Good morning,
Imagine this…. Boots on. Strapped up. Sitting in the away dressing room about to play Barcelona in the Champions League.
Then a tap on the shoulder.
The goalkeeper coach told her she was in the grandstand.
Coming soon on The Overseas Athlete: Chloe Logarzo. Matildas midfielder, 59 caps, 2 Olympics, 1 World Cup, a career across the US, England, Sweden and Norway. The Norway chapter is the one she has not really told publicly. A coach willing to torpedo a Champions League fixture out of bitterness. A captain apologising before kick-off. And a 23-year-old who walked into the CEO's office the next morning and put herself on a plane.
It is a story about agency. About what you do when the people who are supposed to back you decide not to.
Drops in the next two weeks. You will not want to miss it.
Two more names landing alongside her:
A Socceroo currently playing in Korea.
A National team captain, over 4 MILLION social followers, with a story about Indonesia I have been wanting to put out for a while.
Sunday 24th May, new episodes drop… and the Wednesday after.
Set a reminder. Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you do not miss out.
What Three Players Taught Me About Finding Work When Nobody Is Calling
Most overseas careers do not start with a phone ringing.
They start with a player deciding to manufacture the call themselves.
I went back through three of the most-listened episodes from the original run this week. Different sports. Different countries. Different decades of career. The same pattern underneath all of them.
Stefan Milidrag. Canadian, 26, no institutional pathway, no agent worth the name. Built a digital marketing income on the side during COVID. Used LinkedIn the way most players use Instagram. That is how he got to New Zealand. Not a scout. Not a database. A post about turning pro at 29 that landed in the right inbox.
Hamilton Thorp. Wrote letters from Darwin at 16 to clubs in England. Got a trial at Arsenal off the back of one of them. This was before email. Before LinkedIn existed. The mechanism was different. The principle was identical. If nobody knows you exist, you have to introduce yourself.
Matt Ward. Ten years in Asia. Started in Taiwan because he picked a hub he could fly out of in three hours to anywhere that mattered. Built a network from scratch in a market most Australian coaches do not even consider. Has been scammed, had contracts cancelled, watched fraud happen in front of him. Still operating.
Three players. Three eras. Three sports environments. One pattern.
The trusted introduction is the only real entry point into an overseas career. Every guest across seventeen episodes confirmed that. What Stefan, Hamilton, and Matt add to it is the harder version of the truth. If the introduction does not exist yet, you build it. You do not wait.
That is the work most people skip. It is also the work that separates the players who get there from the ones who keep waiting for a call that was never coming.
Three episodes worth a re-listen this weekend. Links below.
Back Catalogue: Three Pathways
Episode 5. Stefan Milidrag. Canadian footballer who built a remote income three years before he needed it, used LinkedIn as a career tool, and reframed the backup plan as the foundation. The most raw mental health story in the original run. Snow on the field at minus fifteen, friends telling him to give up, and the decision to keep going anyway.
Watch on YouTube, or if you prefer to listen via Spotify or Apple, click the links.
Episode 6. Hamilton Thorp. Darwin to Arsenal trials at 16. Rochdale, Portsmouth, West Adelaide, Perth Glory, Sweden, Norway, Singapore. The most retrospective voice in the original catalogue. Nearly retired at 23 after Portsmouth froze him out and paid him 60 cents on the dollar. The retirement transition four years later was harder than any of it.
Watch on YouTube, or if you prefer to listen via Spotify or Apple, click the links.
Episode 7. Matt Ward. Ten years operating across Taiwan, Philippines, China, and Ghana. Has placed coaches into roles, been scammed himself, had contracts cancelled four times, seen organised crime running clubs from the inside. The Asia operating manual delivered straight, with no varnish on it.
Watch on YouTube, or if you prefer to listen via Spotify or Apple, click the links.
Four Currency Moves Every Overseas Athlete Should Be Watching Right Now
Five central bank decisions in 72 hours.
The Fed. The BOJ. The ECB. The BOE. The BOC.
Every one of them moves the rate your overseas salary converts at.
Australian Q1 CPI came in at 4.1%. AUD/USD dropped 42 pips inside twelve hours. The BOJ held under 0.75% but signalled June normalisation is live. EUR/USD ground its way toward 1.20. GBP/USD is forming an inverted head-and-shoulders.
That is a lot of noise. Most of it does not matter.
Four moves do.
I broke them down in this week's full piece, including a quote from a player we spoke to last week who summed up the reality better than any analyst could.
"I used to send home at 1.60. Now I'm like, what. 1.40."
That is not a chart. That is a real paycheck, getting smaller, every time it crosses a border.
If you are paid in USD, JPY, EUR or GBP and you have not had a conversation about this in the last six months, this is the one to read.
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Before you go
If you are an athlete, an agent, or anyone managing cross-currency contracts and want to talk through what is happening this week, book a call here:
Thanks for reading.
Chris