Meet Rohan Ricketts: The World's Most Well-Traveled Soccer Player

Rohan Ricketts never thought it would turn out that he'd be playing at one of the highest levels of soccer against all-time greats like Roy Keane and Paul Scholes.

Ten years ago he played for Tottenham Hotspur in front of 68,000 fans at Manchester United's legendary stadium Old Trafford, the favorite match of his career.

The game was a scoreless draw and Ricketts, a product of the prolific Arsenal academy, was subbed out of the game in the final seconds. Soon after, he was loaned out to lower-league Wolves, and would never play for Spurs again.

Instead, he would play basically everywhere else. For a moment, the 32-year-old Ricketts imagines what would have happened if someone from the future came back in time to tell him how his life would unfold over the next decade—to tell him that, in his own, half-joking words, he "was gonna be fucked".

"I probably would have thought it was a nightmare! I was playing for Spurs, had friends and a nice pad in Essex, the whole shebang. I was playing for the England under-21s but I was on the verge of a full call-up. So if you'd have told me I'd be playing in fucking Goa and these places I would have said you're crazy."

By "these places" he's referring to the formidable list of countries he's played in since his Spurs days: Toronto, Hungary, Moldova, Germany, Ireland, India, Ecuador, Thailand and Hong Kong. Plus trials in Scotland and Belgium.

Thinking back on that game at Old Trafford, the 32-year-old says it was his favorite "because I played the whole game, I was on fire." He pauses, before adding: "And now I'm in Starbucks in Hong Kong, eating some apple turnover!"

He was in Hong Kong because he'd recently signed for Eastern SC, whose season had petered out after looking like favorites for the HK Premier League title. He's out of contract now and looking for a club, and unsure of where he'll be living next.

"But I'm calm about it," he says of his constant search for the next contract. It's how he's conducted his career for a decade, and that's given him a perspective on the sweaty underbelly of global soccer's frantic labour market that few players have. He paints a picture not dissimilar to the cliche of jobbing actors heading to Hollywood on a wing and a prayer, hoping for that big break.

"In Thailand, there are loads from all over the world. There'll be three or four of them in a room, just waiting for an opportunity to get a contract. There are so many free players, there's not enough space to hold them. You have all these players, Germans who've played in the Bundesliga, who have to go two leagues below. So they go to Asia, and there's not enough space because they've got the quota (on home-grown players). There are players flying to places on their credit cards last-minute, some real stuff going on.

"And it's tough because this is their life. This is all you know, it's a dream you nearly realized, you tasted it. But then agents are lying to you, people are paying agents $400 just to get them a trial. I've got a friend who's nothing to do with Guam, but he's got a Guam passport, because he wants to be an Asian to beat the quota. There are numerous people trying to change their passports, trying to find loopholes."

What might seem like a fancy-free globe-trot has been anything but. Ricketts has suffered troubles not being paid on time, and signed contracts that turned out not to be what they seemed. He described Moldova as a "NIGHTmare," India as a "mini-nightmare" and as for Hungary: "I had three coaches in three months. Didn't get paid all my money. Lived in a shithole."

On his recent stops in south-east Asia, Ricketts says: "The technical level is OK. The physicality is not there, not the level I'd be used to. But sometimes it's a good thing for me, because I'm a bit older now and things are a little smoother. I've played in countries like India, Thailand—Ecuador's different because that's very intense—but (Asian countries), that intensity level, the mentality's completely different. Because football's not something they've been playing since they were one or two years old."It was never a conscious decision to tour the world, he says. More a series of moves each intended to get the best deal, in terms of soccer and finances. In addition to padding out his passport and learning swear words in myriad languages, travel has provided other benefits: he met his long-term girlfriend in Toronto and picked up Spanish in Ecuador. And he reckons it's been more lucrative than staying in the UK would have been.

"Because in England you've got the higher tax," he says. "So when someone says you're earning five grand a week it's not five grand a week. And then you've got to pay for your house, TV license, your own bills, the car. All these things, in the places I've been playing, you get for free. And I've been living in countries that are cheap. So I think for the most part it's been better."

But a better explanation for why the Englishman, born in Stockwell, south London, has forsaken his own country's leagues, is a soccer one. The self-described technical creative midfielder, endowed with endeavor and a few tricks, clearly feels his is unwelcome in the more conservative, sometimes defensive-minded English soccer structure.

He says: "Some managers don't know how to fit me in to their scared system. To them (my of play) is a luxury. A lot of players like myself, the technical players, are seen as luxuries because the English of fotball isn't like that. So a guy like Josh McEachran (Chelsea's highly-rated 22-year-old, currently on loan at Vitesse Arnhem), where is he? Everyone talks about him. He's never gonna play at Chelsea. Jack Wilshere—very fortunate he came through at Arsenal, because he can play that style. But if he wasn't there, he wouldn't be able to play anywhere."

But what at times appears to be anger at his own country's ethos genuinely seems to have become indifference, tinged with some disappointment at having played in the MLS just before it's stock began to rise in recent years.

"To be honest, I don't care. Because they don't care. I played for Arsenal, Spurs, Wolves and Barnsley. Some big clubs. And then left to go and play in the MLS. And (potential British employers) ask: 'where's he been? Oh nah nah nah, we're gonna go and sign so-and-so from the Conference (English football's fifth tier) who we've been watching for the last year.' Now, everyone's like 'Oooh, the MLS.' They're signing players from there."