Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

Which footballers are which drugs?

Jose Bosingwa – Cocaine

Suspiciously expensive for the little quality you get in return, and notoriously popular in West London clubs.

Portuguese wing-back Jose Bosingwa, like cocaine, came to Chelsea in a big way and cost a lot of money. You should always be suspicious of the guy who says “No, honestly, this is the good stuff mate, it’ll get you right fucking going”, whether that’s FC Porto President Jorge da Costa trying to convince Roman Abramovich to part with £16m in 2008, or the weird Sex Offender-looking old guy in the club who is selling what he calls gak at £80 a gram.

Having the reputation of being quite glamorous but actually being very underwhelming, Bosingwa has stuck around West London, moving to Queen’s Park Rangers in 2011. Why is there such an obsession?

Michael Owen – Laughing Gas

People get nostalgia about when both of these seemed like the best thing ever. You probably have fuzzy memories of Owen being quite good – that run against Argentina, that double against Arsenal in the FA Cup. We all thought he was on top of the world.

Also, remember that time when you filled up a balloon at a 14th birthday party with nitrous oxide and thought your head was going to fall off? You probably thought you were on top of the world too. Then half a minute later the feeling had completely gone. And now Michael Owen plays for Stoke City.

But when you were young, both were exciting prospects – another English golden boy to win us the World Cup someday (errr….) and an exciting and harmless way to feel like you’re subverting your parents with a whipped cream dispenser.

And that’s what defines these two things, being utterly harmless – Owen’s one Capital One Cup goal every 18 months having as much long-lasting effect as your fifteen-second canister high . 

Carlos Tevez – MDMA / Pills

If only for the fact that Carlos Tevez looks like he is permanently gurning – and is very popular in East London. Tevez almost single-handedly saved West Ham in 2007 and so has a lot of fans east of EC1 these days. I’m not convinced he doesn’t drop a couple of hours before every game either, running around with a furious energy in every game.

Pundits mistake this running for trying to win the ball back in order to score a goal, but I think if he ever did win the ball back off defenders, he’d probably just hug it and tell it what a ‘great ball’ it is, and that “we really should hang out more”.

Nicolas Anelka – Alcohol

Like alcohol, former-Chelsea, Manc hester City, Bolton, Arsenal, Real Madrid, PSG, Fenerbahce and Liverpool striker Nicolas Anelka has been found practically everywhere and is a reliable source of scoring.

One of the first memories of football fans of our generation will be Anelka as an 18-year old being a cool, exotic part of Arsenal’s double-winning season in 1998. Likewise, unless you are Muslim or Macaulay Culkin, alcohol will be one of your first experiences of drugs, too.

And now in the modern age, Anelka is still currently scoring for Shanghai Shenzua in China. And everyone still drinks.

Dimitar Berbatov – Ketamine

можем да се отпуснеш?” is Bulgarian for ‘Can we chill the fuck out please?’.

Looking permanently sedated, Berbatov is in a perennial existential crisis at both being voted Bulgaria’s Sexiest Man 2006 and playing in a team with Chris Baird. Every time Steve Sidwell runs down a blind alley and manages to shin pad the ball into touch, Berbatov looks like he might go into a k-hole.

Bebe – Mephedrone

Both popping up on the Manchester scene a couple of years ago, Bebe and mephedrone are now a bit of a running joke. Neither having had a lasting stay in culture, both buyers of mephedrone (public school dubstep fans) and Bebe (Manchester United) are probably both quite embarrassed about how much money they spent on their two purchases.

United reportedly spent £7m on the ex-homeless striker, who has amounted to nothing, while teenagers would spend up to £25 on grams of drone back in the day, all just so that Skrillex sounded acceptable.

Duncan Ferguson – Heroin

Both popular in Scotland in the mid-1990s, and both absolutely terrifying.

Both football and drugs are supposed to be fun, pleasant escapes from reality, but both Ferguson and Heroin seem to be examples of these two things which, as Super Hans says, go beyond fun and actually become quite nasty.

Ferguson was such a violent, aggressive striker that he was actually jailed for 3 months in 1994 for assaulting an opposing defender. It’s probably best to stay away from both Ferguson and smack in any serious capacity.

Check out our other content

Most Popular Articles