When a footballer’s legs finally betray their former talent so much so that clubs refuse to keep paying them to kick balls every weekend, they have few options: find a cushy punditry job, find a cushy coaching job, or fade into cushy obscurity.
Not Park Ji-sung. The former Manchester United man has headed off to study sports management at Leicester’s De Montfort University, where he has no doubt spent the last month marauding around the campus, falling out of bars steaming, absolutely smashing Freshers Week on pints of snakebite.
Imagine his surprise when, after two hazy weeks of initiations and watching N-Dubs play at his SU, Park Ji-sung wakes up in a room full of stolen traffic cones to discover he’d drunkenly signed up to play for Football Soc.
And so it came to pass that former South Korea captain and Champions League winner Park Ji-sung rocked up for his MA students’ team against a side selected by De Montfort University vice chancellor Dominic Shellard. And lost 7-1.
Process that for a second. A 35-year-old former professional footballer only two years retired from the highest level of the sport and with three World Cup tournaments under his belt was not only unable to gift his team an easy win against amateur opponents, but also couldn’t prevent them getting absolutely smashed.
Here he is, the man who once-single-handedly kept Andrea Pirlo in his pocket, failing to get anywhere near the ball:
What’s gone wrong? Stay off the Jaegers, Park.
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