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2015 will be the end of the one-club man

By on January 3, 2015

In 2014, Ryan Giggs’ career came to a low profile close. After a professional career with Manchester United spanning twenty-four years, he slowly drew shut his career, surprisingly a low key event for a legend. He wasn’t the first of his generation to do the same, before him Paul Scholes and Gary Neville flirted with management and retirement before finally drawing their generation shut. That was the last of the Class of ’92.

Frank Lampard might not have been a one-club man, but came close after spending over a decade with Chelsea. He too left Chelsea, though hardly in a low key way, having bridged his move to America with a stint at The Blues’ rival Manchester City.

In 2015, the same is set to happen for another generation. Carles Puyol bowed out of the game after fifteen years with Barcelona in 2014, as well, and 2015 is likely to see Xavi end his one-club stint career Barca, whether he retire or leave for the United States or another foreign league.

Back to Chelsea, and 2015 will also be dawn, or even end, of John Terry’s one-club career. And as for what is already set in stone, Steven Gerrard has announced he will leave Liverpool at the end of the season after over fifteen years at Anfield. He has confirmed he will move to the MLS, though it is all but the same as ending his top level career. Nonetheless, he will signal the close of another generation, that immediately after Giggs’, which includes Terry, Lampard, Puyol, Xavi, and more, like Alessandro Del Peiro over in Italy. It also includes Everton’s Tony Hibbert, who will turn thirty-four in 2015, the next longest serving Premier League one-club man behind Terry and Lampard, who joined the club in early 2001.

There is a pattern here, the one-club greats are retiring. That in and of itself isn’t worrying, there should always be a flow of these players retiring, however, it becomes so when you consider future generations. Beyond Andres Iniesta, Lionel Messi, and the younger of the Barcelona gang who is next? In the commercialized and big money world of top level football, very few players stay at one club their entire careers. In the early 90s it was considerably easier to break into a top Premier League team as a 19-year-old from the academy. Nowadays, talent comes from all reaches of the globe, and the clubs who get lucky enough to find it will almost certainly have to sell it at some point for the money. And those clubs buying the talent don’t have the time or patience anymore to wait on harvesting their own talent – at least in the numbers the latest her stations of retirees have come in. Sir Alex Ferguson, who is credited for harvesting the original Class of ’92, recently sold one of his biggest youth talents in Paul Pogba after not seeing the immediate results he must have wanted, or the potential.

And then there is this new fad or “retirement leagues”, at least at the moment that is what the MLS serves as for Europe’s best. Lampard, Gerrard, and potentially Xavi are all taking his option. Del Peiro, who moved to Australia from Juventus, did so as well. In short, it is getting harder and harder to find, harvest, then keep, and then keep happy players. 2015 will shut the generation, with few straggling examples left, of the one-club man.

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.