Forgotten Champions League winner with Chelsea is now successful businessman and even attended Harvard
Former Chelsea defender Ryan Bertrand started and sold a business before he even retired from football.
The 33-year-old left-back launched the Blues’ triumph in the Champions League final 11 years ago when they defeated Bayern Munich on penalties to secure their first-ever European Cup victory.
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More than a decade later, Bertrand has played for clubs such as Aston Villa and Southampton but now he plies his trade at Leicester.
And while he’s preparing for a return to the Championship following the Foxes’ relegation from the Premier League, he’s found much of his success off the pitch in recent years.
Bertrand started trading as a young 18-year-old at Chelsea – an interest that eventually led him to start his own brokerage business in 2015.
He founded the company — a fintech startup called “Silicon Markets” — with the idea of ”bringing institutional tools to the home trader.”
And after building the company, the former blues star sold it to a Malaysian company.
But that’s not the only endeavor he’s undertaken over the past decade.
Bertrand also developed an emoji business with his former teammate John Terry.
Speak with Sky Sports In 2021 he said: “Sport is my passion that will never go away, but finance is another.”
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“As you chart the course for post-career, you must relearn, educate yourself, and help yourself become an expert at something else.”
“It’s these horror stories that have kept me at the top, I’m always thinking ahead.”
Bertrand’s impressive entrepreneurial spirit prompted him to complete the Harvard Alternative Investments course.
The defender hopes the course, offered by one of the most prestigious universities in the world, will broaden his knowledge of business.
He also has plans to eventually take up the FA Technical Director course – and has his eye on a future board role at a football club.
Bertrand, who will work with Enzo Maresca under his 21st manager, said The guard in 2018: “At first English managers might be afraid of it.” [a director of football]. Nobody tells me which players to buy, they would say.
“But if you look at the demands of a single human in the modern game, you can’t get six.”
“There are specializations – player recruitment, making sure the club’s methodology is maintained from the youth team onwards.”
“That is ultimately the role of the director of football.”