stepfather a bribe of £25,000 in cash. It was turned down. The newspaper headlines were sensational, particularly after Samba’s visit to Melwood, when he was photographed in a Liverpool jacket. He was tipped to lead England to success at the 2006 World Cup. “It was insane,” Samba says. The giddy highs would leave him with further to fall.

Why did the move to Liverpool break down? There have been differing accounts over the years. There was the suggestion that Millwall were unhappy when the picture of Samba in the Liverpool jacket came out. Did it drive his price even higher? According to Samba, Liverpool were prepared to pay £2m – £1m of it up front – but that Millwall wanted the full amount in one payment. The bottom line was that Samba did not join Liverpool or anyone else. “It crushed my world,” he says.

Cherno Samba’s stats on the computer game Championship Manager. Photograph: Championship Manager

For six months, Samba did not play. “I thought: ‘If I can’t have my dream move, I don’t want anything to do with football,’” he says. His representatives fought to secure his release from Millwall and a Football Association tribunal was involved. It was to no avail and, having taken stock, Samba agreed to return to Millwall, with the club having guaranteed him a three‑year professional contract when he turned 17.

But something had broken. Samba admits he had the wrong attitude. He had always been cocky. Take the time he met Sol Campbell. The England defender signed a ball and gave it to him, so what did Samba do? “I signed it myself and gave it him back,” he says. But now, Samba was verging on the entitled. In his mind, he should have been a Liverpool player.

At the same time, Millwall’s stance seems to have been curious. Samba came to feel that some staff at the club had it in for him and wanted to assert their superiority over him; to prove a point. “It was a case of: ‘You tried to fuck us, we’ll show you,’” Samba says. He did not develop any further at Millwall and he would not make a first-team appearance for them.

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Samba’s career drifted from Cadiz to Málaga B; to Plymouth and Wrexham; to Haka in Finland, Panetolikos in Greece and Tønsberg in Norway. He retired at 29.

On Championship Manager, however, Samba saw what might have been. The programmers for the 2001-02 version of the computer simulation assigned him high scores, based on his raw talent, and the gamers knew the drill. Samba was cheap and they would sign him easily. Then, he would blossom.

For a long time, Samba was troubled by the discrepancy between his real and virtual selves. Opposition defenders would taunt him about it. He even denied that he played the game, although he did. “I’d be Manchester United, I’d sign myself, I would score loads and we’d win everything,” Samba says. “It sounds a bit weird but the thing is I was great in it!”

These days, Samba is grateful to the game’s makers. “I love it, it’s part of me,” he says. “It’s led to so many stories. I’ve got a private plate on my car and the other day, this driver recognised me and got me to pull over for a photo. He then face‑timed his mate, who was playing Champ Man and my name was up on the screen. I’ve heard that my US equivalent, Freddy Adu, hates it and feels that the game has messed him up. But it’s just a game. You’ve got to have your own mentality.”

Samba is focused on forging a career as a coach. The 33-year-old is close to obtaining his Uefa A licence – he has completed some of his hours at the Tottenham academy – but he has also poured his energy into a soon-to-be-released autobiography. It has been a cathartic process.

“I’ve held a lot of anger, anxiety and hurt and the book has allowed me to let go of it,” Samba says. “I only talked about my overdose to friends and family last year. All these years and all these things – people have thought: ‘He’s all right now.’ I wasn’t until the book was finished.”

• Cherno Samba: Still In The Game is available for pre-order at chernosamba.co.uk and Amazon

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.