The players’ box of any top football club is always a hotbed of gossip, full of dressed-up WAGs eager to see their loved ones perform on the pitch. Without cameras, it is a place where the wives and girlfriends of footballers can relax.
And, as I’ve seen firsthand, they really relax, especially during the holidays. You’d expect champagne at this time of year, but for extra Christmas cheer, many WAGs also dip into their designer handbags for something else.
As a former WAG (the acronym for wives and girlfriends of top sports stars) and married to Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur defender Jason Cundy for sixteen years, I was invited into countless players’ boxes where the atmosphere of camaraderie and sometimes rivalry was heavily influenced by the use of cocaine .
I remember one particular away game in the run-up to Christmas when it dawned on me how common on-pitch cocaine use is. A fellow WAG was constantly up and down, trotting to the toilet, without paying any attention to how her husband was performing on the field.
Finally I leaned over and asked her in a whisper if she had a bladder infection and if she needed anything. The stunned silence of the group of thin, ultra-glamorous women around her made me realize what an idiot I was.
The WAG in question did not have a urinary tract infection. Only later did someone pull me aside to discreetly tell me why she was visiting the ladies so often: she was chopping and snorting lines of cocaine.
Drugs have never been my thing, writes Lizzie Cundy, photo, but I can see why a WAG might resort to cocaine
Over the years I realized that some WAGs are quite shameless when it comes to using them. They don’t hesitate to sneak onto the property; if they don’t put it in a compact box in their Hermes bag, it is smuggled in a pendant, dangling between false breasts. I even saw one hiding her cocaine in a tiny wrapper on the inside of her false nail.
There was one guy in the players’ box who always acted like he was very much at home. He looked like a model and wore a different, well-cut suit every week. 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. Dealers know they’ll get paid by everyone else around them who use it, so they give the WAGs freebies.
I smile to myself as I scroll through Instagram and look at the current glut of wholesome Christmas posts from WAGs.
I know very well that some of these images are based on a secret cocaine habit.
Christmas is a lonely time for a WAG. The Boxing Day match is one of the most anticipated matches of the season, meaning there is no need to have a big Christmas dinner with all the trimmings the day before. A footballer’s priority is sleep, rest, certainly no alcohol and a few strange protein meals. Club nutritionists insist she eats instead. And if they play away? You’re on your own.
I must emphasize that while I love a glass of fizz as much as any WAG, drugs have never been my thing. But I can see why a WAG might resort to cocaine.
For starters, it is widely available in club circles. The fact that it can keep your weight down as an appetite suppressant while keeping you jovial and high (and a bit boring if I’m honest) is also a huge boost 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 in losing weight. You won’t be hungry and you will stay hyper without the risk of the horrible side effects that come with new fat injections. Nowadays Ozempic is also widely used in the WAG world, but next to cocaine. A double whammy to keep them slim and vibrant.
It’s not for me to say who uses it, but that’s why WAGs who are no strangers to the drug will generally look older than their years, all protruding hipbones, high cheekbones and a slightly gaunt look.
I also see how using cocaine can become a habit. It may look ultra-glamorous, but WAGs exist in a desperately uncertain world. The husbands or boyfriends can go from man of the match to having their likeness hung by fans outside a pub faster than you can say David Beckham. The euphoric, confidence-boosting effects can dull the chaotic, isolated reality of life as a WAG – which often means fending off other women desperate to steal your man.
WAGs use cocaine as a coping mechanism. It keeps even the grumpiest of women with a glass-half-full optimism when their other halves aren’t doing well on the field. And when has he done it right? It’s also an obvious way to celebrate.
Many don’t feel like they have to give up their drug of choice because they would never consider themselves addicted. If anything, cocaine is seen as sexy and cool – which is very different from the image it had among the bad boy players in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Liverpool’s Robbie Fowler infamously carried out his ‘cocaine snorting fest’ on the white line of the penalty area at Anfield in 1999, earning himself a four-match ban and a £32,000 fine.
Chelsea goalkeeper Mark Bosnich and model Sophie Anderton’s £4,000-a-week cocaine habit dominated headlines during their four-year relationship (he was sacked by Chelsea in 2002 and given a nine-month ban after testing positive for a random drug test) . But behind Sophie’s gilded lifestyle was abuse and heartbreak; she later said the time was “the darkest and scariest of my life.”
They weren’t the only big-name players at the time to rely on the grimy white powder for an ‘extra buzz’, although footballers themselves don’t do that anymore. The current tests are rightly far too strict for players to risk using banned substances.
But while the players’ cocaine use may have decreased, their partners are still participating.
I first came into the world of football in 1988, at the age of 19, when I met Jason. He was an apprentice at Chelsea and because their training ground was near my house in Richmond, he pursued me after we met in a local bar.
Four years later he played for Chelsea’s first team, where his star was rising. 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 with cocaine as wages continued to rise, and suddenly the players had agents, managers and PR representatives – yes people who pandered to their every whim.
Every time we changed clubs, our house got bigger, with more cars in the driveway.
Even though I’m a strong woman, the threat of your husband getting hurt, demoted, or stolen from you by a wannabe WAG means you’re living on your nerves. It didn’t surprise me that when the ITV series Footballers’ Wives first aired in 2002, cocaine snorting played a major role in the storylines. It was a realistic detail.
From the beginning, as each new season began, the drug came from handbags.
After having the summer off, a WAG and her husband would inevitably have indulged in a bit of a holiday at a five-star resort or aboard a yacht. His physique would be brought back into shape by the club’s physio and training team, but what does his wife do?
If she gains weight, Coke is an easy solution. She needs to look good during those first matches and it’s a quick way to suppress her appetite.
Coke also helps you sober up – and this is where the details admittedly get grim.
In social settings, WAGs often drink, but if you weigh the same as a teenager, you quickly feel the effects.
There’s nothing worse in the WAG world than a woman who can’t hold back her alcohol, so they use cocaine to counteract it.
A famous football couple liked to drink, but he didn’t like to see her drunk. So she relied on cocaine to get sober.
Sometimes this led to bad behavior. One girl, high as a kite, was so annoyed that her husband wasn’t picked for a game that she went out and destroyed the manager’s very expensive car. But those are the emotions and erratic behavior that coke brings.
On another memorable occasion I was asked to make a fun video for a club meal. But the video had to be deleted because I caught a WAG discreetly sniffing her (acrylic) nail. She had used the nail to scoop some powder from 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 her what photo was inside, assuming it was a cherished image of her children, but no. A small plastic bag fell out.
Seasoned professionals who use coke only get the good stuff out of friends. They use the powder that does not come from a regular supplier with their wider circle of hangers-on, the nail stylist or tanning consultant who has undoubtedly signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement).
I think we all know that footballers have addictive personalities. It’s no surprise that so many people gamble or have obsessive problems. Is it any wonder they are attracted to women with the same addictive psychological makeup?
So many WAGs think the lifestyle is happily ever after. But it isn’t. It is extremely anxious and you keep waiting for the fairy tale to end. I point the finger at the money men. They know it will continue. There is no duty of care to the women surrounding these highly paid athletes.
Take the money out of football and the drugs will disappear faster than you can say Bolivian marching powder.
But that goes for the WAGs too, I think. So we can count on many more white Christmases.