It is, they always say, a short playing career, and you need to make your money while you can – an observation about professional football that was perhaps more relevant in the days when retired strikers might be found running a struggling pub or cabbing in the early hours than now, when the likes of Ronaldo, Messi and Neymar bestride the grassy sward.
The midfielder Steve Hodge belongs more to the former era than that of the Midas-age players whose revenue from image rights and endorsements alone would keep them in gold taps and gigantic watches for the rest of their lives – indeed, even Hodge’s most lucrative transfer, from Nottingham Forest to Leeds United in 1991, didn’t break the million-pound barrier.
