The Professional Footballers’ Association has been urged to do more to prevent addictions and mental health problems from escalating after Dele Alli, the Everton midfielder, spoke out about his addiction to sleeping pills.
Clarke Carlisle, a former chairman of the PFA who now works as a mental health consultant, said: “PFA intervention only comes on request. It’s a reactive measure. So invariably, they only get involved when players are having problems. And they’re in like crisis mode or disaster recovery.”
Carlisle, a former Burnley defender who faced his own mental health struggles as a player, said prescription addiction was a “growing issue” and added: “There’s a responsibility on the clubs because they are the employers.” He said a team of PFA representatives should be available daily at professional clubs to respond to players’ wellbeing and mental health needs and be separate from their coaching team. “The PFA is the players’ union, they need to ensure that they can increase their capacity to be proactive on these issues.
“I think their relationship with clubs and with the leagues needs to be on a far more interactive level, where they can be present on a daily basis so that they can identify the various signs and signals that players are entering into any kind of behaviours that are going to be detrimental to them.”
Carlisle said increasing numbers of late matches made it harder for footballers to rest between games. “Trying to fit in with the media schedule means there are a lot of evening fixtures and that exacerbates the problem,” Carlisle said.
He also said that the narrowing margin for success at elite level encouraged players to maximise sleep. “If you can find anything that gives you that extra 0.1% when it comes to recuperating and being able to apply yourself to your training, then it will be utilised because the benefits to [you and your club] professionally and financially are so huge. And that exacerbates issues like this.”
Dele revealed his addiction to sleeping pills as an adult as part of a raw interview about the impact of his traumatic childhood. Speaking to Gary Neville on The Overlap, the 27-year-old said he spent six weeks in a rehab facility in the USA for his mental health. Dele said: “I got addicted to sleeping tablets and it’s probably a problem that not only I have. I think it’s something that’s going around more than people realise in football.”
The PFA said it is growing its wellbeing team, which works with players every day and proactively goes into clubs to provide mental health workshops. The union is understood to consider having representatives within all clubs impractical, since it would require an enormous amount of very specialist staff as well as easy access to clubs. It said players had increasingly been coming forward with concerns about addiction to prescription medication, typically painkillers and sleeping pills.
Dr Michael Bennett, head of player wellbeing at the PFA, said the organisation regularly supported members who requested help for drug dependency, including sleeping pills.“We know there are many reasons why a player may begin to use sleeping tablets. It is common for players to struggle to sleep after night games as they find that it often takes time, both mentally and physically, to ‘come down’.”
Bennett said frequent travel across time zones and personal stress could also be a factor, adding: “Even administered in small doses, prescription medications can be habit-forming. If players are using sleeping tablets or any other prescription medication and are concerned that they may have developed a dependency, we encourage them to speak confidentially with the PFA and access the support we offer. Help is available.”
Jon Holmes, the sports agent who has represented many Premier League players, including Gary Lineker, said footballers were under greater pressure mentally than previous generations, which could feed into trouble sleeping. “The attention and the social media builds up that pressure, doesn’t it?” he said. “I suspect they are subjected to much greater attention.”
Gary Bloom, the Oxford United psychotherapist, said: “Addiction to sleeping tablets is widespread, much more than people realise.” Bloom told the BBC World Service: “There is also widespread use of caffeine stimulants for matches. Players are pretty wired during games because they want to give themselves a legal buzz for when they are playing – but then they cannot get to sleep at night. They are therefore prescribed sleeping tablets and the cycle goes on.”
