Premier League footballer retires aged 26 to take up surprise new career just weeks after helping Tottenham win the Europa League

A member of Tottenham’s Europa League-winning squad months ago has called time on his football journey for a shocking new career.

The star, who was 26 when he announced his departure but is now 27, was with Spurs, one of their youth teams, days before signing his first professional contract and was with the team until the end of last season.

During this time, he had two loan spells with Swedish side Degerfors, but never looked like making any impact on the first team and regularly found himself well below the table.

So she began dipping her toes into other areas of living life to try out potential careers, including acting classes, broadcasting and photography.

Accordingly AthleticHe was expecting to continue his football career when he was released from Tottenham at the end of last season but called it a day on his own terms in the summer.

The player in question is goalkeeper Alfie Whiteman. He also played in England’s Under-17 and Under-19 games but has now hung up his boots for the lens.

The now former goalkeeper has been with Spurs since his youth days but has failed to make a mark in the first team.

Alfie Whiteman, now 27, took up photography despite expectations that he would continue his career in the summer

“I signed for Spurs when I was 10,” he told The Athletic when announcing the news publicly. ‘Then I left school at 16 and went straight into football full-time.

‘When I was 17 or 18, living in the digs, I had this feeling: “Is this it?” Getting into the minibus, going to training, doing Sports Science BTEC and going home to play video games. From a very young age I realized, “Oh, I’m not happy here.”

‘The football player stereotype is generally quite accurate. Golf, laundry bag culture. I was that young football player. I asked for the Gucci laundry bag and drove the Mercedes. You are all reflections of each other. You are a product of your environment. This is how football is in this country; It’s so closed off to everything else. You go to training and then you go home, that’s it.

He added: ‘Football is a short career no matter what, even if you do really well and I knew I didn’t want to stay in it. It was about trying to gain experience and be proactive about things that interested me too, but mainly because I enjoyed it and was surrounded by the kind of people who were doing what I enjoyed as a job. They were doing something. “It was truly inspiring.”

He made one senior appearance for Tottenham under Jose Mourinho’s management in the Europa League in 2020. He tried to leave the team in 2024 but Spurs needed club-trained players for their Europa League campaign and he eventually became part of the winning squad.

He revealed he had two trials in the summer – one at a League One club, the other at a Championship club – but eventually decided he saw ‘happiness’ in his other ventures.

Whiteman has since worked with the likes of Nike and rapper Central Cee, and has also performed in countries such as Norway and Ukraine. He also said that he hasn’t watched football since he retired.