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Retired: What Happens to Footballers When the Game's Up
Almost half of professional footballers face the threat of bankruptcy within five years of their retirement. A third will be divorced less than a year after hanging up their boots. With little or no support from the game to which they gave their lives, many end up addicted, depressed, living with debilitating illnesses, behind bars or even worse. While an elite few may be financially secure, or others may land plum managerial jobs or punditry roles, it transpires that for the majority retirement is something they're not prepared for and lives can spiral into a rapid and depressing decline. Retired is the ultimate 'where are they now?' and asks what actually happens to most footballers once they hang up their boots? How do players cope with going from heroes to zeroes in such a short space of time? And what can be done to help with their transition to normal life?
- GenresFootballNonfiction
256 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 9, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 11, 2017
Reviewed for The Two Unfortunates football blog here.
April 6, 2019
Retired is a thorough write-up of the numerous troubles faced by football players upon leaving professional football. The footballing public is often unsympathetic and critical of highly-paid stars who have fallen on hard times, however Retired provides some much-needed perspective on the personal and health issues ex-footballers are consumed by when the game leaves the players behind.
Retirement for ex-footballers is indeed a scary premise. Over nine chapters, author Alan Gernon remains sympathetic of ex-footballers in navigating the retirement ‘minefield’. His description of issues such as divorce, bankruptcy, drug use, gambling, physical and mental health, and crime are well-researched and underpinned with relevant and often shocking statistics. For example, the author states that: 80% of retired players will suffer from osteoarthritis; 75% will get divorced within three years of retirement; and 35% will suffer from some form of depression. In a book replete with such statistics, Niall Quinn’s insistence that Retired is “the most important football book in a long time” is certainly given credence. The anecdotes from and of ex-players also give depth to the sobering and often dry reading. As such, the stories of Lee Hendrie, Peter Storey, and Michael Branch among others are drawn upon.
Jeff Astle’s sad passing from CTE frames Retired’s damning assessment of the football industry’s handling of the mental health of ex-professionals; an assessment that also touches upon male bravado in the dressing room as a mask for depression and anxiety (remember what John Gregory said to Stan Collymore all those years ago?).
The tone of Retired is hard-edged and softens in its treatise of players voluntarily giving the game away completely, or staying in the game as a pundit or coach. Who’d ever thought David Bentley would be now running restaurants in Spain, or Lee Bowyer would be clearing the brush away from his own fishing lake in France? You may not be familiar with names such as Richard Leadbeater or Shane Supple, but their stories are fascinating. Such anecdotes serve to show that players fall out of love with the game, and the decision to quit can be a slow-burning one or even a sudden one—as in the case of Espen Baardsen’s decision to give it away just as he was about to tuck into a Tesco sandwich. This softer side of Retired acts as a counterpoint to the first half of the book.
Of particular highlight is the interview with BBC pundit and seeming Renaissance Man, Pat Nevin. He comes across as erudite and well-informed, and throws in his two cents about the desperate hordes of ex-professionals thinking that punditry is a given upon retirement.
Retired hits hard like an expose aimed more so toward footballing authorities, rather than the failures of footballers failing to recognise the pitfalls of a cutthroat profession. A sense of entitlement pervades but is rarely touched upon, and player failings in avoiding issues such as bankruptcy, divorce, and gambling and not covered in Retired. Although these failings are not the only causes for an ex-player’s downward spiral in retirement, the blinkered attitudes of professional players at the highest level prior to retirement was not adequately covered in Retired. A pro career may finish in an instant, or it can be a dramatic fall from grace. The author, in this respect, was prescient with his description of a World Cup 2018 England squad featuring Joe Hart.
Nevertheless, Retired is indeed an important book for football fans that will add broad shades of understanding to complex issues facing ex-professionals, and will add much-needed perspective to often one-sided pub arguments.
HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGES
On the attrition rate of young professionals:
In an interview with Gordon Watson:
STARS: 3.5/5
FULL TIME SCORE: An end-of-season 2-2 away draw upon which the long-serving veteran stands tearfully contemplates his retirement before the travelling support.
Retirement for ex-footballers is indeed a scary premise. Over nine chapters, author Alan Gernon remains sympathetic of ex-footballers in navigating the retirement ‘minefield’. His description of issues such as divorce, bankruptcy, drug use, gambling, physical and mental health, and crime are well-researched and underpinned with relevant and often shocking statistics. For example, the author states that: 80% of retired players will suffer from osteoarthritis; 75% will get divorced within three years of retirement; and 35% will suffer from some form of depression. In a book replete with such statistics, Niall Quinn’s insistence that Retired is “the most important football book in a long time” is certainly given credence. The anecdotes from and of ex-players also give depth to the sobering and often dry reading. As such, the stories of Lee Hendrie, Peter Storey, and Michael Branch among others are drawn upon.
Jeff Astle’s sad passing from CTE frames Retired’s damning assessment of the football industry’s handling of the mental health of ex-professionals; an assessment that also touches upon male bravado in the dressing room as a mask for depression and anxiety (remember what John Gregory said to Stan Collymore all those years ago?).
The tone of Retired is hard-edged and softens in its treatise of players voluntarily giving the game away completely, or staying in the game as a pundit or coach. Who’d ever thought David Bentley would be now running restaurants in Spain, or Lee Bowyer would be clearing the brush away from his own fishing lake in France? You may not be familiar with names such as Richard Leadbeater or Shane Supple, but their stories are fascinating. Such anecdotes serve to show that players fall out of love with the game, and the decision to quit can be a slow-burning one or even a sudden one—as in the case of Espen Baardsen’s decision to give it away just as he was about to tuck into a Tesco sandwich. This softer side of Retired acts as a counterpoint to the first half of the book.
Of particular highlight is the interview with BBC pundit and seeming Renaissance Man, Pat Nevin. He comes across as erudite and well-informed, and throws in his two cents about the desperate hordes of ex-professionals thinking that punditry is a given upon retirement.
Retired hits hard like an expose aimed more so toward footballing authorities, rather than the failures of footballers failing to recognise the pitfalls of a cutthroat profession. A sense of entitlement pervades but is rarely touched upon, and player failings in avoiding issues such as bankruptcy, divorce, and gambling and not covered in Retired. Although these failings are not the only causes for an ex-player’s downward spiral in retirement, the blinkered attitudes of professional players at the highest level prior to retirement was not adequately covered in Retired. A pro career may finish in an instant, or it can be a dramatic fall from grace. The author, in this respect, was prescient with his description of a World Cup 2018 England squad featuring Joe Hart.
Nevertheless, Retired is indeed an important book for football fans that will add broad shades of understanding to complex issues facing ex-professionals, and will add much-needed perspective to often one-sided pub arguments.
HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGES
On the attrition rate of young professionals:
“A young player, groomed by their club since childhood, has solely focused on a career in the game. They generally have no education to fall back on, so when they’re one of the 98 per cent to be jettisoned between the ages of 16 and 21 panic sets in—remember you are only two per cent on 16-year-olds on a club’s books that are still playing professionally by the age of 21. For the 22 players on the pitch in the next match you watch, consider that there are another 1,100 who were churned out and discarded by professional football before getting the proverbial key of the door.” (pg. 103)
In an interview with Gordon Watson:
“Watson had been gambling during his career but the free time afforded by retirement exacerbated his problems. ‘I think that it took hold all the way through my career. Time, place and money are the triangle of disaster. But I didn’t have the time when I was a player. I was training or travelling or preparing for a match. But as soon as the lines of the triangle align, then it’s just like a runaway train.” (pg. 237)
STARS: 3.5/5
FULL TIME SCORE: An end-of-season 2-2 away draw upon which the long-serving veteran stands tearfully contemplates his retirement before the travelling support.
January 1, 2018
I've never heard of Alan Gernon, so it came as a pleasant surprise to see that this book explored the many facets of retirement in detail, and had a good number of interviewees from the world of football. I'd have preferred it had a more critical stance been taken towards financial mismanagement and marriage, however, where it felt overly sympathetic towards footballers.
The attitude towards retired footballers generally falls in to one of two camps in my experience. They aren't deserving of any sympathy as they were spoiled mercenaries, or they are portrayed as victims as they are more likely to divorce or go bankrupt. What this book did well was to stress that not all footballers are millionaires, and even those who were are still subject to human emotions, what it did poorly was to argue that for lots of professional footballers, they are well placed to avoid some of the problems.
The first few chapters detail some of the problems that affect footballers after retirement, namely bankruptcy, divorce and mental health. The last of those lends itself to sympathy, but the first two less so. The general story seemed to be that footballers could no longer service their debt once they'd retired and weren't earning the same income. This was understandable, but in most cases, those footballers would have known this in advance, and are not subject to a decimation of an industry like mining, for example. Similarly, while never explicit, it was implied that a wife getting 50% of earnings when divorced was a bit unfair given the high wages footballers receive. But that is how marriage and divorce works, and it is right to say that their wives have to make career sacrifices if they are looking after the kids or moving around the country due to their husband's job. And if a footballer married a future CEO who did have a good career, he'd be entitled to half their salary too.
The more interesting chapters were the stories of what individuals had got up to after retirement. Some decent names were interviewed, from Gary Stevens and Pat Nevin to Steven Caldwell and Richie Sadler, some of whom discussed their industry in more detail if it related to football. It would have been easy to find some stories on the internet, so this primary research is the strongest element of the book in my opinion. A more balanced description of Lee Bowyer could have been employed though, "some well documented off-field controversies" rather glossing over an out-of-court settlement to an assault victim and an on-field fight with a teammate that brought a charge against him from the police.
The author also suggests clubs don't do much to help retired footballers - whilst true, I'm not sure why they are under any obligation to do so as I'm not too aware of any help given to staff made redundant in other industries beyond empty words, and the PFA is well placed to do this work anyway. Could players not contribute to a fund to help those retired players in need? Could the players themselves use their greater-than-average free time to train in preparation for retirement? There was only one voice who argued footballers should still have to bear some responsibility even if misled financially.
This wasn't quite another Michael Calvin book of retired footballers, but the wide range of people interviewed (including charity workers and lawyers aside from the footballers) meant that on the whole, this was a balanced look on retirement from playing professional football.
The attitude towards retired footballers generally falls in to one of two camps in my experience. They aren't deserving of any sympathy as they were spoiled mercenaries, or they are portrayed as victims as they are more likely to divorce or go bankrupt. What this book did well was to stress that not all footballers are millionaires, and even those who were are still subject to human emotions, what it did poorly was to argue that for lots of professional footballers, they are well placed to avoid some of the problems.
The first few chapters detail some of the problems that affect footballers after retirement, namely bankruptcy, divorce and mental health. The last of those lends itself to sympathy, but the first two less so. The general story seemed to be that footballers could no longer service their debt once they'd retired and weren't earning the same income. This was understandable, but in most cases, those footballers would have known this in advance, and are not subject to a decimation of an industry like mining, for example. Similarly, while never explicit, it was implied that a wife getting 50% of earnings when divorced was a bit unfair given the high wages footballers receive. But that is how marriage and divorce works, and it is right to say that their wives have to make career sacrifices if they are looking after the kids or moving around the country due to their husband's job. And if a footballer married a future CEO who did have a good career, he'd be entitled to half their salary too.
The more interesting chapters were the stories of what individuals had got up to after retirement. Some decent names were interviewed, from Gary Stevens and Pat Nevin to Steven Caldwell and Richie Sadler, some of whom discussed their industry in more detail if it related to football. It would have been easy to find some stories on the internet, so this primary research is the strongest element of the book in my opinion. A more balanced description of Lee Bowyer could have been employed though, "some well documented off-field controversies" rather glossing over an out-of-court settlement to an assault victim and an on-field fight with a teammate that brought a charge against him from the police.
The author also suggests clubs don't do much to help retired footballers - whilst true, I'm not sure why they are under any obligation to do so as I'm not too aware of any help given to staff made redundant in other industries beyond empty words, and the PFA is well placed to do this work anyway. Could players not contribute to a fund to help those retired players in need? Could the players themselves use their greater-than-average free time to train in preparation for retirement? There was only one voice who argued footballers should still have to bear some responsibility even if misled financially.
This wasn't quite another Michael Calvin book of retired footballers, but the wide range of people interviewed (including charity workers and lawyers aside from the footballers) meant that on the whole, this was a balanced look on retirement from playing professional football.
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