Gambling with players’ futures
There was an interesting intervention last week by former football great Paul Merson who slammed the idea of dishing out lengthy bans to players guilty of gambling offences.
“To give people 10-month bans for an addiction that is ravaging football, with sponsorships all over the shirts... they need help and I don’t think ‘help’ is giving them 10-month bans,” he said.
In recent times there have been two high-profile player gambling cases that have hit English football – Brentford’s Ivan Toney, who got an eight-month ban, and Newcastle United’s Sandro Tonali, who got 10 months. And it was these cases that prompted Merson’s annoyance.
“We underestimate this addiction. We need to show it some respect and not, ‘oh show a bit of willpower’. I would say to the people who make these rules up and ban people, ‘next time you get diarrhoea, try and stop that with willpower’.”
Merson is a player who knows a thing or two about the subject, having been a gambling addict his entire adult life, while simultaneously managing a glittering career with Arsenal, Aston Villa, Middlesborough and England.
But, as he says, dishing out bans is hardly fair when a sizeable chunk of football’s revenue is based on money it receives from gambling sponsorships, investments and advertising. It can hardly be a surprise if a knock-on effect of being surrounded by adverts encouraging you to bet is that players, er, start betting.
And it equally shouldn’t come as a shock if some of those players then end up suffering from an addiction they may otherwise have avoided.
According to ex-Arsenal legend Tony Adams, who set up the Sporting Chance rehabilitation clinic after suffering his own addiction problems, when his operation first started, 70 per cent of the players who checked in were there for drinking issues and the rest gambling.
Today those numbers are reversed, which shows just how big a problem gambling addiction has become.
Yet despite that, a player who can’t give up the booze is treated with sympathy and compassion, while one who can’t stop betting is ostracised and banned. I don’t know about you, but I don’t recall ever having heard of a player stopped from playing for repeatedly getting drunk.
Football has a problem with gambling that has only been accentuated by its desire to take money off betting companies to feed its own financial greed.
It’s time the sport admits it has been complicit in creating this mess and starts treating players who are addicted to gambling as people who need help rather than rushing to kick them out of the sport.
The cup is sTill kinG
Those people who feel the magic of the FA Cup is finished need only look at last weekend’s games to realise that is absolute nonsense.
The quarter-finals were utterly intense, incredibly thrilling and proof that the world’s oldest knockout competition is alive, well and very, very loved.
The Manchester United vs Liverpool and Wolverhampton Wanderers vs Coventry City games in particular were classics that made compelling viewing, packed with drama, comebacks, twists and turns.
There was a time a few years ago when the FA Cup felt like it was on the way down. Last weekend proved it is still very much up there at the very top.
For The love oF The club
You don’t have to be a football genius to work out that there is a plethora of differences between the English Premier League and the Maltese one.
Although they are based on the same sport and enjoy roughly the same competitive mechanics, they are worlds apart when it comes to revenues, global reach and even domestic appeal.
Yet that disparity also has a positive side for local teams and their supporters – the people that get involved in running these clubs do so out of love, not greed.
We saw clear evidence of this last week when the current president of Valletta FC, Alexander Fenech, announced he would be writing off €1.5 million in debt owed to him by the club.
“For me, the club comes only after my family, and for this reason I don’t want our great club’s future to be in some way compromised by the debt they have with me,” he said on social media.
This was immediately followed by a similar announcement from Fenech’s predecessor as president, Victor Sciriha.
“My intention was always not to take back the huge sums of money that I invested in the club while I was president,” Sciriha said.
Between them these two men were willing to cancel millions of euros of debt out of devotion to the club, relieving it of that burden at a time when it is facing the very real threat of relegation from the Premier League for the first time in its history.
That would be a huge fall from grace for a team that has won 25 league titles, many of them while under the guidance of Fenech and Sciriha.
There was a time when English football was very similar. Local businessmen and women used to get involved in running teams they grew up supporting and would often pump in massive funds just to keep them afloat.
But those local heroes have been mostly priced out of the market and can no longer afford to bankroll clubs that have become playthings for the rich and famous, or investment tools for the greedy.
I don’t personally know either of the two men who have given Valletta this much-needed lifeline. But I admire the depth of their passion for the club they love – devoting time, energy and vast financial resources to a cause that was never likely to pay them back.
That sort of commitment puts the English Premier League to shame.
“A player who can’t give up the booze is treated with sympathy and compassion, while one who can’t stop betting is ostracised and banned
E-MAIL: JAMES.CALVERT@TIMESOFMALTA.COM TWITTER: @MALTABLADE