When USWNT star Trinity Rodman and tennis player Ben Shelton made their relationship public this week, they became the latest in a long line of high-profile sporting/celebrity couples.
The pair’s ‘Instagram official’ moment — or their ‘hard launch’ to use language that only people of a certain generation will recognise or abide — involved Shelton, the world No 14, posting a picture of them smooching in a lift. Textbook.
But what can the pair, both 22, expect now they have entered into a relationship that will spawn thousands of gossip-based internet stories and millions of comments on social media about their very public dalliance?
It’s a well-trodden path. The most famous footballer, and the most high-profile example, is undoubtedly David and Victoria Beckham, or Victoria Adams as she was known when the pair started dating in the mid-1990s.
He was one of the best and most famous footballers in England, she was one-fifth of the biggest girl group on the planet. Their relationship was huge news and a paparazzi’s dream, but not everyone was happy for them.
“We knew David was pissing off the manager (Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson),” his United and England team-mate and friend Paul Scholes said in the Netflix documentary Beckham. “He was probably going down to London at times when he possibly shouldn’t have been, and the manager wouldn’t have that.”
Having one of his players dating a Spice Girl was a long way short of ideal for Ferguson, who — according to Beckham, speaking in the documentary — wanted his player to “marry a local girl that wasn’t a superstar”.
David and Victoria Beckham in 1999 (Vanina Lucchesi/AFP via Getty Images)
Instead, with opportunities to meet at a premium given his football schedule and her music career, world tours et al, Beckham would drive through the night from Manchester to see Adams in London (a 400-mile round trip) even if they just had, in Beckham’s words, just seven minutes together. Or they would talk on the phone for hour upon hour, sometimes through the night.
When asked about the relationship, Ferguson admitted: “He changed, there’s no doubt about that — and all the media and celebrity attention was different from what I wanted.”
“I was on tour, not knowing when I was going to see him,” Victoria said in the Netflix documentary. “He would do anything to spend time with me, he would sometimes charter a tiny, two-seater plane, come over literally just for a few hours and then go back.”
Did it impact Beckham’s career, as Ferguson feared? The England national team’s manager at the time, Glenn Hoddle, thought so, dropping Beckham from the starting line-up at the start of the 1998 World Cup finals in France and saying: “I don’t think he’s been focused coming into this tournament. He hasn’t been focused on his football, he’s got to understand his football has to come first and remain first.”
Beckham’s best pal Gary Neville, also team-mate with club and country, retrospectively agreed with that opinion, saying: “David struggled always when he was away from Victoria for long periods. He did struggle, he has to admit that.”
But did it really affect his football career? His trophy haul — including six Premier League titles, one in La Liga, another in Ligue 1, two in MLS and a Champions League — and multi-million-pound sports and branding empire suggest not.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain might not be on Beckham’s level but after watching that Netflix documentary, he could relate to the nature of a high-profile relationship with someone whose work schedule is busier and involves even more travel than yours — fiancee and Little Mix singer Perrie Edwards.
“There were elements I could relate to,” the former Arsenal, Liverpool and England forward told The Athletic in 2023. “Perrie could relate to a lot of it, too, travelling back and forth and recording while looking after our little boy.”
Oxlade-Chamberlain said he found the distance from family the hardest aspect of playing abroad since his move to Besiktas in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2023. “But even when I was at Liverpool, they would often come up for a week and go back down for two weeks because Perrie has to work in London a lot of the time,” he added.
Oxlade-Chamberlain with Edwards after the 2019 Champions League final (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Sloane Stephens, the 2017 U.S. Open champion in tennis, and her fiance, former USMNT striker Jozy Altidore, is probably the most pertinent example for Rodman and Shelton.
Altidore played for Sunderland and Hull City in England and Toronto FC in MLS during his career but, now 35, has moved away from the round-ball sport and into NFL team ownership as a minority partner in the Buffalo Bills.
He told USA Today that, although being with a fellow athlete was challenging, given he was constantly travelling around North America in his Toronto days and Stephens could be anywhere in the world playing tennis, they had a level of appreciation for what the other was experiencing.
“She is somebody who gets everything I am going through without having to say anything,” Altidore said. “You look at each other and you know right away if one of you is annoyed. She just gets the mood I’m in as she lives a very similar life.
“I works really well, there is no stress. She is a successful athlete and I do OK, and we just enjoy our time together when we are together.”
Altidore and Stephens in 2021 (Rodrigo Varela/Getty Images)
Another tennis/football power couple were Grand Slam-winning tennis player Ana Ivanovic and celebrated German player Bastian Schweinsteiger, who met during the latter years of their careers.
Ivanovic was so smitten she swapped Switzerland for Bolton to be near the midfielder when he played for nearby Manchester United, a sacrifice few people would be willing to make, while he personalised his boots with the date their relationship started.
Yet while high-profile — and often long-distance — relationships present logistical challenges, there are more direct threats that can be posed to a player’s career.
In 2005, Beckham revealed he was considering his future at Real Madrid after claiming his eldest son Brooklyn, then aged six, had been “chased” into his football school by photographers. He also said members of the media had taken pictures of his second son, Romeo, at his nursery in the Spanish capital.
“I love Spain as a country, I love the fans, they have been incredible to me,” he said. “But there are things which upset me in Spain. Those incidents have made me sit back and think.”
It had been relentless in England, too, when Beckham was with Manchester United.
As Neville said in the Beckham documentary: “I always remember in Manchester there were two brothers that followed him around — they were f*****g everywhere.”
Those brothers were Eamonn and James Clarke, and they revealed that standards have changed in 2025, particularly when it comes to taking pictures of children.
“Well, yeah, you wouldn’t do it now,” Eamonn said of photographing Brooklyn. “Times have changed, you just wouldn’t do it.”
They might not, but any member of the public could. Smartphones have changed privacy restrictions beyond recognition, while social media opens couples up to daily abuse. Edwards was bombarded with snake emojis on her Instagram page when Oxlade-Chamberlain moved from Arsenal to Liverpool in 2017, for example.
In terms of time, it’s not easy combining a sports career with a high-profile relationship, but the above examples, not to mention JJ and Kealia Ohai Watt, Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, Julie and Zach Ertz, or Travis Kelce and his significant other whose name we can’t remember, suggest that it is doable.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
