Soccer: Bad boy's turnaround

Joey Barton has made his fair share of enemies over the years. From fans to teammates, referees to the managers who have tried - and usually failed - to bring him into line, the irascible footballer has upset many during his controversial career. But his latest outburst, while likely to go down badly in the dressing room, could earn him some new admirers after he candidly admitted that a lot of his fellow Premiership professionals were "knobs".

Barton's inability to control his temper has seen him involved in violent scuffles both on and off the pitch, the most serious of which resulted in a six-month jail sentence. Last week, however, he hit out at the modern game and its lavishly rewarded stars, whom he described as dangerously out of touch with reality.

"Most footballers are knobs," he said in a BBC interview. "You can dress it up whichever way you want, but driving around in flash cars and changing them like they're your socks, wearing stupid diamond watches and spending your money like it's going out of fashion. In the midst of a recession in this country when people are barely struggling to put food on the table for the kids, it's not the way to do it," he said.

The £5.8 million ($12.9 million) Newcastle United midfielder, who earns £20,000 a week, said he has given up drinking alcohol and has undergone behavioural therapy to control his temper at charity Sporting Chance, following a series of bust-ups that included stubbing out a cigar in the eye of a young teammate. He described the environment of top footballers as a "Peter Pan world" - one in which he too had been cocooned since joining a Premiership youth team at the age of 8. He said he would never have grown up unless his problems had emerged in the media.

He said: "There is always an agent who will sort out your contract or your mortgage, or they will sort your house out or your car insurance ... you will never have to do anything for yourself if you don't want to."

The 27-year-old, who grew up on an estate in the working-class Huyton area of Liverpool, said drinking and fighting were considered part of normal life for "young bucks" such as himself. As for his highly-publicised acts of violence, he admitted: "That's the stuff people know about - there's stuff I got away with." But he said footballers were no different to other sportsmen. "If you are the best footballer, golfer or cricketer in the world, you are still a human being. You might be good at that, but you are crap at life."

Barton said he nearly lost everything when he was jailed for a late-night attack in 2008. "My last night out probably cost me £500,000 plus my reputation," he said. "I had two choices, basically. Either you carry on doing what you're doing and your career's gone, or you address it."

Barton insisted that he had not gone into the game for money or glamour. "I want to play football. It was never for me about the cars, the women, the money - whatever people perceive to come with it."

- INDEPENDENT