From The Guardian:
'Sponsorship deals in football have become a bit like drug use in a stadium rock band. It is so much a part of the schtick that no one really likes to mention it might be becoming a problem. Yet increasingly the near-maniacal pursuit of cash in some players lends itself with extraordinary neatness to the stories they later get caught up in. Perhaps it is fanciful but there is something of a ready-made morality play about Beckham's recent life.
Just consider it. The England captain accepts a great big wedge to be the face of Vodafone messaging, appearing in adverts to giggle endearingly at his mobile. Some months later the News of the World helpfully confirms he does use the product - an awful lot - but it is not always his wife sending him communiqués.
Then last month Victoria Beckham graciously journeys to Peru to live with a dirt-poor family for Sport Relief. "People shouldn't have to live like this," she frets for the cameras. Pity they don't live in Indonesia, you find yourself idly thinking, then they could get a job in a sweatshop making your husband's trainers (another endorsement).
And now, no sooner has the £40m Gillette sponsorship deal been announced than a slew of features appears saying the England captain is at rock bottom and in despair. What was the product again? Ah yes, razor blades. Now, if you were Beckham, even if you weren't that quick on the uptake, you might find yourself on the point of spotting a pattern here.
The case of Rooney proves you can hardly rely on the agents - the 15 per centers - to urge restraint in the service of Mammon. The only authority figure close enough to Beckham to make the point might be Eriksson, had he not his own issues in this area. Journalists were once barred from a press conference unless they agreed to include the branded image of a Play Station game in their copy - Sven-Goran Eriksson's World Cup Challenge. If he will insist on bringing up the World Cup I think it ought to be us setting the challenges for Sven just now rather than the other way round.
At present, then, Beckham seems doomed to a series of increasingly Faustian pacts and you can hardly hope for much more for Rooney on current form. The strong sense of foreboding that always used to attend the pictures of celebrity weddings - sold lock, stock and barrel to glossy mags - has finally been supplanted. Sponsorships: the curse of Hello! for the next generation.'