What Do Soccer Players Do After Retirement?

Although no job is guaranteed for life any more, you’re usually guaranteed to work at least in the same field for most of your working days. This however is not true of professional soccer players, who for reasons of fitness and competition, rarely manage to work in the same field for more than 2 decades.

Become a Manager

The most logical route which a lot of good former soccer players tend to go down is the management one. This is partly because it’s one of the few things they may be readily qualified for when the playing career comes to an end. They’ve worked as a cog in the machine for years, and understand how each part works alongside another to create a great team of soccer players. Naturally, they should then progress to management, taking their turn to shape all the cogs in the footballing machine.

A lot of good, well known players opt for this career, as it’s apparent they understand the game well enough to have become such a great player in the first place. They also tend to command more respect and admiration due to the successes of their playing career. With enough experience and respect, a lot of former players get the option to go on and try to become the next Fergie.

Become a Pundit

Again, this tends to be a role that the more well-known former soccer players take up. You only have to watch certain TV channels on match days to find yourself presented with a swathe of 90s (and increasingly early 00s) footballing stars all talking about tactics and making predictions.

This too is a logical career path as it again relates to the one thing the player knows inside out. Their extensive knowledge of football on the field serves them well enough to talk about it off the field for a living.

Advertising

Another fruitful way for former pros to make a decent buck for another few years is through advertising. Again, unfortunately this only usually applies to the megastars who were making the big bucks to begin with, and whom also may have benefitted from some great sponsorship and advertising deals throughout their career.

So whilst this might not be an option for any Joe Bloggs from the English Championship or below, it certainly works for the bigger names the world over. David Beckham has long continuing contracts with many of the sponsors he had as a player, Gary Lineker advertises crisps, Thierry Henry advertised cars, and Pele, Maradona and Zinidine Zidane all appeared in the same Luis Vuitton advert together. It’s a lucrative market to tap into.

Go off the rails

Unfortunately, it’s not all rosy and many former soccer professionals will not find themselves fortunate enough to be able to take up one of the opportunities mentioned above. Sadly, it’s commonplace to hear of former professionals – both celebrity and not – becoming lost after their career has ended and turning to things like alcohol, drugs or gambling. Many former players use these addictive things as a means of distraction or to fill the void in their lives that the lack of soccer playing has created. Usually they’ll gamble on things like football coupons (as they are familiar with the chances) or in casinos, playing high stake poker games and the like. However, unlike you or I, they don’t play bingo on sites like this one bingosweets.com. Their gambling problems sadly tend to go much deeper than deposit limits on these sites, as they are used to affording to gamble much more.

It appears that there is a fine line between falling into something good, and making good prospects of a former soccer career, and ending up lost and throwing it all away. It’s hard to say if this can be related to the money, the education or the lack of obvious choices available, but it appears from the outside that former soccer players only have a limited number of career paths to choose from after retirement.