Spice Boys (footballers) - Scandals and Controversies

Scandals and Controversies

Neil Ruddock spoke in an interview in 2010, saying he was delighted to be in the "Spice Boys" team because they were "earning tons of money, driving Ferraris and bedding Page 3 girls before anyone else". The reason Ruddock and the Spice Boys could say this, was because it is statistically accurate that the English footballers in the 1990s were earning at least ten times the amount footballers before then had been earning, widely due to the influx of television and revenue streams for the newly revamped and globally marketed, FA Premier League. Players' wages swelled to an average of 10–20,000 pounds a week in those days and was constantly rising each season until the present day. With the newfound money and fame, many players had to deal with these issues, but the Spice Boys were notable for their very public controversies related to how they went about it, with Stan Collymore stating in his biography that he believes that the television show Footballers' Wives is based on the stereotypes, many of which were perpetuated from the Spice Boys' antics, and that not only are the depictions very accurate, but that the whole show might have been based on the very idea of dramatising the documentation of the rise of footballers' dealing with newfound fame and wealth having been thrust into these lifestyles in the first place.

McManaman meanwhile, told FourFourTwo magazine that the Spice Boys was based on misconceptions, saying: "The Spice Boys at one time consisted of eight or nine players and the press just used to change the personnel as they fancied. It was unfortunate because when we finished third in the league we got a lot of stick for it. At the time I felt very sorry for some of the lads involved. But it didn't bother me personally as I was playing very good football at the time...When we finished third and people saw us having a laugh and a joke, they thought we didn't care. Nowadays, when you finish third, everyone is thrilled to bits...Everyone's excited about qualifying for the Champions League. Under Roy Evans we did that a lot, and did it by playing fantastic football, but because there were a few young lads who liked to enjoy themselves at times, people had misconceptions."

The Spice Boys of Liverpool were notable for headlining several scandals covered to great extent in the British Tabloids in the 1990s: