Alcohol continues to blight national sport

Forget the talk about modern footballers imbibing nothing but unlimited amounts of sparkling mineral water to wash down their pasta.

Drink, the curse of generations of English soccer players, continues to blight the national sport.

A lurid report in the News of the World on Sunday, confirmed by the club, detailed the antics of four drunken Chelsea players who stripped naked and vomited at a hotel in front of Americans grieving for victims of the attacks in the United States.

Frank Lampard, Jody Morris, Eidur Gudjohnson and Jon Terry were fined heavily by the premier league club after their five-hour drinking binge on September 12, the day after hijacked aircraft hit targets in New York and Washington.

"The report is true," said Chelsea managing director Colin Hutchinson. "They certainly went out drinking but they did not go out with the intention of upsetting Americans."

West Ham United's Don Hutchinson told the same paper that drink and parties had threatened to end his career.

"I thought I was invincible," he said.

By depressing coincidence, the two reports emerged during a weekend when the spotlight turned on two of the finest footballers produced in the British Isles, whose lives have been defined by alcohol.

Gascoigne Alcoholism
A newspaper confession by Paul Gascoigne on Sunday that he was an alcoholic was hardly a revelation. But some of the details were.

"When I was playing, I wasn't drinking at the weekends," Gascoigne said. "But if I wasn't playing, I would drink Saturdays, then Sunday, then Monday.

"Then I would try and train and it was no good, then have another drink just to pass the day away. Then I couldn't train.

"I never felt suicidal but it was a breakdown in a way. It wasn't just the drink. The drink only eased the pain for a bit."

Gascoigne, 34, is in recovery and hopes to extend his premier league career at Everton a little longer.

There is no doubt that the golden promise of his performances at the 1990 World Cup was never fulfilled and that alcohol was largely responsible, although injuries have also played a part.

But Gascoigne's comments on life without drink hardly brim with optimism.

"I don't look to the future now because it only brings worry," he said. "I don't know whether I will drink again in my life but I didn't drink yesterday. I am not drinking today and I'll try not to drink again tomorrow."

A greater player than Gascoigne knows if he does drink tomorrow he will probably die.

A fragile George Best, 55, appeared on a television chat show on Saturday to promote yet another book detailing his life of alcohol, sex and fame. He looked closer to 70.

Best dazzled the world all too briefly during the 1960s. Both for Manchester United and Northern Ireland he demonstrated amazing ball control, burning pace and endless courage. With his dark good looks and fashionably long hair, he was the first pop star footballer.

Prodigious quantities of drink hastened the end of his career, although he continued to play for a variety of teams into his 30s.

His lifestyle inevitably took its toll. In March last year Best was rushed to hospital after collapsing with severe liver damage and was told one more drink could kill him.

Now, for the fourth time, he has taken the drastic step of having stomach implants, pellets which will make him violently ill if he drinks. So far they have worked.

"I wake up every morning and slap myself on the back and say 'well done'," Best said.

For Best and for Gascoigne it will always be one day at a time.