Soccer needs to call time on players' affliction with alcohol

When former England captain Tony Adams ended up on stage with a stripper after a 16-hour pub crawl earlier this year, it must have been bare-cheekily apparent to him that his drinking had become somewhat out of control.

The tell-tale signs had been there as far back as 1990 when he was jailed for four months for drink-driving and three years later there was the celebrated case of him going head over heels down the stairs of a nightclub.

Similarly, Adams' Arsenal teammate Paul Merson embarrassed himself in public several times before admitting that he had hit the tierce in the addiction stakes - drinking, drugs and gambling.

While it is the most difficult thing in the world to admit to oneself that a few lagers after a match has turned into a drink problem then deteroriated into alcoholism, those around Adams and Merson must have had a pretty good idea that they were seeing the world through the bottom of a beer glass.

They are, after all, professional footballers with a high level of fitness and even though their addictions were not immediately evident on the pitch, it must have been noticeable on the training field, the morning after the bender before, that the legs were not quite right.

That the manager, coaches and fellow players presumably looked the other way did a disservice to themselves, Adams and Merson.

The feeling that their cases are just the froth on the beer has been given credence by comments from a player whose own drinking habits are well documented, Paul Gascoigne.