The Best Footballers That Became Politicians After Retirement
The post-playing career of a footballer can take many different turns. Some of them end up becoming coaches, others decide to become agents, whilst others decide to become involved in footballing associations. However, there are quite a few retired players who decide to abandon the world of football entirely and instead pursue a career in politics.
Many of them have expressed their political views publicly, like Kaká or Ronaldinho who supported former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro or Kylian Mbappé and Marcus Thuram who criticized French politician Marine Le Pen and her party’s far-right ideology. Some have even gone a step further, taking an active role in politics and, as you have guessed from the title of the video, we’ll be talking about them today.
And as to make my point even more pertinent, Mikheil Kavelashvili and his moustache have just been named as the president of Georgia. To those unfamiliar to his career, he spent most of his time playing in Switzerland. He is probably most well-known for his short spell at Manchester City in the mid-90s. For those of you who started watching football after 2015, back then Manchester City used to sign rubbish players because they were a rubbish team.
Anyway, back to Kavelashvili, who is a member of the Georgian Dream party, one of those new breeds of opposition parties springing up across Europe, who have a Eurosceptic, conservative and sometimes far right agendas. Some critics have labelled these parties as Russian-sponsored, but that is still up to debate. I mean, the founder of the Georgian Dream party businessman and oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili only made his fortune in Russia during the 90s and still has strong ties to the country, so I’m sure there’s no connection there.
Fellow Georgian footballer Kakha Kaladze, who spent nine years at Milan and won the UEFA Champions League, is also a member of the party and is currently the mayor of the country’s capital Tbilisi. Before he was elected to his current office he served as the Minister of Energy under prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, whilst also owning a controlling interest in the Georgia Hydropower Construction Company.
Since I mentioned the indirect overlords of the Georgian Dream Party, we can take a quick look at Roman Pavlyuchenko. Having spent most of his career in Russia, most notably with Spartak Moscow, Harry Redknapp took a punt on him in 2008, signing him for Spurs. He left the London club in 2012 after scoring 21 goals in 78 games.
Right before leaving Russia for England, he had become a city council deputy in Stavropol, for Putin’s United Russia party. Andrey Arshavin nearly had a similar experience, running in the regional elections for the same party in 2007, but backed off to concentrate on football.
Across the world in Brazil, footballers have always been political. Back in the 80s, Sócrates publicly criticized the ruling military government and stated that if free elections were not held, he would go play in Italy. Fellow legend Zico entered politics after his retirement and became Brazil’s sports minister in 1990. He left the post just one year later, frustrated that his reforms that would have helped improve Brazilian football kept getting delayed.
In 2015, he ran for the FIFA presidency after the ousting of Sepp Blatter, but was defeated Gianni Infantino. And then there is Brazil’s greatest-ever player, Pelé. In 1995 he was appointed by Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso as the extraordinary minister for sport. His main contribution in the role was the so-called Pele law.
Governing many aspects of the game, it was seen as a huge step in increasing transparency and tackling corruption in the Brazilian game, mostly because football clubs had to abide by tax and business laws. It also governed other areas such as the formation of leagues, footballer labour contracts and broadcast rights. The text of the law itself has been heavily modified, at times due to political or economic interests in the detriment of sporting ethics.
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Keeping up with the trend of Brazilian footballing legends going into politics is Romário, who has had a political career since 2010. After joining the Socialist Party and being voted into the Chamber of Deputies in 2010 and the Senate in 2014 he switched allegiances to the centrist Podemos party but failed to win the governorship of Rio de Janeiro.
In 2021 he switched sides again, this time joining the Liberal Party and endorsing Jair Bolsonaro. In the build-up to the 2014 World Cup, he also criticizes the event and the corruption surrounding it, also speaking out against the awarding of the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
The last Brazilian player that I chose to include is Vasco da Gama legend Roberto Dinamite. And I promise I haven’t included him just because he has the sort of name a comic book hero would have. Almost a one-club man, Dinamite played over 700 games for Vasco, scoring 698 goals for the club, becoming the all-time top scorer of the Brazilian league. His longevity followed him into the world of politics, holding various public offices in the Rio state from 1992 to 2006.
Over in Argentina, one footballer who made the move into politics was Carlos Mac Allister. Having previously played for a host of Argentine clubs like Boca Juniors, the ex Argentina international was elected to the National Chamber of Deputies as part of the Republican Proposal party in 2013, representing his native province of La Pampa. And between 2015 to 2018, he served as Secretary of Sports in the government of President Mauricio Macri.
“I learned a lot of things working in politics…it was very enriching,” stated Mac Allister in an RG interview. “As a deputy, I had to go around the neighborhoods of my city, and that allowed me to see other lifestyles, people who were struggling and needed help.”
“As the Secretary of Sports, I made 100 trips throughout the interior of Argentina and went to all the nation’s provinces, which allowed us to put together a federal project and unite everyone. I am not interested in holding office today, but I continue to assist my province’s deputies in whatever they need. We must have a thriving country that’s open to investment, with honest workers who can generate wealth, Argentina must be a world power just like it was in the 1950s.”
Another very political minded ethnic group are the Nordics, and yes, I know Nordics aren’t all the same, but their footballers sure do love getting political. First up we have Kaj Leo Johannesen. Having spent his whole career as a goalkeeper for Faeroese side HB Tórshavn he also played handball for Kyndil, another local club.
Since there are basically 15 people on the Faeroes, they probably assume a number of roles throughout their lives. So naturally Kaj went into politics, serving as the country’s prime minister from 2008 to 2015. Maintaining the theme of sparsely populated nation we head to Iceland where Albert Guðmundsson became one of the first Icelandic players to move abroad, during the 40s and 50s.
After leaving for Scotland to study and joining Rangers, he played for Arsenal, AC Milan and Nancy among others. After retiring he was elected to the Alþingi (the Icelandic parliament) in 1974 and four years later decided to run for president coming in third. Undeterred he continued his political career, serving as Minister of Finance, Minister of Industry and finally ambassador to France.
His son, Ingi Björn Albertsson, who spent most of his career in Iceland also became a member of the Alþingi. Ingi’s daughter didn’t follow her father’s footsteps into politics but did play professionally, as did her son Albert Guðmundsson, who is currently on loan at Fiorentina, meaning that four generations of this esteemed Icelandic footballing dynasty have scored for their national team.
Back in Uppsala, Sweden, Thomas Bodström, a former AIK player spent 6 years as Sweden’s justice minister. Bodström had a rather short-lived career, playing for only seven years in his native country. The son of the former minister for foreign affairs, he basically spent his youth having fun with professional football, before getting his Masters’ degree in law and going into politics.
Before we get to the most high-profile politicians on my list, as in the ones who held the highest offices after retiring from football, a few honourable mentions are in order. Namely:
Gianni Rivera, the AC Milan legend who served as a member of the Italian Parliament, an under-secretary for defence and a member of the European parliament.
Cuauhtémoc Blanco, who not only has an incredibly cool name, but is also one of the greatest Mexican players of all time. After his retirement, he has served as Municipal president of Cuernavaca, Governor of Morelos and is currently a Member of the Chamber of Deputies.
And lastly, Sol Campbell, who grew up to working-class Jamaican parents, who were not exactly well off and who decided to support the Conservatives and run in the Conservative Party nomination for Mayor of London in the 2016 election and support Brexit. He was not selected for any candidacy.
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And now we get to probably the most well-known name on the list, the one you’ve been all expecting. George Weah, the 1995 Ballon d’Or winner and of course former president of Liberia. Weah had already put forward his first candidacy in 2005. Liberia at the time had just planned its first elections after the Second Liberian Civil War and despite being criticized for his lack of experience, he managed to garner 28% of the votes, entering a runoff against Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
In 2011, he ran again and again lost to Sirleaf before finally winning in 2017. His time in office, whilst seeing many benefits in terms of reducing crime and improving healthcare was also marred by a rise in inflation and unemployment. He left office in 2024, but not before recording a song against covid in 2020, to go with his previous one against Ebola.
The second, lesser-known name I would like to feature is that of Ahmed Ben Bella, who served as Algeria’s first president after independence. Whilst posted in Marseille during his military service, he played once for the club, scoring a goal, but refused a professional contract. Instead, he returned to military service fighting against the Germans during the invasion of France.
After France’s capitulation he was demobilised but joined a free French unit of Moroccan tirailleurs, and was deployed in Italy. He received multiple decorations and fought in the battle of Monte Cassino, returning to Algeria in 1945, a country that was reaching its boiling point with independence protests being brutally suppressed by the reigning French regime.
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With help from the emerging independence movements, he helped form what would later become the national liberation front or FLN. During the late 40s, he helped set up regional militias and supplied weapons to them through funds gathered from sympathetic Arab countries. Another way through which he gained funds was the robbery of Oran’s central post office, where he gained more than 3 million francs.
He was eventually arrested in 1950, but managed to escape two years later by cutting the bars of his jail cell with a knife smuggled in a loaf of bread and fled to Cairo. From there, he helped fund and arm the FLN throughout the Algerian War. His importance to the Independence movement was highlighted by the multiple attempts of his life orchestrated by the French, before his capture again 1956, when French military authorities highjacked the plane he was flying on.
After the peace treaty was signed and Algeria became independent, he was freed, returning home and seizing power in a coup. His time in charge however, would only last for two years before being deposed, imprisoned, later moved to house arrest and finally freed.
The last player I would like to mention is Hakan Şükür. The “Bull of the Bosphorus”, as he is named is one of the most iconic and one of the best Turkish footballers of all times. Across three spells at Galatasaray, he won 14 major trophies including Galatasaray’s 2000 UEFA Cup win. After retirement, he entered politics and was elected as an MP for Istanbul.
However, his support for Fethullah Gülen and his movement caused him to resign from his post, when the group began being persecuted by the government. Then in in 2016 he was charged with insulting Turkey’s autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and left Turkey for California. His family later joined him and since the Turkish government seized all of his assets, he became the part-time owner of a café.
In 2019, he took up a job as an Uber driver and a book salesman after “strange people kept coming into the bar”. In 2023, his new life in the US finally took a steep upward turn as he received his green card and opened a football academy in Palo Alto. Despite the deep love Turkish fans still feel for him, the regime still harbours ill will against him and his legacy as shown during an incident in 2022.
During a World Cup game between Canada and Morocco, Turkish commentator Alper Bakircigil mentioned a record held by Şükür and how it had just been broken by Hakim Ziyech. The state-run television channel this happened on promptly removed the commentator at halftime and subsequently fired him.
I mentioned Şükür at the end because of this new trend of pushing back against any form of expression of ideas and ideals in sport. And to that I will simply respond with a quote from the famous Athenian general Pericles: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
By: Eduard Holdis / @He_Ftbl
Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Jean Catuffe – Getty Images