Footballers, believe it or not, are humans. They might exude the aura of immortal Gods, but at the end of the day, they are susceptible to mistakes like the rest of us. Some footballers learn from them, others don’t.
Acts, however, keep echoing in eternity. What we do here always rings between the walls of the world and it keeps coming back at us as memories. Footballers have done some things in their life that they look back to regret. And here are 7 footballers who are known for non-footballing incidents...
#1 Mario Balotelli house on fire
“Why Always Me?” read the T-shirt on under his jersey. So many voices had criticized him ever since his move to Manchester City that he decided to take out his frustration after scoring against Manchester United.
However, this was just one of the many ‘ Balotelllisms’ that he did in his entire career.
We might have a server overload and eventual crash if we decide to make a list of outrageous things that Mario Balotelli did in his life. However, since we are allotted on so much space, we will list his most infamous incident.
It was this incident that prompted him to wear the undershirt that conveyed his message of why it is always him that gets the flake.
On the eve of the Manchester derby, Balotelli decided to do something incredible as he and some of his friends shot fireworks in his bathroom. The result? His home caught fire and firefighters had to blare in at 1 am in the morning to save the night.
#2 Joey Barton bar fight
Joey Barton lives in a world of his own. A world where he deludes himself into believing that he is a preacher of the difference between right and wrong and the ones who don’t agree with him are made to drown in the deluge of his madness.
For someone who is so controversial and volatile that he can be dubbed as insane, it is unbelievable that he actually has the audacity to think that he points fingers at other footballers for lacking respect.
In a career filled with a myriad of unruly behavior, the one that he is most infamous for is his bar fight that got him a sentence in jail. For 6 months. The reason for his conviction was that smashed a teenage boy’s teeth before punching another man 20 times.
All this was caught on CCTV and can be found on the internet if you really have the time to waste.
#3 Bendtner drunk
The common thing between Mario Balotelli and Nicklas Bendtner is that both of them possessed the talent to make it big at the top level, but lacked the necessary diligence to justify their potential. Another common thing between them is that both of them have a loud mouth and a penchant to get into trouble.
As Arsenal crashed out of the Champions League, thanks to a loss to Bayern Munich, Bendtner was busy partying hard and getting drunk. His drunkenness got to such a level that he got into an altercation with a taxi driver who, in his 25 years of service, never saw anything like this.
In the driver’s own words:
"He [Bendtner] said that, if he was not so famous, he would have smacked me, and he called me a 'little fat pig'. I asked him to leave the car – I had to ask them three times, and said I'd have to call the police if they didn't."
"He [Bendtner] stood at the back of the car and rubbed up against the side window after unbuttoning his pants while he whipped the cab with his belt and shouted he wanted to 'f**k me'," he added. "I've had drunks and alcoholics in my cab in Copenhagen over the last 25 years, but I've never experienced anything like this."
#4 Benzema-Ribery scandal
This is the incident that shook French football to its core. Prior to the World Cup 2010, some French players were reported to have had illegal activities with an underage prostitute. If proven guilty, the consequences could have been dire, with jail time waiting in the fray.
The players in the said incident were Karim Benzema and Franck Ribery among others. Both of them were, however, pardoned as they weren’t aware of the fact that the girl in question, Zahia Dehar, wasn’t 18-years old.
Regardless of that, it marked a black spot in their careers that made them hugely respected footballers in the first place.
#5 Valbuena scandal
Another French scandal. Mathieu Valbuena is the most recent victim of a scandalous incident that saw him and Karim Benzema being left out of the Euro 2016.
In short, Mathieu Valbuena’s sex tape was recorded by Karim Benzema’s friend and, if recent reports are to be believed, the latter was not one bit happy about it. However, that didn’t prevent them from not facing an exile from the national team as the controversy that surrounded them during that period was too much for Deschamps to handle.
At the end of the day, people will remember Valbuena more for this incident than his skills as a footballer player.
#7 Messi tax evasion
And we conclude our slide with the best player in the history of the game. He might be the best ever, and do things with a football that none else could even dream of. However, when it comes to managing his taxes, he is as clueless as Bambi on ice.
And it is for this reason that someone like him had to see his name get tarnished because of this. As he was busy playing football, he made the mistake of not reading tax papers and signing on them. Sometimes, blind trust can lead to disaster and that is what happened with the Argentine.
He has had such a glorious career that people might not even remember this incident once he is done with the game. However, it is a tiny black spot that he can never hide.
