Former Orlando Pirates defender Innocent Mdledle has warned Premier Soccer League players about the abuse of alcohol, saying players must examine themselves if they want to be successful footballers.
Mdledle has admitted to being a player who abused alcohol during his playing time. The now disciplinarian Mdledle, believes he is now able to advise the current crop of players about their off-pitch habits.
“Football players must introspect and resolve their problems. They must not put the blame on others. At the end of the day, they are soccer players, and their bodies are what generate the money for them,” Mdledle told TK Solutions.
“When you always put alcohol in your body, how are you going to work? If you put soil in a car, how is the car going to go? I mean you put soil where you are supposed to put oil, how does the car go in that situation, come on?
“As an individual player, you must fix yourself because you are able to see what you are doing is wrong. And at the end of the day, it’s your life that will be ruined.”
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The former Mamelodi Sundowns and Bafana Bafana left back went on to say that blame should not be put on the teams, insisting footballers must be responsible for their own actions.
“Let’s not blame our team. Players should be able to look after themselves and fix their own problems. Teams also have many issues to deal with,” he said.
“We are elders as players, you have a family, a wife, so let’s grow up (players) you can’t go around asking for help all the time.”
“But if you can see that you have alcohol problems, then you must go and tell the team that you have some (personal) problems, then maybe they will help. Even myself now, when I look back, I can see that I was supposed to be grown up and sorted myself out and just went around and blamed others.”