Interview with an educated footballer: Psychology, insurance, recruitment next?
Traditionally, footballers in England would retire from playing in their early thirties, buy a boozer and live out their days as provincial publicans and after-dinner speakers.
Today, the assumed route for the retired Premier League player takes one of two paths. Some coach. Some become pundits. Many bob and weave from one to the other and back again, building themselves a second career out of whatever materials they have at hand.
But the rump of professional football in England isn’t made up of elite academy graduates destined for Sky Sports or top-level management.
It’s a diverse and surprising EFL cohort who came into the game in different ways and must leave it in different ways too. Fewer of them are spending their afternoons playing video games than we might think.
“I came to football late,” Walsall striker Jamille Matt told Football365. “I became a professional at the age of 21 and I was finishing a counselling psychology degree. I was in my last year at the University of Wolverhampton and I had the opportunity to go professional with Kidderminster Harriers.
“A massive part of that was they’d allow me to work around my degree, to finish my degree, and I was the first in my family to do that. Then I’d be able to go into full-time football, which is a dream, isn’t it?”
Matt signed a new contract with the Saddlers last summer at the age of 34. He is an interesting character with several strings to his bow.
While he’s enjoying some of the finest form of his career as Walsall battle for promotion from League Two, those strings are being pressed into action as viable options for what comes next.
Now 35, Matt was born in Jamaica and moved to the West Midlands as a child. After playing non-league football for Sutton Coldfield Town and then Kidderminster, he became Fleetwood Town’s record signing in 2013.
“I thought my chances had gone but having that step into education before football made me very aware of the need to be prepared. Injuries as well. I think it’s easier and better to try things while you’re still playing.”
Walsall came into 2025 in a strong league position and on a long winning run but it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Winter results have wobbled and they lost the division’s top scorer, teenager Nathan Lowe, when he was recalled from his loan by Stoke City.
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Adversity is giving Matt the chance to bring his experience into play. He’s been promoted twice from League Two, once through the play-offs with Fleetwood and later automatically with Forest Green Rovers. His psychology knowledge is relevant too.
“Psychology fits into every walk of life. The biggest thing I learned from my degree is how you interact and speak with different people,” he says.
“If I’m giving a player, say, [Walsall midfielder] Jamie Jellis one message, I’ve got to know him and his character and what he’s like, so the way I speak to him is different to the way I might have spoken to Nathan Lowe.
“Part of it’s how well I know him, and how I speak to him or get a message across to him. There’s lads that respond to you shouting or screaming, and other lads, me included, we respond better to an arm around the shoulder.”
Matt is eager to make clear his immediate priority. He’s eating, sleeping and breathing promotion. At the end of the season he’ll review his situation, contract and all, and thoughts will surely then turn to life after football too.
“Management is something I’ve not really looked into. Part of the reason I did my coaching badges was to ask, ‘Right, is this for me? Is it not for me?’ I wouldn’t say it was for me. But listen, never say never. I’ve learned that from football.”
Football is the most obvious and most natural place for a player of Matt’s ilk and insight after he hangs up his boots but he’s open-minded about the future.
“I’d be lying if I said I’m sure what I’ll do next. I do a little bit of work as an insurance advisor alongside playing now. There’s lads that need proper cover within football. I think it’s something people can really benefit from and it keeps me occupied on my days off. I know I can help people, so that’s part of the reason I’m doing it.”
If that sounds like a lot to be doing in his spare time, it’s a clue as to the type of person Matt is likely to be after football. Spinning these plates is time-consuming, he says, but he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t enjoy it.
Matt speaks highly of his manager, Mat Sadler, and of Rich Hughes, the Director of Football who took him to Forest Green.
Hughes ignited an interest in different roles in football; recruitment would draw on his academic expertise, his experience within the game, and the insight gleaned from working with the likes of Sadler and Hughes in his playing career.
“I like to help younger players, I think that’s naturally in me,” he tells Football365. “You can see recruitment literally as bringing a player in based on just their ability but Rich Hughes was the first person that explained it to me the other way.
“A player might be brilliant on the pitch and a brilliant person but was having a tough time or has a bad reputation from the outside, but what’s he like in a group? What due diligence needs doing? That opened my eyes to exactly what goes into recruitment.”
Matt has plenty of football left in him but he has the aura of a man who’s thinking ahead and laying the groundwork for what comes later, even if his mind is not yet made up.
Football itself offers a multitude of pathways for retiring players and the days of the post-football pub landlord are over, but it’s no accident that the rich plurality of professionals’ routes into football should also inspire their prospects when they leave.