Emile Heskey on UEFA Master's Programme & Preparing for Life After Football

Having hung his boots up after a 21-year professional career, Emile Heskey has now turned his attention to the future by joining UEFA's Master's Programme.

Launched in 2015, the Master's Programme is designed to give former global stars the chance to use their knowledge of football on the other side of the touchline, whether that be as a manager or in an administrative role.

For Heskey, thinking about the future has always been important, but he confessed to 90min that thinking that far ahead is a real challenge when you're still a player.

"When you're actually in and amongst football and you're really at your peak, your focus is only football," he said. "People don't really understand the focus you actually need to really get the best out of yourself. You've got to push everything else away.

"I decided to enrol in this course because it's the next step. When you're looking at footballers' careers, it's quite short, 20 years.

"But you never look at the back end, 'What can we do? What can we give back?'. And this course is a very good one that prepares you to take the next step and gives you the tools for when you're looking for your next angle or your next step.

"It gives you the tools to go and apply for things, and knowing what you know, you can equip yourself well."

Following his retirement in 2016, Heskey had planned to become a coach. He did actually test himself in that field with Bolton Wanderers, but has now set his sights on something more.

"For me, now I'm looking at possibly going a bit higher with the running of the club, maybe in the academy first as a director, running that, helping the structure of the academy," he explained.

"I grew up in an era in which you could call it an academy, but it was something different. It was called YTS (Youth Training Scheme) back then and the Centre of Excellence. It's changed a lot but there was still some fundamentals that are the same.

"The end game would to be a director somewhere."

The Master's Programme comes with plenty of success stories. From the first incarnation of the programme, the likes of Eric Abidal and Juninho Pernambucano have gone on to earn roles as directors of ​Barcelona and Lyon respectively.

This time around, Heskey's class is full to the brim with star power as well.

"It's not bad!" he said. "We have [Didier] Drogba, Kaká, [Florent] Malouda, [Khalilou] Fadiga, [Kim] Källström, [Andrey] Arshavin, [Alexey] Smertin, John O'Shea, Aaron Hughes...

"It's kind of like, you've crossed paths but you don't really know each other in a sense, so this is actually a good time to get to know each other. We're in a classroom, all together, for a long time. The days are sometimes eight o'clock until seven, so they're long days with these players, so it's a good time to get to know each other and a good time to do a bit of bonding.

"We've all got the same thing in mind, we're all very passionate about what we do and what we did, and we're all looking for that next step."

There's often a stigma around footballers suggesting that they aren't intelligent enough to survive in the board room, but it's something which is slowly disappearing. Senior players have programmes like the Master's to educate themselves, but it's at youth level where things are changing most.

As part of academy life, young players are still in school and working towards relevant qualifications - something which Heskey is quick to point out was not the same for him.

"When I was growing up, I did a GNVQ on leisure and tourism," he laughed. "What's that ever going to do for me?"

Nowadays, things are different and the help is out there for players - both current and retired - to begin working towards that next step and preparing themselves for a life after playing.

"It's just about finding your own niche and actually getting out all that you've put into football," Heskey added. "It's all about getting it back out and putting it back into a different level. 

"We've managed to acquire a lot of traits, when you're talking about football, that work well within everyday structure. We work hard as a team, we work hard as individuals, we're very well driven. When given a task, nine times out of ten we'll finish that task. All these traits that we have, they work well, so it's about trying to channel ourselves back into football."

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