The footballing world was shocked when Mason Greenwood was accused of violent assault by his long-term partner as something of this sort was entirely unexpected from a bright young talent like him.
But footballers worldwide are increasingly making headlines for doing illegal and illicit activities. Hence the question remains, is stardom a curse?
Last year, a similar allegation was brought up against Manchester City's French fullback Benjamin Mendy and similar to Greenwood, he has also been imprisoned.
Other than them, Bayern Munich's Lucas Hernandez, Kingsley Coman and Jerome Boateng were all in the news for getting involved in similar misdemeanours, despite narrowly avoiding prison time.
This, however, is not a new phenomenon, as Ronaldinho and Robinho, two of the most critical footballers for the Brazil team of the 2000s, were involved in a lot of illegal and unlawful activities.
Before the advent of social media, these incidents did not receive much fan attention, but nowadays, football lovers across the world can't disregard these incidents.
Why so many footballers are involved in the assault against women, drug abuse, and so on has been discussed among football fans.
Many footballers come from relatively worse socio-economic backgrounds, as in large part of the world, football is a way of rising through the ranks of the societal hierarchy.
Hence, many of them do not get to receive a proper formal education, which explains a lot of their behaviours later on.
Footballers from immigrant backgrounds are overrepresented in these crimes, as a considerable portion of them comes from crime-infested ghettos of the major European cities.
This can be said for Mason Greenwood and Benjamin Mendy, both coming from relatively recent immigrant backgrounds and hailing from not very well-to-do families.
Although these people are exceptions, most footballers coming from such backgrounds are generally more humble and faithful to their roots, with the likes of Mesut Ozil and Zinedine Zidane being two of the most notable examples.
But one cannot indeed deny the fact that footballers, by and large, should at least get some proper schooling on morality.
Football is the most popular game in the world and footballers are considered icons by many.
These types of incidents tarnish the image of the beautiful game. And fans are often left in disbelief learning about the dark sides of their favourite stars.
