One in three footballers deliberately set out to hurt an opponent during their playing days, according to a survey by The Athletic which also revealed shocking new evidence about players doping and the dangerous number of times they were made to play on despite suffering head injuries.
The Athletic will release further insights from the survey across the week, including:
- The financial welfare of retired players
- Long-term health concerns
- Regrets over taking career-extending injections
More than 100 former players took part in the survey, making it one of the biggest of its type there has ever been, with their responses highlighting the sport’s issues with social media and online hate.
More than half say they consider it to be more difficult to be a footballer today, despite all the vast riches within the sport, and 62 per cent explain their reasons by pointing at social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.
The survey was conducted anonymously to make it easier for former players to answer truthfully without fear of it being used against them. These included former Premier League champions and internationals, with 11 per cent of those taking part estimating they would be valued from £40million to £80million or even higher in today’s transfer market.
Three of the players who took part admitted they had taken part in doping at some stage of their career. Two of those said it was unintentional and that it had not been a deliberate attempt to cheat the system. The third, however, admitted to knowingly taking banned substances.
In total, there were 35 questions ranging from whether the players wore black boots to their analysis of the two superstars who have dominated the sport for the best part of two decades.
Almost two-thirds of the responses nominated Cristiano Ronaldo as having had a better career than Lionel Messi. Yet the split was overwhelmingly in favour of Messi – 72-28 – when it came to nominating which of the two ex-players they would have most liked to play alongside.
The subject of referees was another divisive issue, with 57 per cent saying the standard of officiating had improved and 43 per cent arguing that it had become worse.
As for which modern-day manager they would like to have played for, Pep Guardiola of Manchester City (44 per cent) was the clear winner ahead of Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp (30 per cent). Carlo Ancelotti had eight per cent of the vote, as did the current Chelsea manager, Graham Potter. Diego Simeone was next with five per cent, while Antonio Conte had two per cent and Jose Mourinho, Thomas Tuchel and Swansea City’s Russell Martin each scored one per cent.
Nobody elected Erik ten Hag, the Manchester United manager, or Mikel Arteta at Arsenal, the current Premier League leaders.
The former players, who had been involved at every level of the professional sport, were also willing to offer an insight into their private lives and the issues many had faced since calling time on their playing careers.
Almost a quarter said they were not financially stable and one in four followed that up by stating they were jealous of the salaries that today’s players were earning.
Did they have regrets? The answers to that question included playing through injuries, not seeking help for mental health issues, not being more financially astute and not having an agent or getting better career advice.
To the question of whether they had ever intentionally tried to hurt an opponent, 35 per cent said yes.
A third of the former players said no to the question of: “When you think back to how you were as a player, do you like what you see?”
On other post-football issues, a quarter of the footballers who were married during their playing careers say they got divorced after hanging up their boots and, most shockingly, in 53 per cent of these cases it happened inside three years.
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Asked whether they had been able to establish another career after football, 6.4 per cent said it had been beyond them. The most common explanation was that nothing compared to the buzz of professional sport. Others cited a lack of guidance or motivation, or not having the necessary qualifications.
Even though nearly half the people taking the survey were aged 35 to 44, one of the more startling statistics was that 36 per cent of the total number had developed osteoarthritis since the end of their playing careers.
On other health-related issues, we wanted to explore the concerns of retired footballers about the long-term damage potentially caused by heading the ball and whether, overall, they thought the dangers of concussion were taken seriously enough.
The standout figure was that 88.1 per cent replied yes to the question of whether they had ever played on after taking a serious bang to the head. These, it transpired, were not one-off incidents, which is perhaps the most worrying aspect. Almost half of the people taking part in the survey said it had happened “a few times” each season. One in five said it had been “multiple times a season”.
To the follow-up question of how much it concerned them on a scale of one to 10 (10 being extremely concerned), 56.4 per cent picked numbers from six to 10. More than half of these former players, in other words, are living with genuine worries about the potential damage caused by football’s attitude towards head injuries.
Many of those footballers will be aware of the high-profile cases in which ex-pros who were relied upon to be efficient in the air – mostly centre-backs or centre-forwards – have gone on to suffer dementia and, in extreme cases, died from the long-term degenerative effects of what happened in their playing careers.
Only two per cent of the former players said repeatedly heading the ball had worried them at the time. Nearly half (47 per cent) said it was not a concern at the time, but it worried them now they had a better understanding of the dangers. Not every footballer was often required to head the ball, of course, and 51 per cent said they were not worried.
(Design: Sam Richardson)
