To be honest, I find the British attitude towards all this amusing, frightening and sad (present company excluded, of course
)
You pay some of these guys a few million pounds a year to play a sport and, as a result, feel entitled to know the details of their personal lives? Then you vilify them for doing things that, statistically, a large number of non-rich people are out doing every day.
As if some 20-something kids from disadvantaged backgrounds with little education and, in many cases, little intellect who have suddenly struck it rich are supposed to instantly have the best judgment on earth!
In the States, they pay top athletes twice as much (with a lower tax rate) and no one begrudges them their earnings, unlike in England with the constant talk of those evil "overpaid" footballers. No one knows/cares about athletes private lives... until they crash their car into a tree with a golf club hanging out the window.
But I suppose there is a cultural difference there in which we tend to celebrate financial success whereas in England you do seem to love to vilify it. You're like those guys in the imagined conversation of Dire Strait's "Money for Nothing"