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Former CEO and Wales Football Legend Craig Bellamy has issued a strong warning to young footballers after court papers revealed he has been declared bankrupt.
Bellamy uses this sad news as a reason to send out a message to today’s young footballers to be careful about who they entrust with their finances.
Bellamy Is said to owe €1,398,071.20 to her Majesty’s Revenue.
Below is a the cautionary message to young players by Craig Bellamy after being declared bankrupt
“I have been living the last five or six years on Death Row just waiting for someone to put me out.
“I have been waiting for the cell door to open and someone to say: ‘Today’s the day’. It’s like the feeling of not being able to look forward to anything. All the money I’ve earned, I can’t get a mortgage. Financially, I have no future. The hurt of that. I can’t own anything. Everything’s gone.
“My life has been on hold. I’m not a tax dodger but I have been very naive and the HMRC have been pursuing me for unpaid tax for some time. Everything I have had has been taken from me. If you get the wrong people advising you, it all haemorrhages, it all dwindles. It has got to the point where bankruptcy is a relief. It means I can just live again.
“I know some people will probably think I have squandered all my money on drinking or gambling or drugs. I haven’t. I can go quiet where you won’t hear from me but I won’t be down the pub. I have never touched drugs since I was a young kid. I don’t gamble. I have never gambled. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But I have gambled on people unfortunately.”
“I want this to be a warning to other players. Check everything, make sure the people advising you are regulated. If they are not regulated, it’s the Wild West. Get your stuff audited by independent people, the equivalent of getting a second opinion. I was brought up in a generation of footballers where everything was done for you. Every bill. Wherever I was, the club did everything for me. I think that’s wrong.
“It makes you too vulnerable. It’s good for players to have their own responsibilities because one day the club will not be there. You will finish your career and you will still be a young man and when you finish who’s going to pay your stuff then? You are going to have to learn to survive. You are going to have live in the real world.”
Meanwhile, the former Liverpool striker once set up a charitable organisation in Sierra Leone which was known as the Craig Bellamy foundation.
However, the Charity Football Academy experience closure in Sierra Leone due to mismanagement.
The academy in Tombo, two hours drive from Freetown, was established in September 2010 and funded by over £1million of Bellamy’s own money.
