5 players whose careers have been plagued by off-field controversy 

Club Atletico de Madrid v FC Bayern Muenchen - UEFA Champions League
Ribery slept with an underage prostitute in 2010

Since times immemorial, the private lives of footballers have been analysed and examined in exhausting detail in daily tabloids across the world. However, in recent years, football has done its best to sober up, and unlike the days when Paul Merson's drug and booze-fuelled exploits would regularly make headlines, modern-day footballers prefer to keep a low profile.

Controversy is relatively hard to come by lately, and when footballers get caught in compromising situations, it becomes big news. Some high-profile footballers have been mired in controversy over the course of their career, and have gotten into trouble with the media and the law. This list will look at five such high-profile football players.

Also read: 5 most hated footballers in the world currently


#5 Franck Ribery

The French footballer is a devout Muslim who has been lauded for his religious beliefs on several occasions in the past, most notable of which is an instance when he told his Bayern team-mates to refrain from drenching him with beer during their title celebrations.

However, Ribery's penchant for debauchery is well known, and the Frenchman famously ran afoul of the law when reports emerged in 2010 that he had solicited a prostitute in a Parisian nightclub. Ribery was just one of four French national team players to be implicated in the incident, along with the likes of Sidney Gouvou and Karim Benzema.

The matter became worse when it was revealed that Zahia Dehar, the prostitute in question, was underage at the time. Ribery issued a public apology in which he admitted to sleeping with Dehar without knowing how old she was. The case against him was dropped in 2011, with prosecutors stating that the players did not know Dehar's age.

#4 Joey Barton

Middlesbrough v Burnley - Premier League
Joey Barton is currently serving an 18-month ban for gambling

Joey Barton has never exactly been the sort of person you could introduce to your mother, and his antics on the field have earned him the contempt of several players, managers and fans. However, his life off the field has also seen its fair share of controversy, with Barton making headlines repeatedly over the span of his career.

Joey Barton's first run-in with the law came during a Christmas party in 2004 when he decided that the best place to stub out his cigar was in someone's eye. The eye in the aforementioned incident belonged to a youth player by the name of Jamie Tandy, who started off this series of events by attempting to light Barton's shirt on fire.

This altercation kicked off a fairly disastrous year for Barton, in which he broke a pedestrian's leg while driving through Liverpool at 2 am and then assaulted a 15-year-old Everton supporter during a pre-season game. He also assaulted his Manchester City teammate Ousmane Dabo a few years later, resulting in an arrest. He was bailed out and promptly sold to Newcastle.

In less than six months, Barton was back in the slammer after CCTV cameras filmed him repeatedly punching a man and then assaulting a teenager in the Church Street area of Liverpool. He was sentenced to six months in jail and served 77 days of his sentence before being released.

In 2016 Barton was charged by the Scottish FA for breaking several rules related to gambling. Barton placed 1260 bets over the course of a decade, including 30 bets on the teams he was playing for at the time. He also bet on games in which he played the full 90 minutes. Barton was subsequently banned from football for 18 months on 26 April 2017.

Also read: 10 most controversial football matches of all time

#3 Wayne Rooney

Racegoers On Liverpool Day At The Grand National Meet At Aintree
Wayne Rooney has been accused of infidelity

Wayne Rooney is widely regarded as one of the best players to have ever played in the Premier League. He is revered by United fans for his goal-scoring prowess, and at his peak, he was one of the game's biggest stars. However, things have not always gone smoothly for Rooney, and his personal life has often been embroiled in controversy.

Rooney has been involved in several high-profile lawsuits, the first of which came when rumours emerged that he had assaulted his then-girlfriend Coleen in a nightclub. He sued the Sun and News of The World for libel and was awarded £100,000. Rooney was also on the receiving end of a libel case just months later, with Everton manager David Moyes suing him for making false claims about Moyes in his autobiography. The case was settled out of court for £500,000, with Rooney apologising to Moyes.

The English striker married Coleen Rooney in 2008, and since then the marriage has been hurt by infidelity on multiple occasions. In 2010, a call-girl by the name of Jennifer Thompson came forth with claims that Rooney slept with her while his wife was four months pregnant.

#2 Mario Balotelli

Hull City v Liverpool - Premier League
Mario Balotelli has had his fair share of controversy

Mario Balotelli has developed a reputation as quite the character who is just as erratic as he is talented, prone to being provoked and unplayable on his day. The Italian is a controversy magnet, seemingly able to do something absolutely ridiculous in the most mundane of circumstances. Over the course of his career, his off the field activities have become the stuff of legend and have overshadowed his footballing talent to some degree.

Balotelli has been involved in a string of smaller incidents over his career. His reputation was, perhaps, most tarnished by an incident that occurred in 2012, when his ex-girlfriend Raffaella Fico claimed that she was pregnant and that the child was Balotelli's.

Balotelli stated that he would only assume parental responsibilities upon the successful completion of a paternity test. Things got heated when Fico accused him of being irresponsible, with Balotelli threatening legal action against her. Balotelli acknowledged that he was the father of Fico's daughter in 2014, after the completion of a DNA test.

Some of Balotelli's other exploits include firing air pistols into the air with his friends at Milan's Piazza della Repubblica, driving into a women's prison in Italy to 'have a look around,' using a youth-team player as a dartboard and setting his own house on fire with fireworks.

#1 Karim Benzema

France v Italy - Group C Euro 2008
Karim Benzema played a part in blackmailing his team-mate

Karim Benzema has made a name for himself as one of the world's best strikers, and he has been immensely successful with Real Madrid in recent years. However, his international career has been derailed by scandal and controversy in recent years and the striker has not played for the France national team since 2015.

Benzema was arrested on 4 November 2015 on the charges of playing a role in blackmailing his French compatriot Mathieu Valbuena. Benzema reportedly convinced Valbuena to pay a group of people that were threatening to leak a sex tape of the Lyon midfielder.

The French striker was also involved in the aforementioned incident concerning Franck Ribery and was one of three players to sleep with the underage prostitute Zahia Dehar.

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Edited by Shambhu Ajith