It would be glib to suggest that Enke's treatment by Barcelona was the beginning of his illness – he had suffered from fear and insecurity before – but his experience at the Camp Nou did become a pivotal point in his sense of what was subsequently diagnosed as "alienation".
He made his debut for Barcelona in a Copa del Rey match against third‑division Novelda after a troubling series of training sessions where he found it difficult to adapt to the unfamiliar distance between himself and the remarkably high line adopted by Barça's back-four which was an integral part of Louis van Gaal's coaching philosophy. He had already been unnerved by Van Gaal in a telephone conversation when transfer negotiations over his move from Benfica had hit a hitch and he asked for some reassurance that he was still wanted. "I don't even know you," the manager said, a perception, or lack of it, shared by Barcelona's coaches who seemed baffled by Enke's preference for using his hands instead of his feet.
When Barcelona were defeated 3-2 in the cup game, the club's captain Frank de Boer laid the blame for two of the goals on Enke, later claiming he had been misquoted but he never apologised to the goalkeeper. "He was thrown to the lions," says Victor Valdés, Barça's current No1 whose emergence that season kept Enke on the sidelines.