Full Back-Up.
This bloke just bloody loves assisting people – on and off the pitch. A couple weeks after reaching a landmark 50 Premier League assists, Trent Alexander-Arnold has launched a support group for crap footballers. I beg your pardon – he’s actually launched The After Academy, “a new initiative that will provide career opportunities for former academy players who wish to launch a new career path outside of professional football”. So, kind of what I said the first time, just a bit less horrible. With the standard required to become a professional footballer having become so impossibly high – although the current Everton team may make that hard to believe – there are more young footballers than ever who go through the entire academy set-up only to have their life’s dreams shattered while still in their teens. This can, understandably, be hard to deal with, so any attempt to offer extra support ought to be commended. And as someone who was misleadingly promised a guaranteed international career by an over-zealous primary school football coach, I’m entirely in favour of this. He was a bit of a drinker, to be fair. In prison now too, actually. Starting to think he may not have been the best judge.
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