Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman on board a train, British Transport Police said on Monday.<\/p>\n
The ex-Tottenham and Lazio player was charged with \u201cone count of sexual assault by touching\u201d, said a spokeswoman for the force.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old, who has struggled with alcoholism since he retired from top-flight football, was arrested at Durham station in northeast England on August 20.<\/p>\n
He is due to appear in a magistrates\u2019 court on December 11.<\/p>\n
Gascoigne \u2014 known as \u201cGazza\u201d \u2014 made his name with Newcastle before going on to play for Tottenham, Italian giants Lazio and several other teams including Glasgow Rangers.<\/p>\n
The midfielder, widely regarded as one of the most talented players of his generation, was also a key member of the England side that reached the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup in Italy. He won 57 caps in total.<\/p>\n
Gascoigne was one of the first big-name footballers to arrive in China when he made the shock decision to be a player-coach of second division Gansu Tianma in 2003 but he lasted just a handful of games.<\/p>\n
In 2016, he was fined and ordered to pay compensation by a court after making a racist comment to a black security guard at his \u201cAn Evening with Gazza\u201d show.<\/p>\n
In an interview published on Tottenham\u2019s website last year, he said, \u201cSometimes when I look back and people say to me \u2018do you regret anything in your career?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps I left Spurs too early. I loved it there. The players, the staff, everyone was class and the team spirit was\u00a0phenomenal\u00a0absolute class. We had a great team.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople talk about me being a bit of a joker, messing about, but we had about 15 in that squad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last month Gascoigne\u2019s nomination for a place in the Scottish Football Hall of Fame was withdrawn, with officials expressing concerns over the state of his health.<\/p>\n
(AFP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman on board a train, British Transport Police said on Monday. The ex-Tottenham and Lazio player was charged with \u201cone count of sexual assault by touching\u201d, said a spokeswoman for the force. The 51-year-old, who has struggled with alcoholism since he retired from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1936,1937,1938],"class_list":["post-2653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-england-footballer","tag-paul-gascoigne","tag-sexual-assault"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2653"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2655,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2653\/revisions\/2655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}