There is life after sports. At least that’s what these five retired professional footballers prove, after getting their teeth stuck into new pursuits once hanging up those boots. Although this generation’s elite footballers are unlikely to need to work a day in their lives after football, the recent generation may not have been so fortunate.
Although the Premier League riches started to infiltrate in the early-to-mid-1990s, it wasn’t until the monstrous broadcast deals of the 2000s that footballers began to be paid astronomical salaries for kicking a ball of leather around.
With that in mind, many former Premier League players have taken different routes after retirement. Some fascinating pursuits and some rather more mundane. Below, we discuss five retired football stars who have made a name for themselves away from the football pitch.
Daniel Agger
Liverpool’s former Danish centre half Daniel Agger was quite an enigma on the football pitch and he’s proven to be similarly unorthodox after hanging up his boots too. After retiring early in 2016, Agger decided to try his hand at becoming a professional tattoo artist. Agger linked up with world-class tattoo parlour Tattoodo.
Agger has his fingers in other pies too. In his native Denmark, he co-founded a successful sewage management firm called KloAgger. The business is run by Agger’s brother, Marco, day-to-day. Agger’s also tried his hand at football management too, securing a role as head coach of Danish first division outfit HB Koge.
Teddy Sheringham
Teddy Sheringham enjoyed a 24-year career in professional football. With 288 goals in 755 appearances, as well as 11 goals in 51 England games, Sheringham is one of the most decorated English centre forwards of the 1990s and 2000s. In fact, he’s considered by many to be one of Tottenham’s ten best strikers in the club’s history.
After announcing his retirement in 2008, he made a conscious decision to master the game of poker, an industry where a competitive edge is still hugely valuable. There are plenty of nuances in the poker rules, depending on which variant one plays. There are different rules to abide by in both Texas Hold’em and Omaha, the two most popular poker variants played today. Therefore, the fact Sheringham managed to come fifth out of a field of 384 in a European Poker Tour (EPT) event in Portugal just months after turning pro is a testament to him.
Vinnie Jones
Vinnie Jones was one of football’s notorious hard men of the 1980s and 1990s. The Welsh international was a ferocious competitor in the Premier League as part of Wimbledon’s iconic ‘Crazy Gang’. After retirement from football, Jones was drawn to sticking around in the entertainment industry.
He first starred in WWF wrestling in 1998 before turning his hand to professional acting. Jones played a key role in the British movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in the same year. Jones has continued to act in movies ever since, with iconic performances in Mean Machine, Snatch, Gone in 60 Seconds and Madagascar 3 proving his most notable.
Arjan De Zeeuw
Dutch centre back Arjan De Zeeuw made his name in the Premier League with Barnsley and Portsmouth and also enjoyed two spells with Wigan Athletic. After 13 years in English football, De Zeeuw opted to return to his native Netherlands. After a brief spell with ADO ’20, he called it a day and sought to train to become a doctor.
After all, he only moved to Barnsley in 1995 with the intention of playing a couple of seasons in English football before returning to complete his medical training. However, De Zeeuw found it harder to pick up in his later years and opted to become a police detective instead.
Fabien Barthez
French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez was one of Europe’s most eccentric goalkeepers in the 1990s and 2000s. He was part of France’s World Cup-winning side in 1998 and became a long-serving player for Manchester United.
Within 12 months of retiring from football, Barthez opted to get behind the steering wheel competitively instead. Barthez is now a one-time French GT champion and has competed in multiple Le Mans races too.
