After a professional footballer retires, it’s rare to ever hear about them again unless it’s for the wrong reasons. The thing is that for those recently retired players (and certainly this current generation when they eventually retire) they have so much money that they’re set for life, so unless it’s to indulge in a spot of punditry for walking-around money, what reason is there to surface again? Having a kitty of literally millions of pounds in your mid-40s means that you’re pretty much free to do whatever you want, be it traveling, writing, monster truck racing or just good old fashioned whoring.
To say then that Mateja Kezman raised a few eyebrows this week when he announced plans to become a monk after retiring, would be a slight understatement. The Fenerbahce striker has declared that when his playing days are over he fully intends to spend “as much time as he can thinking of God.” Unconventional sure, but I guess admirable when so many players seem to get into the game for all the wrong reasons these days, namely money and the celebrity circus that tends to follow it. STT man-crush and World Player of the Year Ricky Kaka’ intends to follow a similarly spiritual route too, always claiming that his true calling was to be a preacher back home at his local church in Brasilia, Brazil. Not many people know that having just broken into the
If we’re really talking about going in off the religious deep end though, look no further than former Argentinian international goalkeeper Carlos Roa, who didn’t even wait until his career was coming to an end before jumping ship to Noah’s Ark. Incredibly, the devout Seventh-day Adventist temporarily quit the game at the age of 29 to genuinely prepare for Judgement Day. He reasonably believed that the world would completely end at the dawning of the third Millennium and retreated to a farm in rural
It’s hard to imagine any of England’s current crop going this route after finishing their careers unfortunately, but if this article’s done nothing else, the mere thought of maybe seeing Rio Ferdinand as the Bishop of Westminster in a couple of decade’s time should be enough to put a smile on your faces for the rest of the day: ‘BLAP! And dat iz how God totally MERKED all dem fassy-‘oles, believe.’