{"id":333590,"date":"2025-08-10T16:40:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T16:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/333590\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T16:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T16:40:11","slug":"england-wonderkid-quit-football-after-losing-spark-and-now-has-completely-different-job-football-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/333590\/","title":{"rendered":"England wonderkid quit football after losing spark and now has completely different job | Football | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

From winning the World Cup with England to the grind of a nine-to-five: Curtis Anderson\u2019s career has been anything but straightforward. A product of the Manchester City<\/a> academy, Anderson was part of the England U17 side that waltzed their way to World Cup glory eight years ago.<\/p>\n

The England squad from the tournament in India has proved somewhat of a golden generation, with the likes of Jadon Sancho, Marc Guehi and former academy team-mate, Phil Foden, all featuring for the Young Lions. Anderson started between the sticks during England\u2019s triumphant final win over Spain, but fast forward almost a decade later and the Barrow-born star is working as a financial advisor.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC<\/a> Sport, Anderson revealed: \u201cYou can literally change people’s lives by taking money stresses away. People don’t understand simple things around finance so making things clearer for people and helping them keeps me motivated. I want to help as many people as possible. I’m so passionate about helping young football players.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an admirable stance for the ex-footballer to take, but why the sharp change in career trajectory? Explaining how he quickly lost his love for football after the U17 World Cup, Anderson added: “The spark of football just wasn’t really there. I didn’t have the same drive and love for it that I had five years earlier, I was happy to do my day job. The decision to fully stop playing came quite easily.”<\/p>\n

Following the triumph in India, Anderson moved to the States to join Charlotte Independence, but he lasted less than nine months with the American outfit. A stint at Wycombe Wanderers followed, before Anderson slipped into non-League.<\/p>\n

While Anderson quickly realised life in the lower leagues wasn\u2019t going to satisfy him, the England youth international did have his eyes opened to another potential career path. He said: “At Wycombe, I’d get questions from older players [about money]. I realised there is a lack of education and support about finance in football.<\/p>\n

“There’s not enough education, guidance and support for young people with high earnings. If you’re a lower-league player, your immediate priority should be to plan for life after football. If you’ve got that sorted, you can set yourself and your family up for years. I look at what I know now and feel like I need to help as many people in football as I can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From winning the World Cup with England to the grind of a nine-to-five: Curtis Anderson\u2019s career has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,119524,393,12632,119525,94,119526,4884,16,15,93214],"class_list":{"0":"post-333590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-curtis-anderson","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-england-football-team","12":"tag-england-u17-world-cup","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-football-career-change","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-world-cup-2026"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115005464612281506","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}