Former Manchester United star Brandon Williams cut a relieved figure at Chester crown court, having had plenty of time to process the grim reality of what could have lied ahead.
Williams was handed a 14-month suspended sentence on Thursday for dangerous driving after ploughing into a central reservation, just moments after he was filmed ‘with a balloon in his mouth’ in August 2023.
Less than a year after he was released by United following the expiry of his £65,000 a week contract, a verdict that Judge Eric Lamb described as ‘deliberate disregard’ completes an extraordinary fall from grace for Williams.
Once lauded by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for his leonine courage, the former England Under-21 international will now reflect on the punishment sent his way. Whether he returns to football remains to be seen.
It will be of scant consolation to Williams that he is by no means the most high-profile former United player to tread the ignominious path from pitch to penitentiary.
That dubious distinction belonged to the late George Best, whose status as arguably the finest player of his generation offered no protection from a three-month prison sentence for a drink-driving offence in 1984.
Brandon Williams, 24, made 51 appearances for Manchester United but has been without a club since his contract expired last summer
The defender has been sentenced to 14 months in prison, suspended for two years for dangerous driving after crashing his car in August 2023, just moments after he was filmed ‘with a balloon in his mouth’
George Best is led away by police in November 1984 after his arrest for drink-driving. Having also broken bail and headbutted a police officer, he received a three-month prison sentence
‘I see no reason to distinguish your case from others because you happen to have a well-known name,’ stipendiary magistrate William Robins told Best, whose punishment was upheld on appeal a fortnight later.
‘You don’t have much time to adjust to the idea of going to prison because as soon as the judge has passed sentence, you’re hurried down the steps from the dock to the holding cells and put in with all the other criminals waiting to be transported to jail,’ Best wrote in his 2001 autobiography Blessed.
‘No one who hasn’t been inside can have any real idea what prison is like… The stench of the place hit me as soon as I stepped down from the van, the smell of excrement, rotting food and body odour.’
Like Williams, who had twice previously been banned from driving, Best did not help himself. On the night that led to his downfall, he had been drinking heavily in Chelsea and was en route to the legendary London nightspot Tramp when he was stopped by police outside Buckingham Palace.
He was breathalysed, carted off to Canon Row police station and bailed to appear at Bow Street magistrates’ court the following morning. What Best did not know, however, was that he was due to appear at 9am – just three hours after police released him.
He awoke that afternoon and remained blissfully unaware he had broken bail until returning to the same watering hole where the previous evening had begun. Unperturbed when regulars informed him he was all over the news for breaking his bail conditions, Best simply picked up from where he had left off.
But when he returned to his Chelsea home at 7am the following day, it was surrounded by reporters – and, before long, a bevy of police officers. Ignoring their demands to come out, Best eventually decided to make a run for it, sprinting across the road to the nearby home of Diana Janney, a former girlfriend.
‘It was like something out of the Keystone Cops,’ Best recalled, ‘even to the point where they all careered into the front door of Diana’s flat just as I slammed it in their faces.’
After headbutting a police officer during his arrest, Best quipped: ‘I suppose that’s the knighthood f***ed.’ He would go on to serve 53 days in prison
Williams poses with Marcus Rashford after Manchester United’s 2023 Carabao Cup win over Newcastle. The left back’s dreams of contributing to such moments have yet to be fulfilled
Like Best, Ronaldinho also spent time in prison. The former Barcelona and Brazil maestro was locked up in 2020 after trying to enter Paraguay with falsified documents
Best eventually gave himself up, although not before headbutting a police officer; ‘I suppose that’s the knighthood f***ed,’ he quipped. But like so much of the off-field behaviour that drove his dazzling career off the rails, it was no laughing matter.
‘I regard assault on the police as an extremely grave matter,’ Best, who served 53 days in prison for his troubles, was informed by the judge during sentencing. It was a sterner verdict than he had hoped for, yet Best knew it was high time someone in his life got tough with him.
Perhaps Williams will come to a similar conclusion, given his past transgressions. Certainly greater talents have fallen only to rise again.
The former Arsenal captain Tony Adams infamously spent eight weeks in Chelmsford prison in 1990 for a drink driving offence. Jermaine Pennant was playing for Birmingham City when he was sent down for three months for drink-driving while disqualified in 2005. Both went on to bigger and better things.
There is not always a happy ending, of course, for football is littered with players who have spent time behind bars, often for the most unlikely of reasons.
Such was the case with Ronaldinho, the former Barcelona and Brazil legend who was detained for 32 days in a Paraguay prison in 2020 after he was accused, along with his brother and business manager Roberto de Assis, of attempting to enter the country with falsified documents.
True to his irrepressible character, the former World Cup winner made the most of the experience. Unlike Best, who declined to turn out for HMP Ford because he didn’t want press photographers to capture images of him playing in jail wear, Ronaldinho participated in a prison futsal tournament, reportedly scoring six goals in an 11-2 victory to secure his side the winner’s prize of a 16kg suckling pig.
The 2005 Ballon d’Or winner, who marked his 40th birthday in incarceration, subsequently spent a further four months under house arrest at the luxurious Palmaroga hotel in Asunción before returning home. Yet the irony was that he didn’t need a passport to enter Paraguay in the first place; a Brazilian national identity card would have been sufficient.
Goalkeeper Rene Higuita, best remembered for his spectacular scorpion kick in a friendly against England at Wembley in 1995, spent seven months in a Colombian prison
Higuita, seen her e representing Colombia at the 1999 Copa America, was accused of being an accessory to kidnap after helping to secure the release of a teenage girl from a drug lord
Ronaldinho is seen making his way through a throng of people as he is transferred to a prison in the Paraguayan capital Asuncion in March 2020
If there was an element of the surreal about Ronaldinho’s travails, he had nothing on Omar Ortiz, a former Mexico international goalkeeper nicknamed the Cat.
It would be an understatement to say that Ortiz did not fill his time wisely while serving a two-year ban from football that began in 2010, after he tested positive for the illegal substances oxymetholone and masteron.
The Monterrey stopper was found guilty of participating in the kidnap of at least three people, one of whom was a minor. Tasked with identifying potential targets on behalf of a notorious organised crime group, Ortiz’s victims included Armando Gomez, the husband of popular Mexican singer Gloria Trevi.
To widespread dismay, Ortiz was arrested in 2012 and held for seven years until a criminal judge in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon sentenced him to 75 years in prison.
Barely less unusual was the fate of another South American goalkeeper, Colombia’s Rene Higuita.
The maverick stopper, whose forward forays and set-piece goals earned him the nickname El Loco, is best remembered for his spectacular scorpion kick in a friendly against England at Wembley in 1995. But two years earlier, Higuita made headlines of a rather different nature when he helped secure the release of the kidnapped daughter of Carlos Molina, a Colombian drug lord.
The 15-year-old had been abducted at the behest of Pablo Escobar, the notorious leader of the Medellín cartel, and Higuita was approached by Molina to help secure her release.
Not in a position to decline, Higuita agreed to meet the kidnappers, handing over a briefcase full of money with which he had been supplied to pay the ransom. In short space, Claudia Molina materialised among a nearby group of street children, and the goalkeeper was lauded as a saviour – an image he was quick to embrace.
Omar Ortiz, a former Mexico international goalkeeper nicknamed the Cat, was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 2019 after he was found guilty of participating in the kidnap of three people
‘It was a mission from God,’ he told the press. ‘It was a very beautiful thing. I did it as a blessing, because God gave me the chance to make a family happy. It is not often in life that you get such a chance.’
Higuita’s role in the affair earned deep gratitude from Molina, who insisted he accept a $64,000 gift. But that led the authorities to view him as an accessory to kidnap and, though he was neither charged with nor convicted of a crime, a seven-month prison stay ensued.
‘I acted for humanitarian reasons,’ said Higuita. ‘If I was ever needed again to help free someone, I’d do it without hesitating. I’m a footballer, I didn’t know anything about kidnapping laws.’
Williams too has been a footballer; in time, he may be again. He is still only 24 and, in a sport where redemption is never further away than the next match, his family’s hopes that he can reignite his career may yet be fulfilled.
History teaches us as much. Adams was 24 when he was sentenced, but retired 12 years later as an Arsenal legend with the trophies to prove it. Pennant, a convict at 22, was later signed by Liverpool and made the starting line-up for the 2007 Champions League final.
But no two players follow the same journey, and Williams now finds himself at a very different juncture in his career to others who have fallen foul of the law.
Unlike Best and Ronaldinho, both of whom strayed off the straight and narrow after their playing days were done, Williams is not an established star. Without a club, and with the verdict behind him, he is not even a rising one. How he responds to this nadir will determine everything.
