Retirement can be a daunting prospect in any profession — the loss of income, the sense of the best days being in the past, the need to search for a new purpose — but it can also offer new opportunities and a release from the pressure of a must win environment.
For a amateur footballer, though, retirement often comes before most people have even started to climb the professional career ladder.
A select few reach the top, enjoy success and receive the kind of plaudits that allow them to retire in their mid-30s and enjoy a life of leisure and contentment. The majority aren’t so lucky. The game retires them, either through injury or simply the discovery that the phone has stopped ringing when they need a new team. Many don’t achieve great things or set themselves up for lifetime of trophy winning memories.
It means retirement for footballers can be more challenging and psychologically, than it is for most professions because the end comes when they should be in their prime.
With many footballers now waiting in vain for the phone to ring and beginning to contemplate retirement, The Social media HQ.
Speaking to someone who did not want to be named they said
So i am “retiring from football” at the end of this current season, I play football at a decent (amatuer) level and i am just wondering how people felt about doing this when it happened to them.
I am only 30, fit(ish) and healthy but i am doing this to spend more time with my wife and kids as due to work and football we only get 2 full days a month together as a family, but i am finding the thought of not playing again hard to deal with, i have said to my wife i will do this but i dont think she realies that really you only have a limited time to play at a decent level and when its gone its gone. I just dont want it niggling at the back of my head when it is too late.
I thought it would be easy enough as i have been succesful enough at this level, but im not sure how i honestly feel about it.
LIFE AFTER FOOTBALL ?
No one, however, seems to care about the psychological trauma retirement can have upon the vast hordes of amateur hoofers when the referee blows that most final of final whistles. What are we to do with all those Saturdays and Sundays suddenly devoid of close encounters of the turfy kind? After all, no one can be expected to spend every weekend from here to eternity trawling the record the shops with the wife and kids, can they?
Let’s be brutally honest. Retirement from football is traumatic principally because it is a landmark – a watershed, if you will – on your way to impending dotage, frailty, senility and death. All the time you’re playing football you are deafening yourself to the ravaged shrieks of Father Time and the constant rumours as to the finite nature of your existence
After all, statistics are on your side: very few active footballers die and one does not normally fret out the week scouring the obituaries to see if any of your team-mates have expired before Saturday’s crunch tie at Glasgow Green or Nethercraigs. Former footballers, on the other hand, are no longer safe and are wont to kick the bucket with alarming regularity. You’ll either have to start looking Life’s Big Questions boldly in the eye or find some other sport to distract you.
These days though when amateur football is too fast for you of you feel to old to keep playing with the younger ones there is now a pathway for you.
After arriving at your Mid 30s there is now the option of playing for an over 35s football team on a Friday night in and around Glasgow ⬇️
https://footballcentral35s.leaguerepublic.com/index.html
If you are getting on a little more then Football central also do an over 40s Football league too which also can be found at the link above ⬆️
Growing older and not having the mobility that you once had before then Walking Football could be of interest to you.
There seems to be a stigma about walking football but i would suggest try it before you dismiss it. The popularity of walking football is starting to soar every day.
https://glasgowlife.sportsuite.co.uk/a-z/walking-football
Age groups are:
Men over 50s (50-59),
over 60s (60-69)
over 70s (70+)
Women
over 40s (40-49), over 50s (50-59), over 60s (60+)
Mens Over 60s current league table
Mens OVER 65s current league table
Walking football. The basic rules
What you need to know about playing Walking Football
- Non-Contact
- Above head height restriction on ball
- Deflection above head height by goalkeeper – ball retained by keeper
- No heading the ball
- All free kicks indirect
- Whistle stops and resumes play – no quick free kicks
- No direct goal from a kick-off or any dead ball situation
- All free kicks have defenders 3-metres distant
- Players may not play the ball whilst grounded – to include slide tackling, slide blocks
- Cornering a player is not permitted – allow the opponent to turn
- No 2 vs 1 tackling at barriers/wall
- No tackling across an opponent at a wall/barrier
- Playing with reckless or dangerous intent is an infringement
- One-step penalty kicks
- No restriction on passing back or out from the goalkeeper
- Sin Bin time out for any three same or variety of infringement
- Zero tolerance on disrespectful conduct towards the referee
You may not have kicked a ball for years so probably don’t have football kit of any type. Players can wear anything they feel comfortable in, so if you turn up to your first session in jogging bottoms and t-shirt and you are happy playing football in them, then that’s absolutely fine. This is recreational football so players should be able to wear whatever they’re comfortable in.
As you attend more sessions, you will probably want to buy a more appropriate kit and we recommend that all players wear shin pads to further cut down the risk of injury.
So the moral of the story is never give up and if you keep looking you will always to find a club and league that suits your specific standards and requirements.
The benefits of continuing your football career are simply endless, keeping yourself fit and healthy not to mention the social aspect of it are two of the biggest bonuses of continuing to touch grass.
A massive bonus of keeping yourself active is your mental health. if you ever have any issues with this then please contact the best in the business ⬇️
https://www.brothersinarmsscotland.co.uk/
Footy focus 24/25 
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