Soccer, Sex and Scandals

When it comes to seedy sports and even seedier sportsmen, English soccer is in a league of its own. From the coach down, our national team is peppered with sex scandals, prostitutes, bi-sexual lovers, cover-ups and lies.

It's so bad right now that our coach, a Swede called 'Sven' (we couldn't find an Englishman good enough), faces ejection for being at the centre of a sordid sex scandal. His real 'crime' however is not that he had an affair with one of the secretaries, but that he may have lied about it.

This twisted morality is apparently a step too far for English soccer's governing body. It was forced into a humiliating climb-down last week after first angrily denying the affair and threatening the press with legal action. However, this is not the first time that this 56-year-old Svengali has been caught playing away from home. It seems this unassuming and plain looking man is something of a sex magnet to the ladies. It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?

But he's not alone in bringing disgrace down upon this already soiled sport. Because it turns out, rather embarrassingly, that Sven's boss also had an affair - with the same secretary. And one newspaper is even claiming that she had a fling with a third soccer boss. I'd like to see her job description.

And it gets worse. Our newest and most exciting player – 18-year-old Wayne Rooney - is all over the papers for apparently being caught with a prostitute. Young Wayne's equally young fiancée, Colleen, was so angry with her man she is reported to have thrown her 45 thousand dollar engagement ring into the middle of a squirrel sanctuary – how nuts is that?

And who can forget our biggest soccer star of all, David Beckham, causing shock and disbelief at revelations of an affair with his PA? And there's more. More sex, more indiscretion, more lies and, undoubtedly, more scandal to come.

Still all this, at least, proves one thing. One way or another, you need balls to play English soccer.

By Petrie Hosken