Danny Rose wouldn’t recommend professional football to children

Oh look — another day and another interesting and mildly controversial interview from Danny Rose! This time, it’s a talk with Sky Sports where Danny said that he wouldn’t encourage children to pursue a career in professional football, and hinted that “pressure” and “politics” at the top level have made his life difficult.

“It is the best job in the world, don’t get me wrong. But people seem to think there are no other issues within football, you just get your money at the end of the month and play every weekend. There is so much more to football than what people may see on Saturday and I don’t believe in hiding that from people.

“Even though I feel very privileged to play football, with the things I have experienced within the game, it is not something I would be shouting from the rooftops, to recommend to people’s children to be footballers. Because there are a lot of things that happen on a day-to-day basis at club football that I wouldn’t wish on anybody.”

“There’s pressure, there’s politics, there’s loads of things. There’s not just playing on a Saturday and you receiving your money at the end of the month. There’s so, so much more to football than what people see.

”My agent told me when I was 15, 16, ‘you can have all the ability in the world but if you’re not mentally strong enough football will swallow you up’. For 10, 11 years, I didn’t have a clue about what he was talking about. It wasn’t until this past year where I’ve realised exactly what he’s meant. He’s 100 per cent right with what he told me all those years ago.”

OK, so we all know that Rose is pretty much a no-subject-barred kind of interviewee, and that he’s the kind of guy who’s going to say exactly what’s on his mind no matter what the consequences. I have something to say — damn the torpedoes! It makes him both fascinating and, at times, slightly horrifying to watch and listen to. Essentially telling children that they shouldn’t become professional footballers? Wild!

That said, he’s not exactly wrong. There’s no doubt a gulf of miles between the glamour of a life as a professional footballer and the reality. Like any other field, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. That seems to have hit home for Danny recently. Take that, kids! Stick to sensible fields like accounting, or politics!

Take another look at that last paragraph and it becomes pretty clear that some serious ISH went down with Danny at Spurs last season. It’s obvious that he had a miserable experience last year with Spurs, what with the injury and pay disputes and provocative interviews with a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper and all.

I don’t want to try and read the tea leaves too closely on this one, but it wouldn’t be hard to consider these comments yet another paving stone in the road that leads Danny out of the club this summer. Honestly, maybe that’d be a good thing — in the end, it sure doesn’t seem like he’s having a very good time of it right now.

At least if he does leave we can expect one hell of an exit interview.