Football driving school news - Ronaldo's crash course - 2009

Cheshire pensioners, breathe a sigh of relief: the Professional Footballers’ Association is set to offer extra driving lessons to Premiership players.
 
The announcement follows a string of, er, ‘high-profile incidents’ involving footballers and fast cars, including Cristiano Ronaldo’s Ferrari 599/tunnel wall interface in January.
 
The PFA will run the scheme in conjunction with the British School of Motoring – yep, the ten-to-two-shuffly-hands brigade – and says that it aims to make the footballers ‘better drivers’.

Next time you see Wayne Rooney driving at 35mph in the middle lane of the motorway, checking his mirror every three seconds while a bloke with massive specs and a clipboard pulls disapproving faces alongside him, you know what’s going on.
 
"The one thing that's important for a young male is that they want to buy a car, and that car is often very powerful,” said Gordon Taylor, Chief Exec of the PFA. "We have to make these youngsters aware of how it can virtually be a weapon of destruction if not handled carefully."

Very noble of the PFA, but we can’t help wondering if they’re on a bit of a slippery slope with dishing out the life advice to their players. Where next? Basic numeracy? How to put those little wooden blocks into the right shape of hole? The principles of sexual consent?

Oh, and on a similar vein, Liverpool player Steven Gerrard has just put his modified Range Rover up for sale on AutoTrader. Modifications that include £7,000 on wall rugs and Gerrard’s squad number stitched into every arm rest. At least we know what the next Premiership footballer crash course should be then: taste.