Spice Boys (footballers)

The Spice Boys was a media term for a group of Liverpool F.C. footballers in the mid-late 1990s, seen typically as being composed of Jamie Redknapp, David James, Steve McManaman,Robbie Fowler and Jason McAteer. The term is sometimes used to include other members of the squad, like Stan Collymore, Phil Babb, Neil Ruddock, Dominic Matteo, Patrik Berger,Rob Jones, Paul Ince, John Scales, Jamie Carragher, and Michael Owen, whose antics were also scrutinised as being of the "Spice Boy" stereotype due to association with their team-mates.

The "Spice Boys" emerged as a term coined to characterise the antics and lifestyles off the pitch of the Liverpool 1990s players as high earning playboys who were underachieving in the game, based on a play on words on the name of the hugely popular pop music band at the time, the Spice Girls.

The label is negative and highlights the players' focusing on partying and clubbing, sports cars, dating and groupies, fame and hairstyles rather than football, making as the Daily Mail describes, "inroads in the pages of glossy magazines than in the league table." The term, though harsh, was the media's way referring to the negative side of the manner in which talented English footballers handled new money, popularity and stardom, which the game of football suddenly brought them in unprecedented levels in the 1990s, compared with the 1980s and before.

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