Tony Cascarino knows all about footballers’ gambling habits and he loves to break the rules. Here he reveals that the players always have and always will place bets on matches, whatever the rules say.
You’re a Premiership footballer earning £25,000 a week. You have the five-bedroom house and swimming pool, a brand-new Ferrari and Range Rover, and a wardrobe of designer clothes. You also like having a bet on football and the horses.
And why not? Nothing wrong with placing a wager now and then. But the media would tell you otherwise – they always criticize footballers that use their own money to bet privately in their own time.
It’s utter nonsense in my view. I can’t understand why anybody should be up in arms about footballers having a bet. Look at the furore that surrounded Michael Owen when his gambling debts were revealed last year. A range of insults were hurled in his direction, even though his debts were about 0.5 per cent of his annual salary, the equivalent of somebody with a yearly income of £20,000 losing £100 a year. By his standards the losses were easily manageable.
Like so many in football, I’ve always been a gambler. I used to bet on everything during my playing days. At every club I played for, there were a few of us who backed the horses and others who used to go to watch the dogs.
Cards were the other big thing. During my time in the Republic of Ireland squad, we had a very good card school at the back of the team bus. Jack Charlton, the manager, didn’t mind the players having a bet. Every time we got together for an international game, a group of us would play poker, shoot pontoon and brag.
I even used to put a bet on myself to be the first goalscorer in matches, though it was strictly against the rules. According to The Football Association laws, players were and still are forbidden from betting on a game they’re playing in, but I took no notice. I would put £20 or £30 on myself to score the first goal for a bit of fun, even though I didn’t win often. Players loved having a go at that kind of thing.
To be honest, I see no problem in a player backing himself to score in a game. Some say this kind of betting allows the possibility of fixing a match to increase, but I disagree with that. The sums of money a player can win by backing or laying himself to score a goal are small, and the incentive for a player to behave dishonestly is too small to persuade anybody to cheat. Who’s going to throw a game over a couple of hundred quid? You could put a nought on the end of that figure and it would still fall way short of tempting a player to throw a game.
Gambling is a carefully regulated industry these days. The bookmakers know exactly what’s going on. You can see all the bets logged on their computer systems right up until kick-off, so any unusual betting patterns would be spotted immediately. The football authorities have nothing to worry about.
To my mind, betting is a simple hobby for players, and most are involved through sheer boredom. A footballer leads a dull existence – I spent most of my career training, on the road or stuck in a hotel. You have a lot of time on your hands and you have few outlets. These guys can’t go spending their money in bars or frequenting nightclubs, so they gamble. Things that other people take for granted, like seeing your family or going out for a meal, are rare events for footballers, because you spend so much time travelling.
Gambling is a form of release. Card games and betting create a bond between players. I never saw a fight over a card game. Leave it to the players – The media and authorities should stay out of it.
Cas’s verdict
I had a bet on Chelsea to win the Premiership title this season, because they’re one of my old clubs. I had some difficult times there, but I reached the FA Cup final with them in 1994 and played with some good guys, such as Dennis Wise, Andy Townsend and Vinny Jones.
I was rooting for Chelsea to break the Arsenal-Manchester United duopoly, but they’ve fallen short of Arsenal’s level because they have nobody to compare with Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry.
Vieira and Henry are among the top ten players in the world. Chelsea have a squad of talented players, but nobody at that level. That’s the difference: while Chelsea have plenty of players who’d be among the top 30 or 40 players in the world, they’re missing the highest quality in their first-team line-up.
Arsenal were clearly superior to Chelsea in the two clashes between the sides in February, winning 2-1 on both occasions. But I fancy that Chelsea won’t be ruled out completely, especially with Damien Duff on their side. My bet is that Arsenal will have a five-point advantage over Chelsea come May.
