Joey Barton has been blamed for many things but the Newcastle United midfielder cannot be accused of a lack of candour.
"Most footballers are knobs," said Barton today in a radio interview which is unlikely to prove popular with his fellow professionals. "I meet a lot of them and they are so detached from real life it's untrue. But there was a stage when I was like that."
The 27-year-old, who says he is a changed man since giving up drinking two years ago, expressed dismay at footballers' isolation from the wider world and the rampant materialism of many of his peers.
"Driving around in flash cars and changing them like you change your socks, wearing stupid diamond watches and spending money like it's going out of fashion in the middle of a recession when some people are struggling to put food on the table for the kids – it's not the way to do it," he said.
Interviewed on an edition of BBC Radio 4's Today programme which was guest-edited by his mentor, Tony Adams, Barton said that he was only jolted out of the game's "Peter Pan" world – in which agents organise players' lives, taking care of such mundane basics as bank accounts, bills, mortgages and car insurance – by his addiction to alcohol and inability to control his anger.
A series of unsavoury incidents led him to the Sporting Chance Clinic, which was founded by Adams, the former Arsenal captain. Barton, who served time in prison for his part in an assault in Liverpool city centre two years ago, said the clinic "gave me the tools to understand myself, basically. It helped me grow into a man".
The gulf between Barton's upbringing in Huyton, Merseyside and life as a young player at Manchester City was obvious.
"I was earning £20,000 a week and yet I didn't even know how to behave, I was just a child," he said. "You grow up in an environment where, as long as you're a good player, you're told that you're the best all the time. But whether you're the best footballer in the world or the best golfer or the best cricketer, you're a human being. You might be good at that [sport] but you might be crap at life."
Barton's misdemeanours included stubbing a lit cigarette into the eye of a City team-mate; slapping a fan; assaulting a former City colleague, Ousmane Dabo; and the aforementioned attack on a 16-year-old outside a branch of McDonald's in Liverpool.
"My last night out probably cost me £500,000 plus my reputation," he said. "I must have been as close as you can get to self-destruct. I had two choices, basically. Either you carry on what you're doing and your career's gone, or you address it."
Barton, who is close to full recovery from a serious foot injury, says the British media helped to change his character.
"I am very thankful to the media of this country," he said, suggesting that regular vilification in print and broadcast media forced him to confront several issues.
He also said: "There's stuff I got away with. But I'm very fortunate, because of my profile and the job I do and the fact that I'm in the public eye, it got addressed. And it's only the fact that I'm grounded by the trouble I've been in that's forced me away from being in the football world."
After counselling and introspection, Barton has decided that he is, essentially, "a simple bloke".
"I don't want to be famous," he said. "It was never for me about the cars, the women, the money – whatever people perceive to come with it. I love football, I want to play football."
