The Professional Footballers’ Association has been steered to do extra to forestall addictions and psychological well being issues from escalating after Dele Alli, the Everton midfielder, spoke out about his habit to snoozing tablets.
Clarke Carlisle, a former chairman of the PFA, who now works as a psychological well being marketing consultant, mentioned: “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 like in 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 behaviors 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 slot in with the media time table approach there are numerous night fixtures and that exacerbates the issue,” Carlisle said.
He additionally mentioned that the narrowing margin for good fortune on the elite stage inspired gamers 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 utilized 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 pills and it’s probably a problem that not only I have. I think it’s something that’s going around more than people realize 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 organization 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 mentioned. “I suspect they are subjected to much greater attention.”
Gary Bloom, the Oxford United psychotherapist, mentioned: “Addiction to sleeping tablets is widespread, much more than people realise.” Bloom advised the BBC World Service: “There could also be fashionable use of caffeine stimulants for fits. Players are beautiful stressed out throughout video games as a result of they need to give themselves a criminal buzz for when they’re taking part in – however then they can not get to sleep at night time. They are due to this fact prescribed snoozing capsules and the cycle is going on.”