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We’ve seen many odd career choices made by soccer players after hanging up their boots. Ronaldo tried his luck as a poker player. Maradona got a TV show. Countless went into politics – and the list of post-retirement career choices goes on and on. Nevertheless, no soccer player has taken a path quite like former Coventry City and Hereford United goalkeeper David Icke.
First, a little background on David Icke.
Far from being known across the globe for his senior career, Icke played only a pair of seasons as a professional for Hereford United in the early 1970s. At 21 years old, the Leicester native goalkeeper was forced to retire because he suffered from Rheumatoid arthritis.
David Icke in his footballing days (Photo: @deanocity6 | Twitter)
After experiencing the pain of an early end to a promising career, Icke took a step many former players do today. He became a sports presenter.
Icke worked for outlets like the Leicester Mercury and he served with BBC until 1990. In that time, Icke even spent several months in Saudi Arabia working with their national team. However, he got homesick and went back to the UK.
Ultimately, his career as a sports presenter ended because he was involved in a political scandal in which he refused to pay a newly introduced tax from the British government. At that point, the BBC decided it was better to distance themselves from David Icke. This was only the beginning of a series of political scandals in which the former goalkeeper would be involved as he quickly rose through the ranks and became one of the main speakers for the Green Party.
And here’s where the story gets interesting.
In 1990, Icke claimed to have felt a magnetic force pulling him to the ground while standing near a newsstand. Then, he heard a voice guiding him closer to a particular section of books – a section in which he found a book by a psychic healer named Betty Shine. Needless to say, Icke went to visit Betty Shine to see if she could help him with his arthritis.
It turned out she had different plans for him.
During one of their meetings, Shine told Icke that she had a message from the spirit world for him, and the message was that he (Icke) was sent to heal the Earth.
He did become famous indeed, but not in the fashion he probably would have liked. In 1991 Icke said he received a message through automatic writing (psychography), and the message said he was a “Son of the Godhead.” That message led to an interview with BBC’s Terry Wogan, and what might’ve been the worst day in Icke’s life.
Here is the full interview:
In case you don’t have the time to watch the entire interview, it basically boils down to David Icke being ridiculed on national television.
Interviewer Terry Wogan did apologize to Icke in a more recent interview, 15 years after the original. Yet, the second interview was just as confrontational as the first.
Despite the ridicule, Icke remained strong in his convictions and kept preaching his ideas, which culminated with his Reptoid Hypothesis published in 1999.
Essentially, Icke’s theory claims that the world is secretly run by a race of lizard gods who transform to look like humans.
Don't laugh too soon. According to a 2013 Public Policy Polling pool, "4 percent of voters say they believe ‘lizard people’ control our societies by gaining political power."
Earlier this month, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg even denied being a part of this lizard race in his first Facebook Live Q&A.
(Quote: "I am not a lizard." Which is exactly what you would say if you were a lizard hellbent on world domination.)
You can learn more about this and Icke’s other theories (yes, he has many more) on Wikipedia and his website. Don't say we didn't warn you.
So, can you name a player with a more unusual path after retirement? If so, leave us a comment below!
