There’s Still More Hope For Soccer Icon Paul Gascoigne

England’s soccer icon Paul Gascoigne said:

‘This is the third thing I have won in two years. I won against alcohol and drugs too. I hope it’s for life’.

Gascoigne has been battling drunkenness and drugs, and the former Tottenham, Newcastle and England midfield player has been sleeping in his agent’s spare room and trying once again to take solace from meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. At a point, he said he was a sad drunk.

Aside from the abovementioned, he also openly ‘fought’ mental health issues since his retirement from football back in 2004.

In spite of the addiction, the legendary Paul Gascoigne recalls when he was in Bournemouth where fans got him drinks.

During Gascoigne’s playing days, he was one of the adored players by fans, particularly when could run with the ball at his feet with his elbows as high as possible. Soccer experts ranked him as one of the most incredible in light of the fact that he was exceptionally bold on the ball, free, uninhibited, natural and was always punching forward to get a goal.

Gascoigne was one of the most incredible English players ever, winning 57 caps for his country at the time. The England icon was one of the most boggling and inspiring English footballers a significant number of us have at any point seen.

However, now when you see him, you see vulnerability all due to alcohol and drugs. And from everything, a persevering through misguided judgment perseveres, a conviction that football accomplished for Gascoigne, that celebrity got hold of him and pulled him under.

For Gascoigne, a troubled kid from the north-east, football was pretty much the safest place he ever had. Not for nothing is one of the early chapters of that book – ghosted wonderfully and achingly by the great football chronicler Hunter Davies – called ‘Football to the Rescue’.

Paul Gascoigne once wrote:

‘What I have been suffering from all my life is a disease in my head’.

He just wrote it in his book without giving details of what he implied.

From the age of seven, Gascoigne was consumed by a feeling of fear toward biting the dust. By his teens, he counted nine different physical tics that plagued him. He pulled at his skin. He blinked constantly. He kicked the ground when he walked for fear of what would happen if he didn’t.

He was so scared of the dark – and above all of being alone – that he slept with the light on. He was bulimic. He was obsessed by numbers. He stole. He became obsessed with slot machines.

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He was once taken to a psychiatrist but didn’t understand it and perhaps his father probably didn’t help. Shockingly, a friend’s younger brother – a small child – was hit by a car and killed when ten-year-old Gascoigne was taking him to the sweet shop. His cousin died while playing football. Sadly, another friend died on a building site. Gascoigne blamed himself for all of it. Every single bit.

Avoidable:

Paul could probably have done without some of those nights out with some friends and players. But football didn’t lead Gascoigne into the many dark places he has visited since he stopped playing. By his own searingly frank admissions, he was heading there anyway.

As a matter of fact, Glenn Roeder and Chris Waddle at Newcastle, Jack Charlton while manager of that same extraordinary club, Sir Bobby Robson and Terry Venables, all played their part to assist Gascoigne with stopping drinking and engaging in drugs. However, safe-monitoring was never distant from the center of what they did.

When you close your eyes and think of Gascoigne, what do you see now? In all of this, many people think there is still hope for the soccer legend. Thus nobody ought to fault his picked life for what he is now.

As he wrote himself two decades ago: ‘I didn’t twitch or worry about death when I was playing football.’