Izzy Brown, who was once one of Chelsea's hottest young prospects, has been forced to retire at the age of 26 due to a twice ruptured Achilles tendon.
The versatile forward played regularly for England at youth level and became the second-youngest player in Premier League history when he was handed his senior debut at the age of 16 by West Bromwich Albion just months before his switch to Stamford Bridge.
Brown made just a single senior appearance during his time with the Blues, though, and spent the majority of his career out in loan in the EFL, where he had stints with the likes of Brighton, Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday amongst others.
The 26-year-old joined Preston North End back in the summer of 2021 after deciding to leave Chelsea at the end of his contract. However, Brown has now called time on his professional career after undergoing two Achilles surgeries in the space of three-and-a-half months following an injury he sustained just weeks after joining PNE.
Brown, who revealed he was retiring in an emotional social media message on Thursday afternoon, told The Athletic: “We had a pre-season game against Celtic when I was at Preston and I felt some pain in my Achilles, but it wasn’t too bad. Then we had a couple of days off, I came back for training and then I just passed the football, like I’d done a million times before, and I heard a pop. I thought someone had kicked me but no one was around me.
“It had snapped. So I had the surgery and it went well, but we noticed there was like a little gap in my Achilles. We thought maybe it’s not healed properly, but this was only after two months so we gave it time. Then I went out for some dinner and stepped down a small step and it snapped again.
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“So I had two Achilles surgeries in the space of three and a half months. To come back from one is hard. To come back from two is basically impossible.”
Brown, who was part of the Huddersfield Town team that achieved an unlikely promotion to the Premier League in 2017, left PNE last April and had been contemplating retirement for the past few months.
“Everything is new to me now,” he added. “The world is new now I’m not seeing it from a football perspective. I can go and enjoy things I’ve never been able to enjoy before and go to places I never got a chance to go to. I’m going to take some time for myself and have a think if I want to be involved in football again.
“Football was my dream. It still is my dream. But dreams have to end one day.”
