The banning of Sandro Tonali and previously, Ivan Toney, shows that addiction is still rife in football circles, with former professional, Stan Collymore, suggesting that the game’s governing bodies need to rid themselves of gambling advertisements and the like if players are going to conquer their addictions.
By the time that Tonali can play for Newcastle again, he will have been out of the game for 10 months. Almost a year of his career gone up in smoke.
‘Should things be safer for the players these days, absolutely yes. They are exposed constantly to gambling sites, television adverts etc,’ Collymore wrote in his exclusive CaughtOffside column.
‘I think that the Premier League are certainly wealthy enough to be putting aside a significant chunk of money to be able to ensure that every player knows that there are additional services available to them and support for them in the same way that they know that there are Alcohol and Drug programmes.’
The former Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool hit-man turned the focus onto FIFA and UEFA to suggest that there are simple actions they can undertake which would be a step in the right direction, albeit they may have to get their funding from elsewhere.
FIFA and UEFA now need to look at where they’re getting their money from, and I would say to TV companies that ‘if you want to be an official broadcaster of the Premier League or the FIFA World Cup or any of those tournaments, you cannot post gambling advertising on your channels,” Collymore added.
Of course, no one makes players bet, drink or take drugs, that’s on them, and even if they have a decent support network around them, it’s the players themselves that have to take the plunge to put things right.
‘You can lead the horse to water but you can’t make them drink,’ Collymore concluded.
‘With the stigma that’s still in the game for anyone struggling, it’s important that the Premier League are a lot more aggressive in making it known that there are organisations available to help with addiction.’
One can only hope that in the cases of Toney, Tonali and others, that they will all receive the aftercare that they need and that, moving forward, there’s a more holistic view taken by the leagues and authorities in terms of how to treat such addictions.