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Every profession has its pitfalls, yet footballers enjoy one of the most desirable professions in the world. Not all of them started as players with day-long training schedules though.
From accountant to pathbreaking forward, from fashion designer to national team captain, from taekwondo black belt to temperamental striking force - some football players have made some pretty impressive career choices in their lives – and have never had reason to look back.
Given the amount of risk involved with switching careers, we feel that we should salute some of those footballers whose previous lines of work were bizarrely different from the ones they retired from.
10. Didier Drogba - Accountant
Didier Drogba is considered to be one of the greatest strikers to have ever graced the game of football and is the highest goalscoring foreigner for Chelsea. Still, at 21 years of age, he was confident that he would never make the grade as a professional football player.
A lot of water has flown under Stamford Bridge and other places since that day, and it funny now to consider that the Ivorian turned down offers from big clubs like Paris Saint-Germain in 1998 to devote time to his career choice of being an accountant.
Preparing for life outside football, Drogba rebuffed PSG and signed for second-tier team Le Mans because he wanted to study accountancy at the city's university. Unlike his compatriots of the Ivory Coast golden generation which he was a part of, Drogba was a comparatively late bloomer signing a professional contract at almost 22 years.
One season at Le Mans was all it took for his potential to be realized though. He quit university and has been racking up the goals ever since. One assumes his professional skills help Drogba in keeping track of the number of goals he scores.
9. Socrates - Doctor
The one person who defined being cool for a generation of football followers, Doctor Socrates was the captain of one of the most highly rated and beloved teams ever to have taken the football pitch the 1982 Brazil team. Socrates was known as the thinking man's footballer, and was known best for stroking passes through to Zico and Falcao with the vision of an explorer.
The Doctors pseudonym has not been given to him for no reason. He insisted on graduating as a doctor of medicine before turning professional footballer at the ripe old age of 25. Football and medicine did not cross each other out in his life, though; he continued practising the latter profession ever after retiring from football.
This tragically flawed character, who would later drink himself to death, was a doctor out of a genuine sense of responsibility towards humanity and not because of personal ambitions. His vocal protest against the military dictatorship in Brazil continued till his death, and he remains the only athlete in history to have organized a socialist cell in his team.
8. Andrei Arshavin - Fashion Designer
Andrei Arshavin is a former captain of his national team and was one of the brightest young footballers in the world about ten years ago. About five years before that though, Arshavin was doing a fine job designing women's clothes, and had his footballing flair only narrowly beat the flair he showed for fashion designing.
Arshavin, hailing from a working-class family in St Petersburg, enrolled in the St Petersburg State University of Technology and Design at 17, shifting from the Chemical Technology department to the fashion department because there were many girls there.
A number of his early designs are held in the institutes museum, confirming his adeptness at what he did. He now has his own line of clothes which are quite popular among Russian women.
Arshavin's playing style is similarly creative, and quite like a fashion designer, often fails in an attempt to be extravagant.
7. Phil Neville - Cricketer
Phil Neville was one of the famed Class of 92 and has been involved in football in playing and managerial capacities for more than 25 years. Still, fortune might well have taken him to represent his nation in the other sport England gave the world cricket.
The younger Neville was a precocious batting talent at the U-15 level, breaking records set by Michael Atherton and being the captain of Englands U-15 cricket team. Neville was the youngest cricketer to be selected in the Lancashire reserve team; this record still stands testament to the kind of future this prodigy might have had.
Neville played alongside Andrew Flintoff for the Lancashire U-19 side and in the words of a contemporary fast bowler from Somerset, Steve Kirby:
"He was brilliant. I know it's a big statement, but he was better than Flintoff at the time."
Alex Ferguson might have done a huge injustice to the English cricket team by handpicking this ward of his.
6. Miroslav Klose - Carpenter
The highest goalscorer in the history of the FIFA World Cup is another one of football's late bloomers who have since gone on to win superlative honours.
At the age of 19 years, the age by which Messi and Ronaldo were already scoring goals for their national teams, Klose was training to be a carpenter and playing amateur football in the seventh division of the German league.
He was sent home on the first day of training at an amateur club with the words; You'd be better off learning another job because you'll never have a career as a footballer. Not all German coaches could look beyond Klose's frail stature and spot the store of goals that the man held.
Klose continued his training as a carpenter before being finally selected for the first team at Kaiserlauten at 22 years of age. Only two years later, Klose shone on the world stage in the 2002 World Cup, and there has been no looking back at carpentry ever since.
Klose's attempts rarely hit the woodwork, contrary to his earlier association with wood, and his propensity for finding the net helped both Germany and him.
5. Stuart Pearce - Electrician
Dual careers for footballers were a more common occurrence in the sepia-tinged days of pre-Premier League football, the current manager of Nottingham Forest being an archetype of the working footballer.
Pearce failed a trial at QPR and turned down an offer from Hull City to play for his local non-professional club while training and practising as an electrician. He also worked as a plumber on occasion to pay his bills.
Even later, while a professional at Brian Cloughs Nottingham Forest, he was so unsure of his future in professional football that he advertised his services as an electrician in Forests matchday programme. As fate would have it though, Pearce went on to play at Nottingham Forest for 12 years, outstaying Clough and becoming club captain for a long period.
Pearce has said that his experiences with the tool-box helped keep him grounded and has called the work ethics of current youngsters deplorable.
"I am very thankful that I took that route. Prior to being an electrician, I worked in a warehouse for a year, lifting boxes. You do get a real grasp of what life is all about, when you have done that."
4. Joe Hart - Cricketer
Joe Hart has been the most dependable goalkeeper England have had in a long time. Still, his proficiency at cricket might easily have further stretched England's search for a solution in goal after Seamans retirement.
Harts physical attributes have served him well in his chosen position, and they were his assets as a 15-year-old bowler as well. Spending two years at Worcestershire's youth academy, young Joe Hart was a tall and strong left-arm over bowler who also managed to get considerable swing.
His coach from the time, the son of the famous Basil d'Oliviera, remembers him vividly as having shown great potential and being different from the usual run of the mill stuff. He said he could tell that Hart would have gone on to represent his county without a doubt. He has revealed that Hart was in doubt as to which way his future lay, but finally made his mind up when football club Shrewsbury approached him with a better monetary offer.
3. Zlatan Ibrahimovic - Martial Arts
Zlatan is one of the best footballers of this generation and has a knack of scoring the most impossible-looking goals. Some of his goals are executed in such a singular fashion that only his training in martial arts can be used to explain them.
As a child, Ibrahimovic attended taekwondo classes at a club called Enighet in his native Malmo, and received a black belt after his training. The President of the Malmo club remembers Zlatan as being as good as it gets and has said that if the Swede had given as much attention to taekwondo as he did to his football, he could well have been the worlds best.
Ibrahimovic has himself credited his taekwondo training for his footwork, and the frequency of bicycle kicks and backheels that he successfully executes are a testament to this.
2. Steve Savidan - Trash Collector
Savidan is a retired footballer who made his only appearance for the French national team in 2008 while aged 30.In what was the culmination of the ultimate rags-to-riches story, Savidan was the best performer for France in this match against Uruguay, delighting the crowd with his stylish footwork and two bicycle kicks.
The rest of Savidans career was spent in more obscurity than would allow him to even dream of appearing in French colours. At 24 years of age, Savidan was plying his trade in the third division of the French football league. Although he was his team's star performer, Savidan was a trash collector and a bartender at different times to make ends meet.
"I am proof that the system doesn't always work"
His toils were not over though, a move to Monaco at a very late stage of his career was interrupted by a failed medical that diagnosed that his heart was not strong enough to allow him to play football any longer.
1. Geoff Horsfield - Brick-layer
This English striker has been a part of Birmingham City as well as West Bromwich Albion's successful campaigns for promotion to the English Premier League.
In his early days as a player in the amateur leagues, Horsfield took a college course in brick-laying, and played part-time football for many seasons while pursuing the profession of a brick-layer. A teammate of his from his days of obscurity had this to say about his habits:
"Geoff turned up straight from the building site, still wearing his work gear and with a Big Mac in his hand. But it didn't stop him scoring."
Some years later, Horsfield was signed on by Birmingham City for a club-record fee of £2.25 million.
