Rio paying for excesses of the system

Sideline Cut: One imagines the therapeutic options available to Rio Ferdinand as he wrestles with these dread days of emptiness are quite lavish. Personal crises are relative.

For Rio, the next seven months - which he will undoubtedly come to consider as the most wretched and toughest of his life - will probably consist of solemn moments of introspection broken by sumptuous holidays, occasional television appearances and ongoing product endorsements.

That is not to say Rio's sorrow is not genuine and heartfelt.

It was not surprising that the sometime Manchester United defender declared himself devastated by the news his eight-month ban was to be upheld. Not only is the current Premiership season up in smoke but his ambitions of playing for England this summer have also been reduced to cinders. By the time he eventually gets to pull on the famous red shirt again, he might discover it has been filled by an equally athletic central defender without either corn rows or a compulsive need to go shopping.

Ferdinand is convinced he is the victim of a Machiavellian system of justice and nobody close to him has done anything to persuade him otherwise. Today, he reconciles himself to what is a significant period out of the game even as Leicester City parades the latest three Premiership players to heap shame upon a league that rewards them so handsomely. In a culture where it seems almost all crimes and misdemeanours go unchecked, Ferdinand could be forgiven for wondering how his indiscretion provoked such a storm and was dealt with so gravely. It must have been strange seeing his named mentioned in connection with some of the most notorious drug cheats in sport. Ferdinand was not guilty of taking performance-related substances nor had he anything to hide. He was merely guilty of ignorance.

If he decides to pursue his right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Lausanne - a privilege his legal team will almost certainly advise him to forsake - his only documentary evidence will be an expensive shopping bill. He missed his appointment with the dope tester at Manchester United's training ground because he forgot. And he forgot because he was rushing off to do what Premiership footballers do: consume, thoughtlessly and automatically.

There could be no excuse. It is hard to escape the drugs-and-sport issue right now. It has made a ghost town of world athletics and a chemical laboratory of the summer Olympics, and it is now threatening to make a joke of professional baseball.

That an individual can be involved in sport and somehow fail to understand just how cancerous the mere suggestion of chemical enhancements can be to that sport beggars belief.

But I am certain Ferdinand never even remotely associated his world with that of, say, Dwain Chambers. Nor was the issue of drugs in sport likely to have been the subject of much discussion in the Old Trafford training ground. The reaction of Manchester United and Alex Ferguson to the initial punishment meted out to Ferdinand points to a profound lack of understanding about the issue. It was as though their defender had been tripped up by some technical gimmickry, a nonsense piece of legislation designed solely to frustrate the aims of the club. And if the wealthiest and most famous soccer club in England is that unenlightened, the assumption must be that the smaller clubs are equally in the dark.

Ferdinand paid for not behaving responsibly. But the Premiership culture has never asked its heroes to behave in any way other than with hideous immaturity. The Premiership implicitly demands that its poster boys never really emerge from adolescence.

The booze-ridden japes and verbal quirks of Paul Gascoigne - in the heyday of a football life that now seems tragic - set a tone for the succeeding generation to aspire to. Laden with sinful amounts of cash, inflated by hyperbolic television coverage and convinced of a sense of infallibility that runs rampant through the league, Premiership players have been encouraged to act like the new kings of society. They believe the law is something that governs the poor saps that pay to watch them play.

Ferdinand, though, was one of the league's brighter examples: there has been ample testimony to the fact he contributed generously to charities with both his time and his money. Still, he was paid an enthusiastic subscription to the lifestyle of unchecked opulence and entitlement that the majority of his young contemporaries pursue with a zeal they often fail to match on the field.

The FA have been rather grandiose in self-congratulation over the swift and hard lesson they inflicted on Ferdinand and, by extension, Manchester United. Their stance has been portrayed as the beginning of an earnest attempt to get their house in order. One way of doing that would be to genuinely try and teach young professionals how to conduct themselves in civilised society.

Most of the trends and problems and issues that emerge in English soccer happened in the American professional sports five years earlier. With cases of sexual assault, spousal abuse, drug abuse and even murder tarnishing the NFL in particular, all new draft choices now have to go through an induction weekend before they begin their short, violent and privileged sporting careers. They are given talks on how to handle finance, relationships and the pressures of celebrity. Old professionals who learned the hard way come in and give them practical examples of the million-and-one ways it can all go wrong. Probably very little of it sinks in among the bored and the restless who have been feted and adored since their school days. But a little of it may do. And at least they cannot say they have not been warned.

That is Ferdinand's lone valid excuse. He did not appreciate the seriousness of his medical test because he was never taught to. His manager did not tell him. His colleagues did not tell him. His agent did not tell him. The thought of some nobody with a case of needles waiting for him in a back room just was not that inviting or important. Maybe he forgot, or maybe he figured it just wasn't worth his while.

Ultimately, he is fortunate. When Ferdinand does return to soccer again, he will be just 26. His best days in the game are yet to be tapped into. He will be none the poorer for this experience, either financially or morally. If he applies the lesson of accountability, then it will be of value to him on the field.

But in terms of correcting the prevalent culture of English soccer, Ferdinand's punishment is just a cry in the dark. It means nothing to his peers, the most excessive of whom will continue to run arrogantly through the very society that idolises them.

And when Saturday comes, they will raise their arms to the cheers.