When Wayne Rooney recently revealed his battle with alcohol during his record-breaking career with Manchester United, it was a jarring reminder that even the most successful sports stars fight to overcome unseen challenges. At the same time, Rooney’s revelations seemed a throwback to a different era.
“I just drank for two days straight, come [into] training and at the weekend I’d scored two goals and then I’d go back and go and drink for two days straight again,” Rooney said. “That was a moment in my life where I was struggling massively with alcohol.
“Massively struggling, and I didn’t think I could turn to anyone. I didn’t really want to because I didn’t want to put that burden on anyone.”
In the modern era, the game has now become more of a business, with billions invested in the pursuit of excellence. Clubs at all professional levels are stacked with experts in nutrition, fitness, recovery and well-being, all aimed at ensuring optimum physical and mental health, meaning that Rooney’s story — dating back to his peak years at United under Sir Alex Ferguson, from 2004-13 — would appear to be one that could not be told in the modern game.
Today, some clubs weigh their players on a daily basis, and others take mouth swabs from them to keep track of health and fitness — one saliva test can even reportedly identify concussions — yet the sport still has players with alcohol problems. While more contemporary issues have crept in — addictions as diverse as gambling, gaming, excessive training, nitrous oxide (aka laughing gas) and snus, which are nicotine bags placed between the lip and gum — a conversation still needs to be had about alcohol.
“Alcohol hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s still there, it’s still accessible,” Jeff Whitley, a player welfare executive and counselor at the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) told ESPN. “Has it declined from the full extent of the 1990s? Yes, of course it has, but are we still having discussions with players around their relationship around alcohol? Yes, absolutely.”
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During the 2024-25 English season, through its Wellbeing Workshops, the PFA carried out more than 1,500 well-being assessments across the Premier League, EFL and Women’s Super League (WSL) and around 13% of players highlighted alcohol as an issue of concern.
“They might not necessarily go out and party as hard as some of the people in the 1990s, but I suppose the most important thing is understanding how they drink and also what do they see as somebody who is out of control with their consumption,” Whitley said. “Some of the players might be binge drinkers, so they might only drink maybe twice a month or something like that.”
But while drinking once or twice month might seem little cause for concern, Whitley says that it is how they drink and what are the potential consequences.
“If they’re drinking to excess where they have no off switch or they don’t know how much they’re going to drink or they’re having consequences when they’re out, whether that’s getting into fights or maybe they’ve jumped in the car after four or five drinks, these are the kind of things that I try and highlight,” he said.
“Okay, you might not be going out every week, but have you already had consequences? And some of them will have. That question I always pose for those who are comfortable enough and confident enough to be able to put their hands up, then we have a discussion around it.”
Clubs at all levels regularly open their doors to the PFA, often requesting Wellbeing Workshops that offer advice, education and access to counselors so their players are cognizant of the help and support that is available to them. The PFA also has a dedicated well-being team in place to provide tailored, confidential support to players — this includes a 24/7 helpline and access to a national network of counselors, as well as making regular club visits and hosting workshops.
Through its partnership with the Sporting Chance Clinic, PFA members can also access specialist mental health and addiction treatment. Sporting Chance, a UK-based charity providing counseling and residential clinics for current and former athletes living with mental health conditions and addiction, was founded by former Arsenal and England captain Tony Adams in 2000 with the proceeds of his book “Addicted,” which revealed his personal struggle with alcohol.
Whitley’s own story is why he is able to speak on the same level to players living with addiction.
The 46-year-old played over 300 senior games during a playing career that saw him represent Manchester City, Wrexham, Sunderland and Northern Ireland, but during his 20s, he fought alcohol and drug addictions, filed for bankruptcy and spent time in rehab with Sporting Chance. He admits he was lured into the sport’s drinking and partying culture in the 1990s at a time when there was little in the way of help for players in his situation.
“Nobody came into the clubs talking about that stuff when I was playing,” he said. “I was playing in a squad at City where some of the messages from the older players were along the lines of, ‘If you don’t drink, you ain’t going to be a player.’
“I was pretty rubbish at drinking at 17, so did what any good professional would do and practiced hard at it because I really wanted to be a player. But listen, it has changed and help and support is there now.”
While the PFA’s 13% figure of players citing alcohol as an area of concern shows that it remains an issue, the sport is now unrecognizable from the image it projected in the 1990s. A photograph showing England players, wearing torn clothing, downing spirits in a dentist’s chair in a bar in Hong Kong during a pre-Euro 1996 training camp epitomized the game’s relationship with alcohol at the time.
One newspaper carried images of the alcohol-soaked players under the headline “Disgracefool,” but England’s run to the semifinal of Euro 1996 led to the incident entering English football folklore, almost as a symbol of the benefits of team-bonding rather than professionals preparing for a major tournament in a reckless manner. The attitude to alcohol within the English game only began to change when Arsene Wenger closed the players’ bar and banned drinking on the team bus following his appointment as Arsenal manager in October, 1996.
“I will not ban beer completely, because one pint helps relax people,” Wenger said at the time. “But I do not want the players drinking 15 beers, because that is bad.
“A footballer’s body is his work. If he then destroys that with bad habits like drinking, it’s silly. My players will have to change their social habits. I don’t see how a player who drinks regularly can survive in football.”
ESPN analyst Don Hutchison, whose 19-year professional career saw him play for several teams including Liverpool, West Ham, Everton and Scotland, witnessed the change in the game during his playing days. But almost twenty years after retirement, Hutchison admits he regrets the damage that alcohol inflicted on his career.
“I do put my head on the pillow every now and again thinking, “what the f— was I doing in the early nineties?” Hutchison said. “Because I know I could have got so much more out of my career. It still haunts me today.
“Yes, I played for some great clubs and had almost 20 years in the game, but I had three years at Liverpool and that could have been 10 had things been different.”
Hutchison admits to being a “skinny cross country runner” when he arrived at Liverpool from Hartlepool United in 1991, but despite his minimal intake of alcohol until that stage, he felt similar pressure to Whitley to assimilate with the older professionals.
“When I signed for Liverpool, there was a sports bar as close as you can imagine to the training ground, so the routine was [drinking there] every Tuesday afternoon,” he said. “It was quite bizarre because everyone used to get taxis to training on a Tuesday morning, knowing they were going to go to this sports bar in the afternoon with a view to having Wednesday off. It was bonkers.
“I was 18 or 19, but the younger lads were all getting sucked in. We hadn’t got a clue what we’re doing, but the big boys are all drinking pints and you want to be part of the group, so you join in.”
Hutchison earned notoriety in summer 1994 when, during a vacation after the season with Liverpool teammates Jamie Redknapp and Michael Thomas in the Cypriot resort of Ayia Napa, he was photographed in a bar wearing only a Budweiser label to protect his modesty. Within weeks, Liverpool offloaded Hutchison to West Ham.
“The stupid stuff I was doing off the pitch cost me,” he said. “It cost me because I was getting in the headlines too many times. It’s horrible when I look back thinking, ‘What the f—— hell were we doing?’
“At the time, the culture was that we worked hard and played hard. It sounds crazy now, but everybody did it and there was no chance of going to your manager to say you were worried it was a problem because you thought you’d look weak. But things have changed; you can see that with players like James Milner, who doesn’t drink and is still playing in the Premier League at nearly 40 years old.
“I mean, you think of the England players in the dentist’s chair — none of the modern players would go anywhere near that now!”
But while the sport has changed, alcohol continues to trouble players, albeit in reduced numbers. Yet with other addictions coming to the fore, Whitley says it is crucial that players and clubs are aware of the help that is available to them for whatever they’re battling.
“Snus is a huge problem within the industry,” Whitley said. “It’s in every club and we have clubs asking us for specific workshops on it. Whether it’s snus, nitrous oxide, alcohol or whatever, if they don’t understand their addictive natures, then they’ll always search for something new.
“But ultimately, therapy is not just a place where you go because you’re in crisis. There’s many, many people who are in therapy who are not in crisis, but they know they need to offload. We want to make sure that if players do feel like they have an issue then they’re coming to us earlier rather than in their late-30s and they’ve lost everything.
“There are younger players coming forward looking for help and support now, and that’s a real positive.”
The path taken by former players such as Rooney, Adams and Hutchison is one full of regrets due to the game’s relationship with alcohol, but the positive outcome from their experiences is that today’s generation now has a route out of the difficulties that impacted so many of their predecessors.
