These football players later broke the law after playing for Welsh teams.
For many young people, playing professional football and reaping the financial benefits is the stuff of dreams. But after their careers ended, a lot of gifted athletes discovered they were leading double lives that involved criminality.
Numerous football players who were part of Welsh teams have found themselves in legal trouble. Among them are athletes who have competed for Wales’ top teams, Cardiff City FC and Swansea City FC, as well as the Premiership.
This is a list of Welsh football players who have served jail time for a variety of offenses, from drug offenses to intentional injury. Subscribe to our crime newsletter here to receive the most recent court reports.
A significant drug gang utilized a former football player named Layton Maxwell’s property as a safe haven. As a cocaine “courier” for the gang, which received drugs from Liverpool and operated throughout Cardiff, Newport, and Porthcawl, the 43-year-old player, who had previously played for both Liverpool and Cardiff City, was paid £500 per month.
After police discovered 400kg of cocaine being traded, Maxwell, of Rhiwbina Hill, and 13 other gang members were sentenced in October 2022 to a combined total of more than 140 years in prison. The gang came to light after French authorities provided information to the UK’s National Crime Agency in 2020 after they were able to access the encrypted EncroChat communications system.
.. Police stormed Maxwell’s Radyr property as part of Operation Venetic. A total of £270,000 worth of money went through his hands. The gang was trading drugs valued at several million pounds in hundreds of kg. Maxwell received an eight-year prison sentence.
The football player was released by Liverpool two years after he scored on his debut, at the age of 19. Despite earning 14 caps for Wales’ under-21 squad, Maxwell concluded his career in the League of Wales after moving down the ranks. Among his eleven clubs were Carmarthen Town, Barry Town, Swansea City, and Cardiff City. Maxwell became a Vodafone engineer after his playing career ended and managed Cardiff Draconians, a Welsh football team in the third division.
After stabbing a man in a “dispute” over a girl, Ibrahim Meite, a former football player for Cardiff City, was sentenced to jail. In September 2019, the 26-year-old, who played for the Bluebirds from 2017 to 2019, attacked Rio Amos, 24, on a residential street in London, knifing him in the back in front of frightened bystanders.
In the daytime incident, Amos pulled out a bigger knife and stabbed the former striker as he fled the area, injuring him as well. After being sent to the hospital to get care for their wounds, both guys were detained on suspicion of intentionally hurting someone.
Meite, who also played for League Two teams Crawley Town, Derry City, and FC Pirin Blagoevgrad in Bulgaria, was heard by Kingston Crown Court to have approached Amos on September 12, 2019, in the morning, while driving his white Mercedes down a Putney residential street. Leon Hughes was the third man sitting in the front passenger seat.
The defendant, from Roehampton, was seen on camera stepping out of his car to talk to his victim, but Hughes diverted Amos’s attention by making a “pincer movement” between the two men.
Subsequently, in front of “clearly alarmed” members of the public, including a small schoolgirl and a newborn, the former football player stabbed him in the back. Amos pulled out a bigger knife that one witness called a “footlong” and pursued Meite as he ran from the scene. While being pursued, the 26-year-old stumbled and cut his hand, loin, and chest multiple times.
Meite, a former football player, was found guilty of injuring with purpose, unlawful wounding, and knife possession. In December 2022, he was given a 15-month prison sentence.
