In the world of the One Show voxpop, a professional footballer is a wealthy playboy trousering an indecent amount of money for kicking a ball around for 90 minutes on a Saturday afternoon before dating a glamour model by night.
After a weekend of clubbing, he might pitch up at the training ground at 10am, train for two hours then head off to the local snooker hall or Go Kart track at 12. If the talent is there he’ll be blessed with a long and happy career and earn more money in one month than the average worker earns in 12. Failure is a consequence of a lack of application or having too much too young. Alternatives are rarely considered.
Diane Scott hears the old misconceptions trotted out time and again. Asked what support a footballer living the dream could possibly need, the answer, it seems, is plenty.
The former Partick Thistle full-back completed a master’s degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy while running the club’s Charitable Trust. When PFA Scotland advertised a role for a player support officer last year her two passions in life finally merged. The phone has barely stopped ringing since.
Help arrived last month when Scotland’s players’ union announced a partnership with Sporting Chance, the support group established by former Arsenal captain Tony Adams to provide mental health and emotional wellbeing support to professional athletes. Access to a 24/7 helpline is now available with the option of an in-person or virtual therapy session.
Adopting the view that the service is overdue, Scott says: “Players are human beings. We all face the same challenges regardless of the job we do.
“Life doesn’t say, ‘he’s a footballer, so he gets it easy.’
“They have families, they have lives away from football and they’re not all earning £20,000 a week.
“Part-time players are having to work and play football and manage all the stress and anxiety that comes with that. Sometimes it’s financial stress.
“There is so much that we all have to deal with in life. And footballers are no different.
“Kicking a ball around on a Saturday or a Sunday doesn’t insulate them from the stresses and strains of everyday life. They face the same challenges that we all face.”
While the alcohol dependency of high-profile international players like Paul Gascoigne, George Best, Tony Adams and Paul Merson are well recorded, most players prefer to keep their problems to themselves.
Figures released by the PFA in England after season 2023/24 revealed that 530 footballers were being treated for addictions relating to drugs, alcohol and gambling as well as mental health issues. Last season no fewer than 80 professionals down south sought therapy for problems with illicit substances such as cocaine and nitrous oxide, as well as sleeping pills and alcohol. Another 42 asked for assistance with gambling addictions.
In June 2023 former Tottenham star Dele Alli spoke out about his sleeping pill addiction and mental health struggles. Before signing for Arsenal, former Brentford player Christian Norgaard vocalised his fear of becoming addicted to sleeping tablets to help him prepare and rest for games while former West Ham full back Ryan Cresswell warned that too many players were ‘taking too many sleeping tablets and painkillers’ and that addiction is becoming a ‘big issue’ at the top level.
For players – or coaches - with money and time, gambling is a dangerous temptation. Ivan Toney and Sandro Tonali both served lengthy bans for breaches of FA betting rules while, in January 2020, the Scottish FA banned former Hamilton manager Brian Rice for 10 games for breaching the rules on betting. In a recent interview Rice, now Livingston’s head of football operations, recalled the moment he was informed by the club secretary that he was under investigation by the SFA. “Thank God it is over," was his reaction.
“More has to be done in terms of the availability of online gambling and clubs and leagues need to take some responsibility around the issue of gambling firms as sponsors," says Scott of the gambling issue.
Where the English Premier League have implemented a ban on front of shirt advertising for gambling firms, the SPFL is sponsored by William Hill. Players from Celtic, Rangers and Dundee United remain walking sandwich boards for some of the companies contributing to the problems referred to the PFA on both sides of the border.
“It’s in your face whenever you go to a game. It’s always there, and where people might turn to alcohol or drugs and people around them would notice it’s easy to hide a gambling addiction.
“It’s easy to use gambling as a form of escapism. So when we know that gambling can be such a negative coping strategy for players, having it right there in their face, having fun days at races etc, needs to change. That’s adding to the problem rather than helping.
“Of course it’s a revenue stream, but I would argue that there must be other ways of making money.”
Issues come in different forms. While teenage Kilmarnock player Skye Stout received universal public support after vicious trolling by online cretins, Falkirk defender Leon McCann spoke recently on PFA Scotland social media channels about the issues encountered since the birth of his deaf baby son.
For PFA Scotland Chief Executive Fraser Wishart, the help and support available to the modern player contrasts with his own career at Motherwell, St Mirren and Rangers when footballers were encouraged to man up and keep their problems to themselves. Anyone tempted to pour their heart out to the manager was encouraged to give themselves a shake.
“I went through a stage at St Mirren where I was being ostracised by the manager,’ recalls Wishart now.
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“I was told to train on my own for six months and when I look back on it I realise that I had to be strong to come through that.
“I was being treated that way purely because they didn’t fancy me and wanted me out the door.
“Jack Ross was the one who started looking more closely into player care when he came to work for us at PFA Scotland at the end of his career. That eventually evolved towards the role Diane has now.”
Scott worked for a time with Liber8, a Blantyre-based counselling service for adults and young people affected by mental health, alcohol and substance abuse issues. While supporters see the end product of personal problems encountered by footballers on the pitch they rarely see the underlying reasons for the poor displays.
“For most players it’s all about making sure their head is right and ready to go in order to do themselves justice on a Saturday, Sunday or whenever.
“Ultimately, they are jockeying for position. They might not want to speak to people in the changing room, they might not want to speak to their manager, they are not going to speak to anyone close to the manager and probably don’t feel they can trust anyone inside their own club.
“So they need to go somewhere that they can get that help and support away from the club and work on what they need help with.
“Fast access is the most pressing aspect. They need to be able to see someone fairly quickly because the nature of the sport dictates that one bad game or one wrong tackle can be critical. They have to be on it.
“That’s why we now have 24/7 support through Sporting Chance. We didn’t have that previously and I felt that was really important.”
Inspired by one player’s journey towards sobriety UK charity Sporting Chance marks 25 years of providing emotional and mental health support to struggling footballers this year.
Outlining why they exist Chief Executive Colin Bland says: “We strive to fulfil the vision of our founder, Tony Adams MBE, who wanted to create a safe place for players to receive support. He said, “Whenever a player has the courage to reach out for support, there must be a safe, confidential and professional place for them to go – Sporting Chance can be that place.” This has become our mission.”
Like Adams, Wishart stopped playing in 2002. By then, he was involved in the old SPFA, under Tony Higgins, completing an HND in Business Administration at the old Queen’s College in Glasgow.
Starting his playing career at Motherwell, he was accepted for teacher training college, but stuck in at the football – making nine appearances for Walter Smith’s Rangers at the tail end of a long career.
At the age of 60, his life is spent, now, offering help and guidance to those for whom life as a footballer has been complicated by data, gym sessions, recovery, nutrition, video analysis and social media training.
“When I played and you were a decent enough player, you knew that you would have a career, all being well, for 18 years full-time,’ he recalls now.
“I chose to stop playing at 36, but some don’t have that option.
“You can go from a club in the top half of the Premiership to the Lowland League inside six months.
“If someone is in their early 20s thinking, ‘I’m doing okay’ they have to know that it could all change in a second.
“A new manager might come in and not fancy them. Then they end up playing part-time in League One or League Two.
“So we have the support there if they need assistance with the mental health side of things and, at the same time, we can help them be what they want to be. Whatever ails them then, as a union, we think we can help.”
