What is the Retirement Age for a Footballer?

Due the the relatively short lifespan of being able to play football professionally, in the past the retirement age for a professional footballer was set at 35 (according to the rules of the scheme that professional footballers were allowed to join).

Most footballers were unlikely to go on playing past their 35th birthday with only a few limited number of exceptions. Some would go on to play for lower league teams after this but most of them would hang up their boots with at age 35 or before – quite often due to the higher chance of injury, the higher level of effort required to maintain that level of fitness, or even due to an accumulation of previous injuries.

There have been a number of incarnations of the pension scheme that has been run for professional footballers and up until 2006 the retirement age was set at 35. However, with the advent of many new rules and changes to pension scheme legislation, the retirement age was increased to age 55 for those joining after 5 April 2006.

As with most schemes there is provision in the rules of the scheme to retire at an earlier date due to incapacity.

Of course State Pension Age for professional footballers is no different to any other working person so they would have to wait until the relevant state pension age to take their state pension benefits.

Obviously those players who earn large sums in the premier league will have accountants to advise them how to invest their money for retirement and will probably not need to worry too much about pension benefits! But those whose retirement age is now 55 will have to find a way of either earning more money after their footballing career is over, or else using that money wisely to live on. But obviously if you retire at age 35 that is a long time to have to find funds to sustain a similar lifestyle.