After money and fame, some players turn to drink
What you need to know:
- In a sport awash with so much money, including wages of thousands per week for top players, it is inevitable that there should be casualties at the coalface, collateral damage so to speak.
- Gascoigne said he was in a rehabilitation programme with Sansom, “but Kenny ran out after half a day. He was not wanting that. I cannot help him unless be puts his hand up and says he wants help.”
- The timing was unfortunate to say the least. Fifa released a film about itself, United Passions, which has earned scathing reviews.
Rarely has the word corruption been in the headlines as often as these past weeks when bombshell after bombshell exploded around the governing body of world soccer, Fifa. Dollar sums quoted were not in the hundreds or thousands but in millions and multiples of millions.
The drama started with the arrest in Switzerland of 14 high-ranking FIFA officials or ex-officials in a joint operation by the US FBI and the Swiss police. The US Department of Justice said charges included racketeering, wire fraud, criminal mismanagement, theft and conspiracy.
One of the 14 was Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, who was also accused of diverting monies collected for Haiti volcano victims.
The arrests took place immediately before Fifa’s annual congress. President Sepp Blatter was not named among the accused and was re-elected to his post. Two days later, however, he resigned and announced he was working on a programme of reform.
The Fifa allegations mostly concern bribes related to the award of the lucrative World Cup competitions, which happen every four years.
American officials said they were investigating the misuse of $100 million over three decades.
In a sport awash with so much money, including wages of thousands per week for top players, it is inevitable that there should be casualties at the coalface, collateral damage so to speak.
Two of these are English footballers Paul Gascoigne and Kenny Sansom, 48 and 56 respectively, one-time internationals and now admitted alcoholics.
Sansom won 86 caps for England and played more than 300 games for Arsenal. Two years ago he admitted addictions to booze and betting but told the BBC he could “see light at the end of the tunnel”.
Last week, however, he said he now gambled his £622 (Sh93,000) monthly player’s pension as soon as he received it, then would drink himself into a stupor in a London park. He was homeless and had contemplated suicide.
Gascoigne had to be told he was an alcoholic. “I knew there was something wrong in my playing days,” he told the BBC, “but I did not know what was going on. Why did I wake up at 5 am and want a drink? It was not normal.” He was 33 when his condition was explained to him. It came as a relief.
Gascoigne said he was in a rehabilitation programme with Sansom, “but Kenny ran out after half a day. He was not wanting that. I cannot help him unless be puts his hand up and says he wants help.”
As for himself, he said he had paid £300,000 (Sh44.8 million) to drying-out clinics. “I am trying,” he said, “I want to win this over.”
Gascoigne was a wonderkid of football as a teenager and was capped 57 times.
***
On the other side of addiction is the scourge of eating disorders, mainly affecting teenage or pre-teen girls who starve their bodies in pursuit of the perfect figure. It’s known as anorexia.
Freya Chandler, 15, began suffering at age 13. “I just got terrified of touching certain foods and the weight wouldn’t stop going down.”
Freya’s dad Paul said: “All we could do was watch her getting weaker and weaker. We didn’t know what to do. She was a stranger to us.”
Freya spent seven months at a specialist treatment centre in 2014 and is now fighting her way back to full health.
A major cause for her condition were online portrayals of girls with beautiful figures. Said Freya: “I used the apps as motivation to get a perfectly toned body.”
The National Health Service says the number of hospital admissions for teenagers with eating disorders has nearly doubled in the last three years.
***
One of Britain’s favourite actor-comedians is the black, Midlands-born Lenny Henry. Family and friends will now have to call him Sir Lenny, since he confirmed he has been named a knight of the realm in the Queen’s next Honours List.
Lenny Henry was a co-founder of Comic Relief, which has raised an estimated one billion dollars for charity. He has also led the fight for greater racial diversity on the BBC.
***
The timing was unfortunate to say the least. Fifa released a film about itself, United Passions, which has earned scathing reviews.
The film, which Fifa funded to the tune of £17 million, launched in a restricted number of cinemas in the US. Its opening weekend earned $609 (Sh59,225).
The Village Voice newspaper said the film, which stars Gerard Depardieu and Tim Roth as Sepp Blatter, was not only ham-fisted but “pork-shouldered, bacon-wristed and sausage elbowed.”
***
Latest Fifa joke: Thieves broke into Fifa’s headquarters. They got away with the winners of the next two World Cups.
