I was watching Charlie play football last week when someone asked me.
We were on the sideline, the way parents are, half watching the game and half talking about nothing in particular. He was an ex-professional too. But his career looked very different to mine. Ten years. Top leagues in Europe and Asia. The kind of career most footballers dream about from the time they can kick a ball.
He asked the question casually. The way you do when you assume the answer is obvious.
I stumbled through something. Nodded a bit. Said something that sounded like an answer but wasn't really one. And then I drove home thinking about it the whole way.
Because I realised I'd never actually sat with the question properly. Not once in all the years since it ended.
The Late Start
I made my professional debut at 29.
Most footballers are thinking about retirement at 29. I was just getting started.
My first game was away at Perth. Robbie Fowler on the other side. Ten thousand people in the stands. I came on with about ten minutes to go and I remember the exact moment I stepped onto the pitch.
It felt twice as big.
I've played football thousands of times. Parks, academies, reserves, all of it. But nothing prepared me for that feeling. The pitch stretched out in front of me like it had expanded. The pace of the game was faster than anything I'd experienced. I wasn't nervous. I was genuinely excited. But the scale of it was surreal in a way I hadn't anticipated.
Five appearances off the bench. Felt comfortable. Felt like I belonged. And then the manager told me I was getting my first start the following Saturday.
The Friday That Changed Everything
On the Friday afternoon before that start, I rolled my ankle.
Not in a tackle. Just a random, meaningless roll on an ordinary Friday loosen up training session. The kind of thing that happens and you shake it off and walk it out.
Except I couldn't walk it out. I'd snapped a bone in the back of my ankle and trapped tendons in the process. I couldn't play Saturday. And then one surgery became three, all of them cleaning up scar tissue and bone bruising. Twelve months of rehabilitation.
Then I was released.
The finality of it was jarring. One Friday afternoon and it was over. Not in a blaze, not with a last game, not with any of the things you imagine when you think about how a career ends. Just a random roll of the ankle on a Friday, and then nothing.
What the question is really asking
When people ask if you miss being a professional footballer, they're not really asking about the football.
They're asking about identity. About who you were when that was your life. And for a lot of athletes, especially the ones who give everything to the game from the time they're teenagers, there's no separation between the two. The sport is the identity. Which means when the sport ends, something fundamental ends with it.
I had 29 years before football turned professional. I'd worked in banks, finance companies, retail. I'd started a financial planning course. I'd floated around, tried things, figured out what interested me and what didn't. Football was something I did. It was never everything I was.
That late start — the thing that looked like a disadvantage — turned out to be the thing that protected me when it ended.
Do I miss it?
Of course I do.
I miss the camaraderie. The simplicity of knowing exactly what success looked like. Being part of something bigger than yourself. The adrenaline of walking out in front of ten thousand people when the pitch feels twice as big as it should.
But I don't mourn it.
Those two seasons weren't a failed attempt at a longer career. They were a complete story in themselves. And the proof that it was worth it came years later, in a completely different room.
The Socceroos Meeting
Last year I presented to the Australian national team.
Not as a player. As the person explaining how we protect professional athletes from currency risk. How we help them make sure the contract they sign is actually worth what they think it's worth once the exchange rate moves. How we've managed over a billion dollars in transfers for players across Asia, Oceania, and Africa.
When I started in FX in 2015, I thought I was helping athletes move money. What I've realised since is that the real problem is much bigger. It's not about moving money. It's about protecting income. Protecting the value of contracts that are negotiated in one currency and lived in another.
Standing in that room, talking to the Socceroos about something I'd spent a decade building, I thought about that Friday afternoon ankle roll. About the pitch feeling twice as big. About stumbling through an answer on a sideline last week.
The career I had was short. But it taught me exactly what I needed to know, exactly when I needed to know it.
Presenting to the Australian National Team in 2024
So do I miss being a professional footballer?
I miss the experience. I don't miss being that person, because that person was always temporary. Even when I was living it, I knew it wouldn't last.
The real question isn't whether I miss it.
It's whether I'm grateful for it.
And that answer has never been hard.
I write about the second chapter a few times a week. The businesses, the move abroad, what it looks like when you back yourself and rebuild from scratch. It's free.
See you next time,
Chris Broadfoot
Former A-League footballer. Founder of SportsFX International and Athlete Newsletter. Proof that the second chapter can be better than the first.