Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang played only half a season in the Barcelona shirt, but he suffered perhaps one of the worst possible episodes: suffering a robbery at home and with his family inside.
This sad event occurred at the end of August 2022, when several hooded men attacked his home at dawn. He and his wife were beaten by the assailants, in addition to being held in the presence of their children.
“My eldest son came running and told me: ‘Dad, there are some guys in the house,'” said the former Barcelona player in an interview with ‘The Athletic’. The footballer recounts the horror they experienced during the robbery: “They entered from outside, where my wife was smoking with my cousin and her boyfriend. They took my cousin’s boyfriend and entered the house. My wife was screaming. They had a gun.”
He tried to stand up to them
Aubameyang admits that in those moments his reaction was to “grab a big bottle” and try to stand up to the hooded men. At that time, the Gabonese attacker also tried to get his sister-in-law, who was with one of her children, to hide to try to be safe.
“That’s when I saw them, there were four or five of them. One of them had a gun and told me: ‘Come down’. I told him: ‘No, no, tell me what you want.’ At that moment, one of the robbers began to hit him, due to Aubameyang’s refusal to sit down.
In his account of the events, the now Al-Qadisiyah player acknowledges that he wanted to fight, but one of the robbers “took my children and my sister-in-law.” There Aubameyang reconsidered: “If you do something wrong, something could happen to them. I gave them what they asked for.”
Many psychological consequences
There were many valuable objects that the robbers took from Aubameyang’s house, but the attacker acknowledges that the worst was the psychological consequences on his children: “After that, the children told me: ‘Dad, I don’t want to go to the school, I’m afraid something will happen.’ For a year, the little boy said, ‘I can’t sleep alone.'”
Aubameyang acknowledges that this situation lasted too long: “There were many nights like that, without sleeping, just thinking about that shit. You have some nightmares. Every time the children are alone, they are afraid…”.
“I still have that house, but I haven’t returned
More than two years have passed since that robbery, but the Gabonese man and his family do not consider setting foot in that home again: “I still have that house, but I have not been back since. I think I will start renting it because my children do not want to go there.” to Barcelona”. Their children are the ones who have the most phobia of returning to the place of the assault: “Their school took a trip there and they told me not to talk.”
Furthermore, Aubameyang acknowledges that perhaps he should have had professional help: “If I had gone to a therapist or a psychologist, maybe they could have helped me. But I didn’t want to do anything, I was lost.”
Aubameyang left Barcelona after just six months and 24 games to join Chelsea. He is now part of Al-Qadisiyah, a Saudi club where he joined at the beginning of this season from Olympique Marseille.
