Another weekend passes and there are yet more stories in the Sunday newspapers surrounding the private lives of footballers in our country. This weekend saw a report of yet more footballers going to court to file super-injunctions to prevent their secrets of their private lives to be released to the public.
I am fed up with reading about the misdemeanours of these professional footballers; not only are they in the public eye and have a reputation to uphold but they think that with their money and ‘power’ they can get away with it. The audacity of these players who then under privacy laws try and prevent the story coming to light is ridiculous and they should be named and shamed. If they can’t cope with the fall out and possible loss of a family and those all important sponsorship and marketing deals then they really should not misbehave.
Increasingly footballer’s culture is surrounded by money, flash possessions and girls and with the money available to these footballers this will not change soon. But I feel sorry for the wives and girlfriends in all this. Yes, they have to accept that marrying a footballer is never easy and the lifestyle you get with it does come at a cost but I don’t think any of these women deserve to be treated in this way.
I am not criticising all footballers and tarring them with the brush of the minority as the majority do not feature in our newspapers and are hard working and family men. The player who comes to mind is Jamie Redknapp and his wife Louise; they keep themselves out of the press and present and represent themselves in a positive light.
Footballers have got to realise that in today’s culture they are ‘hot property’ and with a increasing number of girls with the attitudes of getting their fifteen minutes of fame and attention from a footballer then footballers will always be at risk. I can’t believe the stupidity of some players who think that after they have had a one night stand or cheated that the girl or someone connected to either party will go to the newspapers and earn a vast amount of money for selling their stories.
Ultimately footballers are role models and they get paid an extortionate amount of money for what they do and therefore should seek to set a good example to their supporters.
I hope that in the future when these injunctions go to court that the judges overrule the footballers and teach them that they cannot abuse their power to keep their business out of the press as ultimately one could argue that these stories are in the public’s interests. For example, if your favourite player was living a ‘wild’ lifestyle and portraying a family man with the desired morals would you think differently if you found out that this was not true!? Perhaps then footballers will realise that they are not invincible and that it may be easier to not behave in this way in the first place as they will get found out.
