One of the traditions which Britons rightly pride themselves on is the free press. Britain boasts arguably the world's most vibrant print media, with high-brow broadsheets on sale alongside downmarket tabloids. The tradition of absolute media freedom is only limited by libel and incitement to hatred laws, anything else is printable.
This tradition, however, is not without its drawbacks. Britain's privacy laws are among the world's weakest, and in any case the phone-hacking scandal has demonstrated that the media aren't too worried about the legalities of a situation. Tabloids, desperate for easy material, make celebrities of anyone they can, and those in the public eye are hounded relentlessly by the paparazzi.
In the case of professional footballers, the media are particularly intrusive. Sporting prowess is easy celebrity, and given how competitive England's tabloid press is (The Sun, The Mirror, The Daily Express and The Daily Mail all compete for roughly similar audiences. In Germany, by contrast, there is only one mass-market tabloid), anything that can be used as media fodder gets printed. Britain's celebrity pantheon encompasses hundreds of people, and footballers are not an exception.
