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Emile Heskey, Stiliyan Petrov and Gaizka Mendieta speak to Sky Sports News about how diversity is aiding their new player-led partnership to help footballers prepare for retirement.
The trio boast over 200 international caps between them and their latest project is a way of “giving something back” to the new generation.
Alongside former international footballers Gareth Farrelly and Michael Johnson, the unlikely quintet have set up a consultancy focused on player welfare, offering services including legal, commercial and financial advice, business planning, public relations and media training.
With a multitude of nationalities and heritages, Heskey was asked if diversity is important to the group.
“Yes, definitely. That’s what we chose,” the former England striker said at technology conference Web Summit. “It was all borne out of that where we’ve all come from different backgrounds, all come from different places.
“We’ve got Gareth Farrelly as well who’s a registered solicitor. He gives us a different angle as well. Stiliyan is a pro licence coach. I’ve started on my coaching journey, getting my badges.
“Michael Johnson as well who’s a pro license coach who has got the UEFA Executive Master for International Players (UEFA MIP) and he’s got another Masters from Salford University. Gaizka’s doing his coaching and media, so we’re all different backgrounds, different techniques. It’s been great for us all.
0:43 “Within football we’ve got this unwritten rule that we’re all in this together, we’re all one,” Heskey added.
“At times it’s difficult for players to sit down with someone, a professional who hasn’t been a player. It’s easy for players to sit down with players and go through what they’re going through and knowing that they’ve already been through it and they’ve come out the other end.
“This is one thing that we’ve got to understand. Players like to talk to players because of the feeling that they’ve witnessed it and they’ve felt it. We’re not taking away from anything that the clubs or anyone is doing.”
Heskey, 42, has an ambassadorial role at former club Leicester where he is helping to develop academy talent at LCFC Women by mentoring and coaching players.
The former striker’s biggest successes during his playing career include winning two League Cups, an FA Cup and a UEFA Cup in four years at Liverpool.
Heskey also played for Birmingham, Wigan, Aston Villa and Bolton, and wants to use his personal experience to help people deal with life after football.
“A lot of people might look at it and say ‘it’s only there for the elite’, no it’s not,” he said. “We’re here for everyone, we’re here to help players and managers and people within the football industry navigate their careers.
“I started at nine, I was told what to do, when to do it, how to do it from the age of nine till I was 38 so it’s tough when you’re coming out of that and trying to navigate during that as well.
“I was lucky enough to have Tony Cottee when I was at Leicester, who was a senior pro at the time and would give me advice on certain things and it does help.
“But to have a group of players of the stature that we have that are there for players is phenomenal. We’ve lived, we’ve worn the t-shirt, we’re here to help them.”
‘4000 players want to do media work’
Midfielder Petrov won four Scottish Premiership titles with Celtic and also captained Aston Villa in the Premier League. He says his research shows that players are still encountering some of the same problems he had when he brought the curtain down on his own playing career.
“As players we don’t have time to make long-term plans and this is the issue. We’re so concentrated on what we’re doing on the pitch, how to achieve on the pitch, we don’t pay attention on how to prepare for life after football,” Petrov said.
1:30 “We had an idea, a great idea, before we made the step of how everything will proceed, we had to make sure we had to speak to everybody in the industry. We spoke with clubs, current players, former players, with federations to make sure we understand the gaps.
“The problems were still there from when we were playing, so we decided to bridge that gap, making it more accessible for the players, to make sure the players to realise their potential but also making sure they upskill. They don’t have to only be in coaching or the media.”
Petrov says there is a demand for similar services from footballers plying their trade in other European countries.
“We have a lot of players abroad who would like to implement the same model in their countries because they feel that they have the same issues,” he said.
“It’s becoming congested. Every single player, most of us think the same. Everybody’s saying ‘if I retire I will do my coaching badges’. But another 2000 players are doing the same thing. ‘I will do the media…’, well another 4000 players are doing media. So it’s becoming really difficult.”
Asked how he would define success in his new venture, he said: “It is very difficult to measure success. I would probably talk about success if we are still talking about [helping players] in five-10 years time.”
‘Some players get itchy feet after retiring and think what now?’
Mendieta played 40 times for Spain scoring eight times but in a career that included spells at Valencia, Lazio and Barcelona, one of his highlights came at Middlesbrough where he won the League Cup.
He was runner-up in the 2006 UEFA Cup final and also missed out on winning the Champions League after back-to-back finals with Valencia. Mendieta hopes his own experience of playing in Europe’s top leagues and deciding to settle in England after retirement can help others.
“Finance and money is important, because that’s what we play for. Football is a short career where you have to try to monetise those years to make your life, which is one of the principles of Player 4 Player,” he said.
1:13 “When Middlesbrough first came to talk to me in Rome, I was like ‘I don’t think that will be an option’.
“When I started to analyse the actual project and the other options that I had, it was something was really exciting about it. Going to a club where they had no trophies, where they wanted to make history and be part of that, why not be a part of that?
“The names I saw in the list of potential players joining, there was a lot of quality. We showed it was right, everything that was presented to me, all the players that got involved in the project, really good players, experienced and young players from the Middlesbrough academy – one of the best in the country – we won the Carling Cup.
“Sometimes you have to look beyond the actual money although it’s important.
“Again, that’s what I wanted to experience in a different way with all the guys involved in this new organisation. To have different angles, different views, and experiences to hopefully support any player that wants to join us in that journey whether at the beginning, the middle or the end.”
Former Spain international Mendieta admits his own career after football has been affected by a lack of specialist advice.
“As a player or coach you don’t stop and see yourself in the future,” he said.
“I never really prepared for the afterwards. I had some investments and some companies doing things but it wasn’t really the thing that I wanted to do.
“If someone would have come to me and said, ‘look, this could be an option, in your last few years of your career, why don’t you do this, it won’t take much of your time, but in the future it will have a big positive impact’, I would have done it.”
Mendieta decided against doing coaching badges and eventually went on to complete the UEFA Executive Master for International Players – a course for former international players that provides skills to work in football organisations.
But he wished he had not wasted several years before completing the UEFA MIP course.
“We’re trying to cut down the time, the stages where players might think after football you’ve got a long time, you don’t,” Mendieta added.
“After football, we can all tell you, after one or two years you love it – you enjoy your family time – and then you get itchy feet and you want to just get involved somehow in some capacity.
“We feel we have so much we can give back to football and in particular to players.
“When you have such a strong financial background when you are a player, money attracts a lot of interest. We will try to make sure those interests for our clients are the right ones for them to have a safety net when they retire.”
