Across the weekend, much of the football news was being made away from the Champions League final, and was related to Harry Maguire’s alleged fracas on a Greek island during his holiday.
The Manchester United captain had to attend court on Saturday for what is clearly an embarrassing episode for him and his club.
However, former pro, Darren Bent, has a problem with how things have been reported, and has taken media companies to task by using the way Raheem Sterling buying a house for his mum was reported by way of a comparison.
“You look at the two headlines and it’s disgusting,” Bent said on talkSPORT breakfast cited by talkSPORT.
“Raheem came home from the Euros and bought his mum a house, but the way it was reported, you would have thought Raheem had done the worst thing in the world.
“All he’s done is bought him mum a house, which is what a lot of people would do if they were in a privileged position.
“It should be a positive thing, but the headline was absolutely disgusting about how he’s let his country down at the Euros and he’s a disgrace.
“Then, you see the way it was reported about Maguire…. It’s so difficult to talk about it, because you don’t want to talk about racial bias, but when you look at the two headlines you start to think something is not quite right.
“It’s a positive story about Raheem buying a house for a mum, but he gets slated.
“But then Maguire, and I know we don’t quite know all the facts, but he has potentially got himself into trouble in Mykonos and it’s like, ‘well… we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt’.
“I do not get that, it doesn’t makes sense to me. There has to be a change in the way you report things now.”
At present, whilst the Black Lives Matter movement and associated causes are front and centre, it’s a surprising analogy for Bent to make as it may well stoke the fires, but perhaps he has a point.
After all, when you break it down the player that did a fairly wholesome thing by any standard is the one who is castigated by the press, whilst the one in an alleged brawl with undercover police officers is given a smoother ride.