Ben Foster was fined last season for breaking a promise to stop filming for his popular YouTube channel.
That's according to Watford chairman and CEO Scott Duxbury, who has detailed the meeting between himself, Foster and sporting director Cristiano Giaretta over his "utterly wrong" videos.
Foster began posting on his YouTube channel – Ben Foster: The Cycling GK – when games were being played behind-closed-doors during the COVID pandemic.
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Since then, the 39-year-old has continued posting content to his channel on a regular basis, with videos showing 'behind the scenes' footage from inside the club's training ground.
The channel, which currently has over 1.1 million subscribers at the time of writing, also shows footage from Premier League dressing rooms on matchday as well as team hotels.
Foster has received criticism from some fans for 'prioritising' his YouTube channel over football.
In fact, back in October, a club insider from Watford told The Athletic about his anger towards the goalkeeper's antics.
“It makes me so angry,” they said. “Focus your dedication and commitment to the club because in return you receive a huge salary and privileged life.”
Now, in a recent interview with the Watford Observer, club chairman Scott Duxbury has suggested that Foster was fined after breaking his promise to stop filming.
“There are many things that occur during a season that are politically sensitive and that we can’t discuss with fans in the way I would like to," Duxbury said.
“However, now the season is over, I’ll say I think some of the videos were disappointing. Our sporting director, Cristiano Giaretta, met with Ben and asked him to stop. He promised he would, but he didn’t. He was fined.
“We want a culture of excellence at Watford. Those videos were not that. I wanted to say publicly at the time that the videos were utterly wrong and we had fined the player and asked him to stop, but it just wasn’t something I could do."
Duxbury added that in the future, player contracts will have clauses in them to "make it clear that sort of behaviour will not be permitted.”
Back in February, Foster opened up about his ambitions to one day in play in the United States.
The former Manchester United goalkeeper says fans in the US are "much more receptive" to behind-the-scenes content.
“I’m still not sure how long I’m going to keep playing football for. I have said a few times that I’d love to go out to the [United] States and play in America for a year," Foster told SPORF.
"I know a lot of people would love to see the GoPro in the Goal back in America.
"They’re so much more receptive over there to that kind of stuff anyway. You see the cameras in the lockers after games and all that kind of stuff.
"So they have so much more access. I think people would genuinely buzz off what it would look like to go to the States and play football."
Topics: Ben Foster, Watford, Premier League
Jack Kenmare