Ledley King opens up to JOE on what it’s really like to lose your career to injury

By his own admission, Ledley King has been looking for “something that I can dig my teeth into,” ever since injury robbed him of the challenge posed by high level competitive sport.

The option of turning to coaching remains but is yet to fire his imagination to the same extent as it has for some of his contemporaries. Sat in an office block in central London with a TV crew awaiting his presence, the former Tottenham Hotspur defender believes he has found not just a profession that intrigues him but also a test of the kind he has missed from the day he played his last game four years ago.

“The idea of working in the media has always been something that’s interested me,” King says. “But like everything else it is about waiting for the right opportunity to come along.

“You don’t ever want to do anything for the sake of doing it, you have to like the idea and believe that it is something that is worth doing and something that will challenge you. It’s because of all those things that I’m excited with my new role and I’m looking forward to getting started and seeing how I do.”

The role King is referring to is that of lead pundit on JOE.co.uk’s brand new Facebook Live show, Football Friday Live, which makes its debut later this week. A warm-up for all of the weekend’s football action, King will be bringing all of the experience, inside knowledge and expertise that he garnered during a stellar career for Tottenham and England.

We've got something big coming up this Friday, here's a sneak preview #FFL pic.twitter.com/2MBRyHXIjp

— JOE (@JOE_co_uk) September 20, 2016

“It’s very different from playing,” he says. “But that’s one of the things that most attracted me to it; it’s a new challenge.”

Since he played the final game of his career, a 1-0 defeat to Queens Park Rangers in April 2012, the expectation has been that King would take up a position on Tottenham’s coaching staff. Although he continues to work with the club he has been at since the age of 14, his role has been ambassadorial rather than sporting and he is also a committed contributor to Tottenham’s well respected Foundation through which he enjoys connecting with youngsters who come from a similar background to himself.

It’s not that he doesn’t have the coaching bug, he’s just yet to reach the stage where he believes he is ready to commit himself to that profession.

“At the moment I’ve parked that,” King admits. “It’s something I’m still interested in and could still go back into. It’s always in my mind. I’m still around football a lot so it’s ticking in my head. I always saw myself as someone who tried to read the game and I’m doing that even now, looking at it more from a manager’s point of view more than a player’s. There’s still time. I’m 35 so it’s still there to be done if it’s a route to go down.”

The fear that talents like King are being lost to English football is one that has been raised increasingly in recent months, particularly with many former players opting to move into media work rather than remaining within the game once their playing days have come to an end.

The argument that the Football Association needs to do more to create pathways for former England internationals is one that King respects, but he also believes clubs should do more to prevent a brain drain. Nevertheless, he remains confident that coaches and managers will still emerge from the ranks of English players even if it might not be the ones who had been expected to step up.

“The FA and the clubs could do more to make sure that a lot of these really talented players and talented minds aren’t lost to the game,” he agrees. “It’s a shame when you get some players who walk away from the game and you don’t hear from them again. There’s more that can be done from that point of view.

“My club have reached out to me because they understand the importance of having someone who’s connected with the club stay within it on a coaching level. More clubs need to do that, I’m thinking of the Steven Gerrards and the Jamie Carraghers, they need to be given that option as soon as they’ve retired to stay within the club and work with it because for a young kid coming through there’s nothing better than to engage with players of that magnitude. All the clubs can do more as well as the FA.

“In terms of players going on to become managers, it’s quite strange because you can see people evolve; someone who started off without those signs can develop them a bit further along the line. But people like Carragher and Neville are two that stand out, two that you thought would be managers and I know Gary’s had a little go at it but sometimes it’s the surprise ones who come through.

“I worked with Danny Murphy at Tottenham and he was always someone that you hung your hat on going into management. He’s had a little dabble but he’s not doing it at the moment so maybe it’s a case of looking out for the quiet ones, the thinkers who don’t say too much but something is ticking away in their head.”

With King, there is a definite sense of responsibility, of a need to give something back to the community from which he emerged and a desire to be seen as a role model to youngsters who have the talent, but not always the opportunity, to make a success of themselves.

Having grown up in Bow, been a player at the renowned Senrab youth team where his team mates included John Terry, Bobby Zamora and Paul Konchesky, his connection with London and those who live there is strong, as is the feeling that the success he made of himself can now be a spur to others.

“I was really fortunate that when I retired that the club that I’d spent my whole career at reached out and asked me if I wanted to be an ambassador,” King says. “At the time I wasn’t quite sure what that was going to be but obviously I jumped at the chance. It was important because when a player retires it can be a difficult time so for me to still be involved at the club, around people that I’d been around for most of my life, made it an easy transition for me.

“Now I’m able to work with the club, particularly with the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation which helps a lot of young people in the area, as well as doing the corporate side, attending matches and travelling with the team, and basically representing the club. It’s been great for me.

“I grew up in East London, it was pretty much a single parent family with my younger brother and I realised from an early age that nothing comes easily. I was fortunate to have good friends around me which made my path a lot easier. Most of them enjoyed football so it was easy for me to go down that route and I was fortunate to have a talent to progress with that and take it further.

“A lot of the kids I work with at the Foundation are similar to how I grew up in and around the Tottenham area and I’ve realised that the more opportunities you give to people – and that’s not necessarily football, it could be music, it could be education – the more you will see the talent is there. It’s great for me to be able to get out and speak to them because I still feel that I can relate to them

“We realise our responsibility and as players we’ve always gone out into the community. For me as a young kid, it took something as simple as knowing that Sol Campbell grew up in my area. Once I realised that I thought there’s no reason why I can’t be a professional. I try to relay that message to the kids: I’m just like them, I grew up just like them and don’t ever believe where you are born should restrict what you do.

“I’m a Londoner so I realise a lot of the challenges and difficulties that these kids face. A lot of them come from single parent families, a lot of them feel that they don’t have opportunities so one of the things I have to do is convince them that they have and I’ve seen so many talented kids who have gone from nothing and really difficult times to doing really well through the impact of the club and the chances that they’ve been given.”

The knee injury that curtailed King’s career at a time when he should have been at his peak is a very obvious curse, the kind that every player dreads, but it has also come with the blessing of perspective. There is no question that he would rather still be playing, both for his beloved Spurs and also for England by whom he was awarded 21 caps.

But rather than dwelling on what he continues to miss, he prefers to focus on the positives of an otherwise difficult experience, particularly how it is possible to thrive in adversity.

“It’s about not giving up and refusing to fall at the first hurdle,” King says. “That’s a message I try to put over, as well as not taking your talent for granted because you never know what’s around the corner.

“In my case I’d always felt that I was indestructible. I knew my knee was bad but I always thought that I could manage it, to be able to play enough games. I’d hoped it wouldn’t get any worse and in the last six months of my final season I was training the day before games and I was feeling pretty good.

“But I probably overdid it and I collided with my goalkeeper and after that my knee was never the same. In the first half of the season I played 12 games, we were unbeaten in those and I was feeling good and then something as simple as that changes everything.

“In the second half of the season I couldn’t move the same way, the team couldn’t buy a win when I was involved and then there was a game against Norwich which made me think about retiring. I felt like there were people getting the better of me and that I wasn’t able to help the team in the way that I could in the past but at the same time I was also thinking just to get to the end of the season and assessing it then. It was only when I did that with my surgeon that we decided I couldn’t risk it any more, that I couldn’t keep going, and that was when I came to my decision.

“When something like that happens, you are left with a range of emotions. Obviously there’s regret and disappointment that things haven’t worked out as well as you’d hoped. I wasn’t someone who was just happy to be a footballer, I wanted to be the best footballer and I feel like that didn’t happen.

“But at the same time I look back at the second half of my career and part of me is proud that I managed to keep going and fight through the difficult times. When you’re breaking down every few games it does your head in, I can tell you that, and it can be difficult to deal with it mentally so I’m quite proud that I was able to drag it out for as long as I did.”

Unlike most players whose careers finish prematurely, King insists that he does not miss the training ground and its ubiquitous banter, mainly because the fitness issues that caused his retirement had already deprived him of much of that kind of involvement.

“I was separate from the lads, I’d be getting physio or whatever, going through my own routine and they’d be outside as a group having all the laughs and the jokes,” he recalls.

“Usually when players retire training is one of the things they miss most but that part was easy for me. I missed the competition, I missed the games, I missed being out on the pitch.

“It was the challenge of being a footballer that I lost and that’s why I’m still now looking for something that I can dig my teeth into and challenge myself to be successful at it.”

On Friday, the challenge that King has been looking for will arrive when he makes his much anticipated debut on Football Friday Live. “I’m really looking forward to it,” he adds. “It should be good.”