Max what do we watch football for? Is it to dissect the personalities of the famous, titillate ourselves with the intimacies of their lives, or watch their performances on the field. I could tell you experiences in my life if you would like that would shock the hell out of you. I'm sure many on this forum could do like wise. We all have skeletons in our cupboard.
If we were to be so concerned about the behaviour of footballers on and off the field, we should forget watching football and just watch Days of our Lives. Football is about football not the size of a footballer's G strings or doing somersaults behind the goal posts. If you get caught up in what the media presents to titillate, you've been converted to the dark side of the force and may as well be watching soap operas. The media thrives on feeding you with this garbage, most of which is probably serious exageration and at times just pure misrepresentation. We get into the sordid rubbish concerning famous people love behaviours and we feed into that, then quibble about it with moralistic humdrum. Makes us really nothing more than voyeurs, peeping toms checking out what our neighbours are up to.
I watch, hear and admire talent that is available to me. I'm disappointed by the foolish actions of Rolf Harris, but I admire his talent and that gives me enjoyment. I think the personal life of Tom Cruise, as portrayed, what with his Scientology fetish and the like, but I love watching his films. Mel Gibson is reported as being anti-Semitic but do I dismiss Mad Max as a result.
Our culture is fed voyeuristic nonsense about flawed famed personalities and ignore what they offer to us in their talent. Tall poppy syndrome some would say. Media titillation to sell their product I say and we feed into it. I call it voyeurism, propagated by a media that feeds off that kind of troubling hunger for a peek into famed people's lives. Is that what we really watch football for. Surprise. We are all human and we are all flawed, even our stars. And if they display things we don't like. get over it. They are just enjoying themselves on the field, being excited as we all would be if we had the talent to be out there. And we'd probably act just as foolishly and any spilt milk in our personal lives would be front page news to titillate out voyeuristic nature.
If you want horror stories to titillate, as a former parole officer, I could scare and horrify the G-string off you. What footballers do is bl..dy tame in comparison to what happens out there in real life. Enjoy the game. Forget the propaganda and silly behaviours some players display on the field in their excitement. And ignore most of the media horror stories. Most are serious exaggerations.