Keith Gillespie exclusive: I blew all my money betting, and won't be last footballer to do it

keith gillespie

As his book How Not To Be A Football Millionaire heads for the shelves, the ex-Man United winger opens up about his gambling addiction

Keith Gillespie’s house is lost in the middle of a sprawling modern estate on the outskirts of the Northern Irish seaside town of Bangor.
He is sitting on a sofa in the front room, dressed in a grey track suit.
The furnishings are spartan.
The place is bare. A couple of plastic golf trophies sit on a table.
A window looks out on to the crescent of anonymous houses outside.
It is not the typical home of a man who played out much of his career in the Premier League during the wage explosion of the late 1990s and beyond.
Not the norm for a winger who appeared for Manchester United, Newcastle, Blackburn, Leicester and Sheffield United in the top division.
Not quite where you would expect a man who earned north of £7million in the course of his career to have ended up.
His startling, revelatory new autobiography is called How Not To Be A Football Millionaire - and there’s a good reason why.
In 15 years at the top of a game that pays its best players lavishly, Gillespie blew the cash on gambling.
A couple of people he thought were friends cost him money, too. Their unscrupulousness persuaded him into bad investments.
He was not alone in entering those schemes. Other players predict an avalanche of football bankruptcies in the years ahead.
The vast majority of Gillespie’s money, though, was invested at the bookmakers.
He started his career at a time when many still regarded betting as a relatively harmless pastime.