When Lee Roche made his Champions League debut for Manchester United two decades ago, he expected a long football career ahead of him.
He was thrown in at the deep end when he stepped out at Deportivo La Coruna in 2003, arguably his best performance in the famous red shirt.
But Roche's time in Manchester would soon come to an end – beginning a spiral that eventually led to his retirement at the age of 27.
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Five years later he was left on the football scrapheap and now works on a building site.
“I have had a few fellow workers on the building sites asking me about United and how have I ended up here,” he said.
“It can get pretty tiresome so I don’t go shouting about that I played for United. I do think young players today should be made to train as something, so they know about the real world.
“Most of them probably don’t have a plan to fall back on if they don’t make it as a professional.”
Roche came through United's academy, enjoying a loan spell at Wrexham in the early 2000s before going on to make five appearances under Sir Alex Ferguson - one of which came as a starter against Arsenal in the League Cup.
Roche moved to Burnley in 2003, joined Wrexham two years later and then found himself signing for non-league Droylsden in 2007, where he would spend the remaining four years of his career.
Now 42, he admits that he did not expect his career to end in the manner that it did, especially given the track record of academy players coming through the system at the Red Devils, The Mirror reports.
He told LFETV : "Definitely not. Especially when you sign for a club as big as Manchester United. You think you're going to be playing football until you're 35. The way things have turned out I've had to work, I've been working here for nearly three years and it's a bit of a change from playing football but you just have to get on with it."
One of Roche's other appearances in the famous red shirt came against Newcastle, which meant the defender had to combat the Premier League's all-time premier marksman - Alan Shearer. Shearer got the better of him and Ferguson was quick to hand out some advice.
He told Planet Football: “I did okay, but I remember Sir Alex talking to me afterwards because Alan Shearer had beaten me at the far post to win a header, so he told me to get up first and not let the forwards do that to me.
"I remember being in an airport after that and someone asked me for an autograph thinking I was Nicky Butt, so I signed it!”
The PFA supported Roche after he left the footballing sphere and now he is a qualified plumber with his own cavity wall insulation business.
The former footballer is also keen for players to have fallback plans that would allow them to find work outside of football, should their careers ever end unplanned.
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