Kicking the habit: Tony Adams on the long road to beating addictions… including Arsenal

Tony Adams’ legacy will not soon be forgotten by English sport.

The only man to captain a title-winning team in three different decades. The ‘Donkey’ with a statue outside the Emirates Stadium. The skipper who led England so close to glory in 1996. A footballer who, at the peak of his powers, revealed he had a crippling dependency on alcohol.

When Adams discusses his contribution to sport it is not the league titles or the statue he is drawn to. It is the Sporting Chance Clinic, the charity he set up to provide specialist addiction and recovery facilities to athletes. From small beginnings near Liphook, Hampshire it is now the largest provider of mental health services and emotional support in the sports industry.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” Adams tells Standard Sport. “Life and death, it’s much more important than football. Bill Shankly got that wrong.”

The nature of that work has radically changed in the near 20 years of Sporting Chance. At its inception Adams was one of a generation of footballers for whom alcohol was a part of their daily routine, extending right the way through to matchday itself.

Adams played three matches whilst drunk before he sought help for his addiction, including a trip to Bramall Lane that ended with him winning the man of the match award. This being a game away in Sheffield that prize took the shape of some of the city’s finest cutlery.

“I remember looking out of the window and sweat was coming down me, I was so drained emotionally and mentally.

“I didn’t realise at the time because I was numb. It was too hard. The other two times, Everton and Swindon, George pushed me off. I made out I wasn’t very well, which I wasn’t I suppose.”

Of course were a player to turn out for a Premier League match three sheets to the wind in 2018 it would be simply impossible to perform to the standard required, as Adams freely acknowledges. The modern footballer scarcely drinks alcohol at all, with many a top professional being teetotal.

Still there remain stimuli for those with a predilection to addiction.

“It’s different substances but the same issues. Gambling has really taken a grip. It’s an epidemic in football.

“It has just replaced alcohol to a huge degree. At Sporting Chance we’re still getting footballers that have their arse hanging out when they’re 45-50 and they’re dependant really on alcohol but the young guys that come in are nearly all gambling addicts.

“Seventy per cent of our traffic now is gambling. They’re younger, they incur big debts very early. They hit bottom very early. It’s a silent illness, a silent addiction. You can’t see the physical sides of it.

“Ninety per cent of the population might have a bet. Ninety per cent of the population might have a drink. But they don’t have the problems of addicts. If you take gambling away from the addict we’ll find something else that changes our thoughts and feelings. It’s a disease of the emotions, of the head.”

Sporting Chance Clinic - Residential. Counselling. Education.

Sporting Chance began as a clinic in 2000 but now carries out only 30 per cent of its work in that sphere.

The majority of the charity’s work is now focused on mental health and is as vital now as it has ever been following a summer where the likes of Danny Rose and NBA star Kevin Love have addressed issues of their own mental-wellbeing.

When Adams took a similar step following his treatment for alcoholism he was “a weirdo”.

“I was one of the first ones to maybe come out, as it were.”

Casting his head skyward he explains: “The man up there wanted me to do that, chose me because I was high-profile enough to get my message across. I’m not special and different. I was used and happy to be used.”

Adams has not been immune from criticism in recent years, particularly when it comes to his beloved Arsenal. He has both handed it out and been on the receiving end of it, particularly for his outspoken criticism of Arsene Wenger.

'That sums it all up!'

Adams reminisces on that iconic goal against Everton 20 year's ago...

Sunday's visit of Everton to north London inevitably brings back memories of that balmy day in May 1998 that perhaps defined the Arsene Wenger revolution more than any other. A 4-0 win over The Toffees at Highbury secured the Premier League title for Arsenal, with the fourth goal forever immortalised in the statute above.

Steve Bould and Adams, two old dogs of George Graham's famed defence, showed off their new tricks when the Arsenal captain burst in behind the Everton defence to claim a deft long ball by Bould and thump a left-footed volley past Thomas Mhyre.

The goal is perhaps the defining moment of the Wenger era, proof of how he revolutionised English football, but it was not what Adams was most proud of.

“I took more satisfaction from the clean sheet than the volley, it’d be the former every day of the week. I’m a bit of a freak like that.

"That volley was for show. 3-0 up. You’ve won the league. Sorry Everton, I was kind of taking the p***. ‘Going on a 40 yard run? What are you doing you idiot? Get yourself back.’"

It was the outcry following his comments following Unai Emery’s opening weekend defeat to Manchester City, after which Adams asked “what he has been doing for the last five or six weeks”, that appears to have stung him the most. He is now loath to be drawn on the state of play at the Emirates.

“It’s not my place to talk about the team,” he insists. “The manager is doing his job; to be respectful of him I don’t think I should keep commenting. He has just got to get on with it.

“If I’ve gone too strong in the past then I’m sorry but I think the manager is actually paid to handle criticism, the media and to be the figurehead of a club.

“I was just so disappointed at the start. After Arsene went I thought we would have got some stability and been tough to beat. It’s going to take time. But to keep on talking about the players, that’s not fair on them.”

Adams still feels raw over the fading of a beautiful relationship. Over the summer he made contact with chief executive Ivan Gazidis to see if there could be a role in the Emery revolution for a double Double winner. There was not.

Dreams of a glorious return don’t fade easily. Nor does addiction.

“I’ll never play for Arsenal again. It’s like a loss. Alcohol has, in effect, been a little easier to kick and I never thought I’d say that.

“I still have football dreams. I don’t have drinking dreams.

“But there’s only so many times you can go back to your ex-girlfriend. It becomes a bit embarrassing doesn’t it? Don’t go there. They don’t want you. Let it go.”

Half an hour later it is not quite so clear that he has moved on. “Listen if Arsenal called me tomorrow and asked me to be a coach I’d go and do it. I just do the next thing. I don’t know, if Per Mertesacker comes on the phone and says ‘come and do the U12s Tone’ I’ll take it.

“I mean the salary is about £26k, it’s six days a week and my wife will probably be saying ‘I know you love the club but the head doesn’t make sense’. I might go against that one. But if I’m of service to the right people I’ll do a job, whether it’s with West Ham, Chelsea or Timbuktu.”

He may not be part of Mertesacker’s youth setup but that did not stop him scouting out the best youngsters Hale End had to offer when he joined around 100 travelling fans in the away end at the Ricoh Arena for an EFL Trophy match.

“A friend of mine lives in Coventry so I was in the area. I asked one of the players to get me a ticket but they were in with the fans, which was great to be honest with you.

“There were 97 of us and I think I did 97 autographs. They were really strange, the fans, I think they didn’t really want me there. They all felt uncomfortable but for me it was a great experience, just mingling with the Arsenal punters.”

If not at Arsenal, where will the future take Adams? His working relationship with Jiang Lizhang, which took the 51-year-old from Chinese side Chongqing Dangdai Lifan to the resurrection of Italian greats Parma via a brief spell in the Granada dugout, is at its end. Since his time in Azerbaijan with Gabala Adams has been a footballing wayfarer but now he is ready to settle down.

That will not be at Crystal Palace or Charlton, both of whom he and Lizhang had an interest in taking over before Chinese investment in football was curtailed. Sooner or later he will throw himself fully into Sporting Chance but “my wife won’t like that, they don’t pay me!”

“I’m trying to do no particular thing at the moment. I don’t look too far.

“I spoke to a guy who works at Wrigley’s chewing gum when I was in Palm Beach during the summer. He said don’t look past the week.

“Try to keep it in the day. If you look too far ahead you’re going to have problems, especially with my mind because I try to organise the future as well. Actually, we ain’t got no power over it.

“Simple. But I’m a complicated man.”

Sober: Football. My Story. My Life, by Tony Adams with Ian Ridley is published by Simon & Schuster and available now in paperback