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Young, rich, bored socialite takes cocaine. Why is the world so shocked?

by Craig Turp
November 2004

Adrian Mutu, captain of the Romanian football team, last month failed a routine drug test at his club, Chelsea, and has been banned from playing football at either club or international level for seven months. Chelsea in turn have sacked him, tearing up his 4 million euros per year contract and writing off an asset bought just 14 months previously for 20 million euros. For taking recreational drugs such a ban is perhaps harsh, be it cocaine or Viagra; Mutu has claimed and then denied taking both substances - neither improves athletic performance. But the law is the law and the suspension was largely pre-ordained. Any chance Mutu had of escaping with a lesser ban for owning up to his offence – as he did – were dashed by the British sports minister Richard Caborn unhelpfully demanding Mutu receive a minimum suspension of two years the day the English Football Association passed sentence.

It was not three months ago on these very pages that I declared that Mutu’s failure to become a regular in the Chelsea side was not connected to his off-the-field activities. Rather, I claimed, he was just not good enough. Now he has failed a drugs test it would appear on the surface to rather blow my theory to the four winds; I disagree. Turning the equation on its head I would argue that Mutu’s failures as a footballer are what led to his off-the-field misdemeanours.

Mutu, as a regular first-team player, would be so preoccupied with keeping himself fit - and in top condition - that taking cocaine would be the last thing on his mind. Likewise, speeding through the streets of Bucharest at four in the morning – ignoring police signals to stop and losing one’s license in the process – would simply not be an option. Yet Mutu, less than a bit part player these days at Chelsea a team of unrivalled riches and with no real need for his talents has more than enough time on his hands to get himself into all sorts of capers. The only matches he had played this season were for the Romanian national team, which plays once or at most twice a month. Given 4 million euros a year and nothing to do for most of the time it is only natural that a young, handsome but poorly educated and still rather naive chap spend his time – allegedly – carousing with first class whores and snorting class one drugs.

Adrian Mutu is not the first socialite to take cocaine. He will not be the last. He is the first high-profile Romanian to be found with his hooter in the Peruvian marching powder, however, and his suspension rules out almost any hopes Romania had of qualifying for the next World Cup. Yet he will get over it, even if conservative Romanians may not. He will return to a lesser club based in a smaller city than London that will desperately need his skills. He will earn less money, he will have far less time to waste, and he will soon be back in sparkling form.

A 7-month suspension is not the end of the world. Claudio Caniggia, an Argentinian footballer, similarly recovered from a cocaine ban of 12 months, repairing his career at lesser clubs than those for which he had previously played, but playing well enough to star in a World Cup soon after. Don’t despair for Mutu. This whole affair could well be the perverse stroke of luck his perverse existence needed.

Craig Turp is the Editor of Bucharest In Your Pocket.