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There aren’t too many good documentaries on football about, but Alan Hansen is doing his best. <b>Life after football</b> was an emotional, intriguing insight – aside from all the-football-is-a-drug comments, which sounds like a justification for losing the plot.<br />
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Gazza is a traditional subject for this, given his playing in China and generally being all over the shop, with not much up top. His honest assessment: “I was too scared to plan ahead… and then I just hit the bottle.” A sad figure. Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer hardly seemed to have it all worked out, but given their wealth and stature, they have time.<br />
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Unsurprisingly, booze featured very heavily – Neil “Razor” Ruddock confessed that he just goes off the rails when drunk; that the discipline and structure lacking after retirement is just too much for men whose sole life-skill was kicking a ball about in front of thousands of fans.<br />
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One comment by Tony Cascarino that “players are not nice people to be around, not when they finish playing” made me wonder how awful that must be, given the behaviour of current players. They all get divorced, it seems. Hardly a surprise.<br />
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Of the current youthful crop, Frank Lampard at least admitted that he is thinking about the future, unlike Rio Ferdinand who just thought the subject was “depressing”, and could only talk about fashion and music. But both recognised that the pampering the players get leaves you utterly unprepared for later life. As Ruddock said: “I had no idea how to find a dentist. Or how to get the car cleaned.”<br />
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But Hansen’s “I’ve been there” style has one major problem. He’s doing ok. Very ok. He sits around in his lazy style, quipping his way through matches with Lineker et al, picks up the odd commercial, and then makes poignant documentaries for the BBC. Sympathy rating: nil. What some ex-players who have hit the skids must have thought when the suave Hansen turned up in his lovely coat and asked them about how short-sighted they were during their careers I dread to think.<br />
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And the only player to have planned a career after football DURING their playing days, the only one to not miss the game? Lineker. He always wanted to work in the media, apparently. He tried to avoid seeming smug, but you could see him thinking “Ha! All those fools who never thought ahead. I did. Snooze, you lose.”