Black tax, living large still trip up
Professional footballers, who have to retire young, need different investment vehicles
Imagine waking up in your late 30s to a life with your prospects at a distinct minimum. You have no tertiary qualification, irrelevant work experience and debts gathered from your unsustainable splurging.
This is the nightmare countless footballers find themselves in after their dream career has ended.
Playing for a professional club is the aspiration of most kids who have ever kicked a ball. It is the supreme fantasy, a height only a select and gifted few will ever reach. The level of competition demands outright dedication; college courses and skills learning become distant concerns when the prospect of making it big is a distinct possibility.
Once there, the allure of living like your peers is irresistible.
“I feel that football players’ biggest problem is they adhere to this status or stereotype that comes from English footballers — they spend their money on fast cars, women and nightclubs,” says former Bafana Bafana centre back Matthew Booth. “The sooner that kind of attitude can change — and I feel it is, slowly but surely, although not fast enough for my liking — the better. It’s quite sad because our careers are half those of a normal nine-to-five job employee, therefore our savings point comes a lot sooner.”
Football is a paradoxical provider: it gives you everything and nothing. There are no Monday morning slogs to the office, but you’re denied the certainty of tomorrow.
Booth describes himself as one of the fortunate few for a variety of reasons. First, the ephemeral nature of his situation struck him at a salvable age — his late 20s, after he had arrived in Russia.
“The best thing that I did was to sit down with my wife and our financial adviser to plot the way forward and make it clear in our minds what we were able to spend and what we were able to save, and to put money away in policies for our family. Just from a peace-of-mind point of view, that does wonders for you.”
The second saving grace was that he envied those who had back-up plan or studies in their back pocket. He’s studying towards a degree now and he laments the time lost getting it — especially considering the bevy of options available for studying by correspondence. He’s also been able to secure punditry gigs at SuperSport and endorsement deals, thanks in part to his well-known persona.
It’s a privilege he says most don’t have to prevent their journey from going crooked.
For every Brian Baloyi and Jerry Sikhosana who gets to spend their post-playing days awkwardly advertising betting agencies, there are hundreds whose reputations have plunged into obscurity, remembered only as footnotes when publications run out of content and run “from our archives” pieces.
There are even fewer tales about current players who are qualified for another profession — Lehlohonolo Majoro stands out as a qualified radiologist.
Managing risk
“Matthew Booth is an anomaly,” says Standard Bank executive risk investment specialist Des Mutusamy.
“It’s a challenging space for the guys. [A] lot of our South African footballers do not have the capacity to think long-term in terms of their financial planning and wellness. That’s to do with their obligations. Very few of them are able to commit to an actual blueprint or plan.”
The so-called black tax is inseparable from democratic South Africa and footballers are most certainly not immune to it. Mutusamy visited Mamelodi Sundowns 10 years ago with the intent of educating the players about the importance of saving. His ideas didn’t take hold.
Although he admits the allure of a lavish lifestyle pulls hard, the necessity to provide for a large family is a bigger burden. For many footballers, as the most successful among their relatives, it falls to them to carry between 10 and 15 other people.
Even for those who do want to invest, inconsistent contracts and a far younger than average retirement age mean planners such as Mutusamy need to think differently about the advice they give to players.
“The biggest differential for me is having them not focus on a monetary target but an aspirational goal,” he says. “So it becomes a goals-based approach versus monetary results. It’s not a rand value. I ask, ‘What are your goals in terms of travel, your family life, what kind of home do you want to have?’ Then we monetise those components.
“I jot down their personal goals. Dream your dream and tell me your dream so that I can monetise it. Then I back-test and forward-test with inflation and see what it will cost in the next five to seven years or whenever the goal is to be materialised. Then I say, ‘In order to reach that goal, you need to make sure you’re putting R10000 a month away in this investment.’
“With soccer players you need to give them something tangible they can feel. You say, ‘There’s the Porsche … you need R1.2-million, but you don’t concentrate on the R1.2-million, you concentrate on the Porsche. Generally.”
Player responsibility
The story about the footballer gone broke is nothing new. Sometimes he need not even put his boots on the wall when that fate befalls him.
Lerato Chabangu was an example of the footballing trap last year. He pleaded with clubs to give him another chance after Chippa United dumped him and completed his plunge into financial ruin. He told the Sowetan that he had spent any money he made on women, booze and cars. When the rands left so did everything else: his wife took their child, his car was repossessed, he had to move in with his grandmother in Tembisa, and the friends who were available to go to the shisanyama every day after training suddenly lost his phone number.
Thandani “Bibo” Ntshumayelo is trying his damndest to outrun the same fate. (See the M&G’s interview below)
Whether you’re Booth or Chabangu, those who have been there know that the onus is on the