About the author
Sam Wardrop signed his first contract for Celtic when he was 12. He became disillusioned with the game, initially leaving football aged 24. Now, he has reconciled his love of the beautiful game through content creation and his online coaching Player Programme, which led him to return to play with Swedish club Ljungskile SK in 2024.
By Sam Wardrop
I didn’t kick a ball for nearly two years.
When I was 24, I went cold turkey on football because that’s just where I was at the time. I had fallen out of love with the game.
My journey as a footballer started when I signed for Celtic’s youth academy at 12 years old. I was there for nine years. It was everything to me.
When I was 21, I moved to Dundee United, a Championship team at the time, and I was still full of excitement about the career ahead of me. Six months into a tricky season, though, I ruptured my ACL.
It was the first time I had been forced to take a break from the game. Up until that point, football was 24/7, 365 days a year. It didn’t leave much time to explore other avenues. As I had time to think when I was out, I started to dip in and out of other interests. When I returned from injury, I felt differently about football and I struggled to gain that hunger and passion that I had always nurtured for the game.
So, I quit.
Or rather, I put the brakes on and started to explore my freedom. I had been to so many countries with football, but I’d never seen anything beyond the training ground and the hotel, so I started to travel and see different parts of the world on my own terms.
I wasn’t starting over though, far from it. I started to realise how much my career as a footballer has set me up for life outside it. I had picked up an extraordinary work ethic and transferable skills that had been ingrained in me on the pitch: drive, dedication, discipline. If you have those standards instilled in you from a young age, you can succeed at so much more than just football.
I was also guided into further education by PFA Scotland and my family, which I’m thankful for as it wasn’t a path I necessarily would have put myself on as a young player. It gets you thinking about other options and gives you something other than football to work towards at a young age.
When I was a professional footballer, the last thing I ever thought I was going to do was coach; I just wasn’t interested in it. The same went for social media; I never would have imagined being comfortable on camera, never mind doing it for a living. However, when I took that break from football, I started exploring both of those avenues and realised how much I loved them. I found myself totally engaged in the process and felt my experience could deliver a lot of value to other players.
“Just because being a footballer is all you’ve ever wanted to be, it doesn’t mean that it’s all you are.”
I got that fire back in my belly; I felt the way I did when I was looking forward to a future in football. Football was still my calling, I had just found another way to engage with it through coaching, content creation, and storytelling.
I always told myself that I wouldn’t return to football because I needed to, but rather because I wanted to. My work gave me the fresh perspective I needed to start again.
I started training, with all the hard work and dedication that I had learned when I was younger, but this time with the knowledge that it wasn’t all that I was. Through my content creation, I received opportunities to train with professional teams and showcase their environment and my journey to other players. I rediscovered the passion for playing that I thought I had lost.
In 2024, I returned to professional football with Ljungskile SK in Sweden’s third tier. It was a nerve-wracking experience to come back, but I enjoyed the challenge and it’s something I know I can do again if the right opportunity comes up.
It's not the most conventional approach to a career – dipping in and out of the game while managing a content creation and coaching business – but it works for me. As well as rediscovering myself as a player, returning to football gave me new opportunities to create content and a face-to-face environment to apply the coaching element of my career.
All these aspects of my life tie in together. They are related to the game that I love. By working on all of them, I avoid pressurising myself with the single label of ‘footballer’. I don’t put myself or my career in a box anymore and I’m much more fulfilled as a result.
It comes up a lot in my coaching; young players who have tied all their self-worth into progressing as professional footballers. I remember that feeling, and it leaves you feeling vulnerable and insecure, which in turn doesn’t help you in your game.
When I set up the Player Programme, it was with the knowledge that I had first-hand experience of what my clients were experiencing, which put me in a position to support them through it and offer a new perspective on the challenges that they are facing. Everything I post is with the intent to inspire, motivate or educate other players.
Football is a short career, so it’s understandable that people want to make the most of it. But you should also be looking to maximise your enjoyment of the game, and that might involve looking at yourself just a little differently. If you’ve grown up dedicating your life to your dreams of a professional career, then you’ve probably got far more varied tools at your disposal than you think, and there’s nothing to stop you expanding how you use them.
Just because being a footballer is all you’ve ever wanted to be, it doesn’t mean that it’s all you are.
