Sol Campbell on the Today programme, Rio Ferdinand on the razz with his Manchester United teammates. One England defender calling for decency, the other helping to organise a party that ended in an allegation of rape. Either way, football’s image suffers. Again.

Twelve years ago last Saturday, the Bosman ruling gave freedom of movement to out-of-contract footballers. Tottenham Hotspur fans unwittingly marked the anniversary at Fratton Park last weekend by abusing Campbell during Portsmouth’s 1-0 defeat.

It is 6½ years since Campbell became the highest-profile “Bosman” player by walking out of White Hart Lane to join Arsenal. The volume of such transfers has done little to leaven the sense of betrayal when a player puts himself first. The sight of a former favourite is one of the few occasions these days when fans, usually sat passively in expectation of entertainment, are proactive.

Expressions of frustration caused by a deepening detachment from the millionaires on the pitch, or evidence of modern society’s bad manners? Whatever, such an ingrained ritual is not going to be relinquished, given the wider context: casual inhumanity is fashionable, ingratitude an epidemic.

In and around Cardiff over the past year, ambulance crews were verbally assaulted 54 times. At a leisure centre in Surrey last month, servicemen who had lost limbs fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan were jeered out of a pool during a swimming therapy session by women who abused them for “not paying”. Meanwhile, last week, Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, admitted an FA charge of verbally abusing Mark Clattenburg, the referee, during a match against Bolton Wanderers, which generally passed without comment. Perhaps we have retired any lingering sense of moral outrage when football people fail to act as role models – unless excess is your ideal.

In which case Ferdinand seems a suitable stereotype. While not involved in any wrongdoing, Ferdinand is thought to have arranged United’s ill-starred Christmas party, collecting £4,000 from each squad member to pay for the frolics.

Ferdinand has 64 England caps, Campbell 73. Both will be remembered as excellent central defenders, both are from poor backgrounds in London and both are victims of sport’s obsessive pigeonholing in a world where you are either winner or loser, Judas or hero, idiot or genius, party boy or loner.

Complexities, subtleties, shades of personality? Sport speeds on by, too busy to stop to pick them up. As a defender who uses his head for thinking as well as propelling the ball, Campbell is a long-term sufferer from “Le Saux Syndrome”, where footballers who muse too deeply about issues beyond their job, clothes, cars and women are caricatured as fey, probably gay.

Campbell, the hulking giant who is delicate and vulnerable, who loves the celebrity lifestyle but craves privacy. Strong and weak, insular and outgoing, the rock who was eroded by crashing waves of criticism, injury and self-analysis. An enigma: one-dimensional shorthand for a three-dimensional character.

Ferdinand served an eight-month ban for missing a drugs test in 2003. His club backed him and continued to pay him, but he frittered away their goodwill by stalling on a new contract. He celebrated his call-up to the England squad in 1997 by being caught drink-driving – one of several motoring convictions. Last year he hosted Rio’s World Cup Wind-Ups, a litter of crass stunts with his England teammates as victims. And he called Chris Moyles, the Radio One DJ, a “faggot” live on air.

So he is one of the lads. But how many other lads have launched an antiknives campaign aimed at inner-city children, supported charities including the Damilola Taylor Trust and the Prince’s Trust, opened a football academy in Uganda? Ferdinand is caring and careless. How to deal with such contradictions? Pick one or the other. Cheer or jeer. “People like to put people in little boxes and if you don’t fit you’re odd. But they don’t really know anything about me,” Campbell has said.

Ferdinand revels in the banter, the laddish petrol that fuels dressing-room and terrace culture, while Campbell tolerates it at best, as his remarks yesterday imply. He is more sensitive than Ferdinand to its potential for careering out of control. It is a shame that more do not share such acuity, but it is easier to judge than to show judgment.