5 players who ruined their career with substance abuse

#4 Adrian Mutu

Adrian Mutu was fired by Chelsea after testing positive for cocaine

Another player whose career was curtailed by cocaine use, Romanian striker Adrian Mutu made his name at home with Dinamo Bucharest, scoring 22 goals in 33 games before making a move to Italy with Inter Milan.

That move didn’t really work out but he hit form with Parma, scoring 18 goals in 32 games, and then made a big move to Chelsea for around £16m in August 2003 as part of new owner Roman Abramovich’s initial spending spree.

Mutu had a solid 2003/04, but when Jose Mourinho took over Chelsea for 2004/05, he fell out of favour and ended up torpedoing his own Blues career when he tested positive for cocaine in September 2004. After the Romanian essentially admitted to playing whilst under the influence, he was fired by Chelsea and ended up being banned for seven months.

Despite this, Italian clubs were still willing to give him an opportunity and so he moved to Juventus, and then to Fiorentina when the ‘Old Lady’ were relegated due to 2006’s Calciopoli scandal.

Mutu proved to be a hit at Fiorentina, but it turned out he was still a ticking time bomb, as he was busted for another doping offence in 2010, this time for using a banned stimulant. This earned him another six-month ban, and while he did return to football, his career became meandering and he was never the same player as he’d been prior to all of the scandals.