KIERON DYER
Gambling addiction plagued England’s golden generation
KIERON DYER has revealed how hundreds of thousands of pounds were lost by top England footballers in secret gambling sessions during major tournaments.
Dyer writes there was a ‘huge danger it was destabilising the team and potentially affecting results’. The claims are detailed in his new book, exclusively serialised in
Sportsmail this week. Today Dyer reveals: England’s squad had a ‘band of addicts’ who gambled behind locked doors.
One team-mate owed Dyer so much that he had to pay by standing order. Dyer ‘loved it’ when the player was picked in each squad because it was so easy to take his money.
Players gambled with IOUs because the amount of cash involved was ‘absurd’.
In one day Dyer went from £46,000 DOWN to £ 50,000 UP from money won from team-mates.
Former Newcastle star Dyer reveals that Gareth Southgate, the current England manager, was involved in a card school but one that did not play for money.
The claims are likely to alarm the FA, who will seek assurances from the present squad that there will be no repeat at England’s World Cup base in Russia this summer.
Dyer writes: ‘You’re supposed to be in the shape of your life at a tournament, but if you’re in that kind of debt, your head is a mess. By the time we were knocked out of Euro 2004, one player was down by more than £100,000. ‘Gambling is an issue in football. Players get bored and have too much disposable income. We are problem gamblers waiting to happen.’