5 footballers who were punished for smoking marijuana

#2 Mbulelo Mabizela

Mabizela was fined $6,900 after testing positive for marijuana in December 2006

So impressed were Tottenham Hotspur by the performance of Mbulelo Mabizela in a pre-season friendly defeat to the South African side Orlando Pirates in 2003 that they immediately signed him up. A couple of months later, he scored his first goal for the club in a 2-1 league victory over Leicester City.

But that was as good as it got for him in England, as he was released a year later after missing a number of training sessions among other unnamed disciplinary infractions.

Two years later, Mabizela found himself back in his native South Africa with Mamelodi Sundowns and it was there that he was banned for six months and fined $6,900 after testing positive for marijuana use in December 2006.

Further troubles followed, leading to his release from the club in January 2009, three months after he had been dropped from the national team setup after going AWOL in the build-up to a match against Malawi. Controversy has never been far from him since.