In their splendour and glory, former footballers played in front of crowded stadiums, and adoring
fans. But the nature of becoming a footballer means you’re more than likely to retire at the average
young age of 35. Some footballers choose the more obvious route of coaching after they retire, but
some footballers go with slightly more obscure career choices.
With the Wold Cup over and the Premier League just around the corner, we sought to investigate
what percentage of former Premier League players have found work in the football industry, switch
entirely, or combine the two after retirement.
Image credit: YAKOBCHUK VIACHESLAV/Shutterstock
The data was collected by looking at the top six football teams from last season’s Premier League
table 2017-18. Ticket Gum then utilised data from Ranker.com, which ranks the most popular
players from each club, and then selected 25 retired footballers from each team, who are still alive
and looked at their subsequent careers outside of football to see where they are now.
The results were split into three sections: former footballers who chose a football specific career
post retirement, those who chose a non-football specific career, and those who did both.
Finally, we found the most popular non-specific football career, by averaging out the number of
players who sought out an entirely different career.
Out of the six teams, former Liverpool players are the most likely to have chosen a football specific
job after retirement (80%), followed by Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea players. Football
specific jobs include managerial roles or working as a pundit.
In contrast, former Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United players are historically least likely to
have gone into a football related job post retirement at 68% respectively. And interestingly, 28% of
the most popular retired footballers who played for Chelsea have progressed into non-football
specific jobs after retiring from the pitch.
Here at TicketGum.com we concluded that overall, an average of 72% of former players prefer to
remain within the footballing world after retirement, whilst only 7% have selected a career path
outside the ‘beautiful game’. Interestingly, 21% of players chose to do both.
When it comes to the careers former footballers choose after retirement, the results show that
‘business’ is the career 57% of retired footballers go into after they depart from the world of
football. The next most common career path is television, with 17% of players continuing their fame
behind the big screen. Other careers include acting (7%), modelling (5%) and even music (7%).
Feature image credit: EFKS/Shutterstock