The players’ box at any major football club is always a hotbed of gossip, filled with decked-out WAGs wishing their loved ones to do well on the field. Without cameras, it is a place where footballers’ wives and girlfriends can relax.
And, as I’ve seen with my own eyes, they really relax, especially during the holiday season. Champagne is to be expected this time of year, but to add to the Christmas cheer, many WAGs will also be reaching for something else in their designer handbags.
As a former WAG (an acronym for wives and girlfriends of leading sports stars) married to Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur defender Jason Cundy for 16 years, I was invited to countless players’ boxes where the atmosphere of camaraderie and, at times, rivalry , was strongly influenced. due to cocaine consumption.
I remember one away game in particular in the run-up to Christmas when I realized how common cocaine use is on the pitch. A fellow WAG was constantly up and down, jogging to the bathroom, paying no attention to her man’s performance on the court.
Finally, I leaned over and, in a whisper, asked him if he had cystitis and if he needed me to get him something. The stunned silence of the circle of thin, ultra-glamorous women surrounding her made me realize what an idiot I was being.
The WAG in question did not have any urinary tract infection. Only later did someone take me aside to discreetly tell me why he visited the ladies so frequently: he cut and snorted lines of cocaine.
Drugs have never been my thing, writes Lizzie Cundy, pictured, but I understand why a WAG might turn to cocaine.
Over the years, I’ve realized that some WAGs are quite shameless when it comes to their use. They do not hesitate to sneak it into the grounds; If they don’t keep it in a compact buried in their Hermes bag, they smuggle it in a pendant, dangling between fake breasts. I even saw one hide her cocaine in a small wrapper on the inside of her false nail.
There was a guy in the players’ box who always acted like he was at home. He looked like a model and every week he wore a different, well-cut suit. The staff and players treated him like family. I thought he was some kind of celebrity because he often wore dark glasses.
But no, he was a drug dealer. At the time, the presence of guys like this represented the side of football that no one wanted the world to know about. It’s a hidden secret. Especially since most WAGs don’t pay for their medications. Distributors know that everyone who uses them will pay them, so they give gifts to WAGs.
I smile to myself scrolling through Instagram and looking at the current glut of wholesome WAG Christmas posts.
I know well that what underpins some of those images is a secret cocaine habit.
Christmas is a lonely time for a WAG. The Boxing Day game is one of the most anticipated games of the season, and that means there will be no big family Christmas dinner with all the trimmings the day before: a footballer’s priority is sleep, rest, definitely no alcohol and some strange protein foods. The club’s nutritionists insist that they eat instead. What if they play away from home? You are alone.
I must emphasize that while I love a glass of fizz as much as the next WAG, drugs have never been my thing. But I do understand why a WAG might turn to cocaine.
For starters, in club circles it is widely available. The fact that it can keep your weight down as an appetite suppressant, while keeping you jovial and high (and a little bored if I’m honest), is also a great incentive in the image-obsessed WAG world.
Lizzie in 2009 with her then husband, Chelsea and Spurs footballer Jason Cundy.
Cocaine was the original Ozempic for veteran WAGs of my generation. It is the ideal aid for losing weight. You don’t feel hungry and you stay hyperactive without the risk of suffering those horrible side effects associated with the new fat injections. Today, Ozempic is also widely used in the WAG world, but alongside cocaine. A double whammy to keep them lean and perky.
It’s not for me to say who uses it, but that’s why WAGs who are no strangers to the drug often look older than their years, with prominent hip bones, high cheekbones and that slightly emaciated appearance.
I can also see how cocaine use could become habitual. It may seem ultra glamorous, but WAGs exist in a desperately unsafe world. Husbands or boyfriends can go from man of the match to fans hanging their effigy outside a pub faster than you can say David Beckham. The euphoric, confidence-boosting effects can overshadow the chaotic and isolated reality of life as a WAG, which often includes fighting other women desperate to steal your husband.
WAGs use cocaine as a defense mechanism. He keeps even the grumpiest of women cheerful with a “glass half full” optimism when his other halves are not doing well in the field. And when has he done well? It’s also an obvious way to celebrate.
Many do not feel the need to give up their beloved drug because they would never consider themselves addicts. If anything, cocaine is seen as sexy and cool, a far cry from the image it had among the bad boys of the 1990s and early 2000s.
Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler infamously performed his ‘cocaine snorting celebration’ on the white line of the penalty area at Anfield in 1999, costing him a four-match ban and a £32,000 fine in the process. .
Model Sophie Anderton’s £4,000-a-week cocaine addiction to Chelsea goalkeeper Mark Bosnich dominated the front pages during their four-year on-off relationship (he was sacked in 2002 by Chelsea and banned for nine months after testing positive in a randomized analysis). drug test). But behind Sophie’s gilded lifestyle lies abuse and heartbreak; He later said that that time “was the darkest and scariest of my life.”
They weren’t the only famous players who back then relied on the dirty white powder for an “extra punch”, although nowadays footballers themselves no longer do. The current tests are rightly too strict for any player to risk using banned substances.
But while cocaine use may have decreased among players, their partners still use it.
I first entered the football scene in 1988, at the age of 19, when I met Jason. He was a trainee at Chelsea and, as their training ground was close to my home in Richmond, he pursued me after we met in a local bar.
Four years later, he was in Chelsea’s first team, their rising star. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, more and more money was pumped into clubs as television rights were sold to the highest bidders.
Football became awash in cocaine as salaries grew higher and higher and suddenly players had agents, coaches and PR reps (yes), people who catered to their every whim.
Every time we changed clubs, our house got bigger and there were more cars in the driveway.
While I am a strong woman, the threat of a WAG wannabe hurting, degrading or stealing your husband means you live on nerves. I was not surprised that when the ITV series Footballers’ Wives first aired in 2002, cocaine snorting featured prominently in the stories. It was a realistic detail.
From the beginning, as each new season began, drugs came out of the bags.
After having the summer off, a WAG and her husband would have spent some time on vacation at a five-star resort or aboard a yacht. The physiotherapist and the club’s training team would recover his physique, but what does his wife do?
If you have gained weight, then cocaine is an easy solution. You need to look good in those first few games and it’s a quick way to suppress your appetite.
Coca-Cola also helps you sober up, and here the details get grim indeed.
In social circumstances, WAGs tend to drink, but when you weigh the same as a teenager, you quickly feel the effects.
There is nothing worse in the WAG world than a woman who can’t handle alcohol, so they use cocaine to counteract it.
A well-known soccer couple liked to drink, but he didn’t like seeing her drunk. Then he depended on cocaine to sober up.
Sometimes it caused bad behavior. One girl, high as a kite, was so upset that her husband hadn’t been chosen for a game, that she went out and wrecked the manager’s very expensive car. But that’s the emotion and erratic behavior that coke causes.
On another memorable occasion, I was asked to make a funny video for a club lunch. But the video had to be deleted because I caught a WAG discreetly sniffing her (acrylic) nail. She had used the nail to get some dust out of her tiny purse. Trust me, that’s inventive for a WAG.
On another occasion I complimented a WAG on the beautiful antique locket she was wearing. I asked him what photograph was inside, assuming it was a treasured image of his children, but no. A plastic bag fell out.
Seasoned professionals who do coke only get good for their friends. Powder that is not from a regular supplier, they will use with their wider circle of hangers, the nail technician or the tanning consultant who has undoubtedly signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
I think we all know that footballers have addictive personalities. It’s no wonder so many people gamble or have obsessive problems. Is it any wonder they are attracted to women with the same addictive psychological makeup?
Many WAGs think the lifestyle is a happy ending. But it is not. It’s extremely anxious and you keep waiting for the fairy tale to end. I point the finger of blame at the money men. They know this continues. There is no duty of care to the women around these highly paid athletes.
If you take money away from football, drugs will run out faster than you can say Bolivian gunpowder.
But I guess so would WAGs. This way we can count on many more white Christmases.