By Emma Kemp
From star to struggler … Lucas Neill in 2013 prior to a Socceroos match.Credit: Marco De Grande
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It was only a week ago that Paul Ifill revealed he gambled about £2 million ($A3.8m) during his playing career. The former striker admitted to dropping as much as $19,000 a day on bets during his time at Sheffield United and Crystal Palace in the mid-noughties, earning about £9000 ($A17,000) a week but consistently borrowing to bet more.
While at Wellington Phoenix he even bet on himself to score first in A-League Men games. That was the “highly illegal” part of the 44-year-old’s “cautionary tale” for other athletes. But the saddest detail was the way he and former United teammate and roommate, Keith Gillespie, would gamble on how fast flies would travel around their living room.
Gillespie, who has 86 senior caps for Northern Ireland, had his own well-publicised problems with gambling and has spoken of losing £47,000 on one “Black Friday” in 1995 – the year he moved from Manchester United to Newcastle United – and more than £7 million ($A13.4m) over the course of his career.
“It was a mess,” Ifill told Kiwi former rugby player James Marshall on his What A Lad podcast. “We were ridiculous. We used to bet on raindrops racing down the window and flies landing on walls. We’d have £500 each, you’d pick a fly and which fly made it around all four walls, you’d pay the other one the money. Now it sounds ridiculous, but at the time that’s just what we did.”
It sounds equally ridiculous and just as sad that Lucas Neill could have been earning up to $AU76,000 a week playing in the English Premier League and be bankrupt a few years later, living in darkness because he couldn’t afford his pay-as-you-go electricity bill at his rented flat and unable to own a mobile phone on a contract.
Last week, the former Socceroos captain avoided being jailed for up to three years after a UK jury took 26 minutes to acquit him of failing to disclose 144 acres that had been sold and netted £2.1 million ($A4m) into an offshore trust. He had believed them to be repossessed and worthless. “People couldn’t believe it, but I had nothing left,” Neill told The Times. “That was my rock bottom. It was the realisation that after 20 years of a football career and all this hard work, I’ve got nothing to show for it.”
Former Premier League and A-League Men striker Paul Ifill has revealed his issues with gambling.Credit: Domino Postiglione
Neill’s financial problems were not related to gambling, but they were related to blowing a lot of money very quickly, and that is something so commonplace in the sporting world a documentary has been made to try and understand why. In 2012, ESPN released Broke as part of its 30 for 30 series, which delved into some alarming statistics from Sports Illustrated finding that 78 per cent of former NFL players were bankrupt or under financial stress within two years of retirement, while 60 per cent of former NBA players were broke within five years.
The reasons are complex but range from a lack of education and skills development outside of playing sport to taxes, agent fees and ill-advised business investments. The latter claimed ex-Liverpool midfielder Craig Johnston, who two decades ago revealed he was broke after losing “absolutely everything” in a failed business venture. The Australian, now 63, made millions after inventing the Predator football boot for adidas, but faltered trying to set up a scheme to set up football schools in Britain’s cities.
He persuaded investors – including Damon Albarn of British rock band Blur – to finance the venture, but it came unstuck after failing to get official backing. “Five years ago I had £5 million and more,” Johnston told The Mirror. “I was getting royalties from the Predator boot, but that has stopped. Now I rely on handouts.” Then 44, he said he was homeless and sleeping in a friend’s spare room, and blamed business advisers for charging big fees but failing to find him funding when the scheme ran into trouble. “I’m the little guy who’s been brought down by the big, corporate smart guys,” he said.
Former Liverpool player Craig Johnston.Credit: Getty Images
The root of the issue, however, seems to lie in youth. Many players across the biggest-paying sports have traditionally turned professional in their teenage years and early 20s, some before finishing school and others without developing skills to help them navigate the financial pressures of adulthood.
Then they are paid an exorbitant amount of cash and left to their own devices regarding how to spend, save or invest it – a foreign concept for many educated people, particularly those who did not inherit wealth. And before they know it, their income is suddenly cut off by their ageing bodies three to four decades before the rest of us even start thinking about finishing up with our chosen vocations. It is too much, too soon, and then it all gets taken away.
Of course, there are exceptions. Players with a natural aptitude or passion for something outside of playing which sets them up comfortably for life. In general, though, if one is to give a person in their early 20s a few hundred thousand dollars, it is likely to be spent.
That may be even more so the case in young men, whose prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for impulse control – matures at a later age compared with young women. This may partly explain David Beckham’s early penchant for not only cars but also luxury pens, as revealed in his recent Netflix documentary (in the words of Roy Keane: “Who the f–k buys a pen?“).
‘We’d have £500 each, you’d pick a fly and which fly made it around all four walls, you’d pay the other one the money’
This is fuelled by a culture of excess often present in the biggest, most lucrative sporting spheres. Of extravagant spending to match the extravagant lifestyle – even after the money is no longer coming in. Re-budgeting to adjust to a new lifestyle sounds simple but is probably not. Anybody who understands the term “retail therapy” will also understand that spending (and gambling) is often tied up with emotion. The dopamine hit of a big purchase can – if only briefly – fill a void in one’s head.
For a retired athlete who has just replaced the intoxicating feeling of playing regularly in front of full stadiums with the vast and quiet emptiness of retirement, there is an awfully big void to fill. There is also the strong chance that if the same athlete was forced to retire prematurely, their still-developing brain may not have considered saving for the future treatment of the injury set to cut their career short and affect them chronically into old age.
In 2021, Professional Footballers Australia commissioned a study on 90 past players with the objective of gaining a clearer picture of why footballers find the transition into retirement difficult. The major reasons were financial uncertainty (60 per cent), loss of identity (65 per cent) and missing the competitive environment (58 per cent). Seventy per cent rated their transition as difficult to very difficult, 41 per cent rated the level of support received as very low, and only 30 per cent gained immediate employment, while 32 per cent reported a potential gambling problem and 25 per cent symptoms of psychological distress.
The study led to the launch of the PFA Past Players Program, designed to support former players in a similar manner as the better-funded AFL Players’ Association’s Alumni program, while the Rugby League Players’ Association has its Past Player and Transition Program. In this respect, things are different to when Neill was playing in the Premier League.
Many academies now run formal education programs with the aim of equipping future athletes with the skills required to live a well-rounded life during and after football. And clubs, federations and unions offer development pathways to ease the transition into a second career, whether through coaching, broadcasting, university study or other qualifications.
It is just awfully bleak to hear a Socceroos great say he has “won my freedom” but “lost in life”.
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