At the age of 26, the former Tottenham goalkeeper retired after winning the Europa League with the team and transformed into a photographer and director.

Hupu reported on October 31 that TheAthletic reported that 26-year-old goalkeeper Alfie Whiteman left Tottenham after winning the Europa League with the team this summer and retired from professional football. Now he is an emerging photographer and film director, signed with a well-known production company.

Alfie Whiteman has never been a football player in the traditional sense.

As Tottenham Hotspur's third, fourth and later fifth goalkeeper, this player who came out of the club's youth training had very little hope of making it onto the field and making a mark in the team he supported in his childhood. So he devoted his free time to a variety of passions: taking acting classes, honing his photography skills, and hosting a monthly radio show that spanned folk, indie rock, alternative pop, and dream pop.

When his teammates drove into the training base in super cars, he chose to take public transportation.

After leaving Tottenham as a free agent this summer, he originally planned to continue his football career-perhaps joining a lower-level English league team, or going overseas to strive for the opportunity to become the main goalkeeper there.

However, despite receiving clear invitations from teams including the English Championship, the 26-year-old Whiteman took the initiative to retire quietly this summer. Just a few months ago, he won the Europa League with the team.

Now, Whiteman has signed with the global production company Somesuch, starting a new career as an emerging photographer and film director. The company, which has offices in London and Los Angeles, has produced Harris Dickinson's directorial debut "The Kid" and Anil Kariya's "The Long Goodbye," which won the 2022 Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short.

Although this decision was not easy, it was the result of years of planning.

"I signed with Tottenham when I was 10 years old," Whiteman told TheAthletic over a bottle of lemonade in a cocktail bar in east London. "After I left school at 16, I went straight into full-time football. Around 17 or 18 years old, I lived in dormitories arranged by the club, and I always thought, 'Is this all there is to life?' Taking a van to train and go to sports Science BTEC (he also did Economics A-Level), went home and played games. At a young age I realized, 'Oh, I'm not happy here'."

"The stereotypes about footballers are mostly true - the golf, high-end toiletry bag culture. I was also the kind of young player who wanted Gucci toiletry bags and drove a Mercedes. Everyone became the same and became a product of the environment in England. That's it, very isolated from the outside world: training, going home, that's all."

"I think I have always felt that I was a little different. My teammates who were close to me called me a "hippie", which was their definition of me. When I was 18, I met my ex-girlfriend, who was a few years older than me. Her best friend was a director, which made me see that there were more possibilities in life."

" As I grew up at the age of 19, I met new friends, got to know myself better, and gradually saw the closedness of the football circle-it was too isolated."

As he fell behind international players such as Hugo Lloris, Michel Vorm and Joe Hart in the goalkeeper rankings, Whiteman still insisted on training hard and looked forward to one day representing Tottenham in a professional game or proving himself on loan to other teams. At the same time, he spent his spare time getting in touch with new circles and making friends in the creative industry. On their days off, producers, directors and cinematographers would invite him to work as an assistant on set. Although he originally thought he would not start his transformation until his 30s, Whiteman was already consciously preparing for life outside of football.

"No matter how good the performance is, a football career is short, and I have known for a long time that I don't want to stay in this industry forever," Whiteman said. "I try to accumulate relevant experience and take the initiative to learn these areas of interest, mainly because I am really good at it." Enjoying the process and being surrounded by people who treat what I love as their job is so contagious."

Whiteman made his debut with the Tottenham first team as a substitute in the Europa League during Mourinho's coaching. In 2021, he joined the Swedish team Degfors on loan and finally got a stable chance to play. He played 34 games on behalf of the Swedish Super League team in 18 months and gradually found his game form. He lives in a cabin in the forest and spends most of his time alone, expressing his inner feelings through art.

“I learned a lot,” he said. “Being in a new natural environment, I completed a series of works that will be exhibited next spring, including self-portraits and some unique creations. I never deliberately planned it, but the experience became a time of introspection. Now. Looking back at these works, I can feel the confusion and entanglement mixed with them. That was in 2022, but in fact this emotion has always been there."

After returning to Tottenham, he was determined to make a difference and signed a two-year contract extension with the club in 2023. Whiteman performed well and trained hard in pre-season under new coach Ange Postkoglu, but suffered an ankle injury in a warm-up game in Singapore, causing him to miss most of the season. During his recovery, he became a creative outlet by hosting the Sweet Tooth program on NTS Radio - a radio station founded in east London in 2011 that focuses on diverse styles of music from around the world. Looking back on this injury now, Whiteman believes it was a turning point in his life.

"It was an accidental injury that caused me to miss most of the season after the new coach took over, so I was thrown into a dilemma," Whiteman said. "During the recovery period, I tried my best every day to return to the game. In the end I did it, but even then, I just sat in the stands and watched the game.. It feels so uncomfortable to put all your heart and soul into training but not get a chance to play. "

"The competition field is the place to show the results of training. Otherwise, training day after day will just be repetitive and unknown, just like the damn "Groundhog Day" cycle. Spurs have a great training ground, the facilities are superb and I'm surrounded by the best players, but none of that is enough to satisfy me. I'm eager to play high-intensity games and feel like I'm improving. None of this is possible when you can't play, and you may even feel like you're regressing. "

Whiteman represented the England U17 national team in the 2015 World Youth Championship. After recovering from injury in the summer of 2024, he made it clear to Tottenham management that he hoped to leave the team on loan to seek first-team opportunities. However, due to Tottenham's lack of local youth training players in the upcoming Europa League (UEFA requires the team to have four players trained by its own youth training to participate), the club rejected his application to leave the team.

He described this failure The feeling of control was "frustrating". At the end of the season, Tottenham won the Europa League, Whiteman received a championship medal and took a parade bus through the Tottenham neighborhood where he grew up.

"My house is only two minutes away from the stadium, and I used to walk to the home games," Whiteman said. "The parade bus passed by my street, and my sister and my good friends who lived with me were waving on the roadside. I also saw a girl who was taking classes at the youth center where I volunteered - she wanted to be an actress and I had taken her headshots before. I said hello to her and she said in disbelief, ‘Why are you on the bus? ’ Very interesting. "

This summer, Whiteman had trial training with two English league teams. The first one was the League One team, which was unable to provide a contract due to financial problems; then he went to a British Championship team for trial training, and the other party offered him a six-month contract as the second goalkeeper. However, By the time the contract offer came, he had already made up his mind that professional football was no longer for him. "I went home one weekend and started seriously considering all my options," Whiteman said. To put it bluntly, I see joy in these new areas. "

"At this stage, I would rather end my football career than go to a club I don't want to go to. I said when I was young that I didn’t want to play in a low-level league. What I always pursued was the highest level of competition. Otherwise, I'd rather do something else. So I just stepped into the unknown and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m really going to do this’. Everything is possible in the future and I am completely in control of my life, which is both exciting and a little nerve-wracking. ”

Just days after calling his agent to inform his agent of his decision, Whiteman joined fashion photographer Harley Weir and British rapper Central Cee on the set of a Nike shoot. After that, he also traveled to Norway and Ukraine to assist his friend Ariya Shahrokshahi in filming a feature documentary. In this issue During this time, he took the initiative to contact people in the industry and introduced himself and expanded his network through coffee.

"Finally, I went to help a friend shoot the World Toe Wrestling Championship sponsored by Vibram (a shoe brand famous for its 'five-finger shoes')," Whiteman said, "I said, 'Okay, I'll help you with the lighting!' ’ The day before the shooting, they said they needed some video material, and I immediately agreed, ‘I’ll shoot it! I'll take the photo! ’”

“There was no budget, no shooting outline, nothing. On the day of the shoot, I was there with my friends, grabbed my camera and took pictures, then gave the footage to the editor and worked with him to complete the video before it was released. "

The short film received praise from the industry, and the famous short film content media DavidReviews gave a five-star rating. A few weeks later, he signed with Somesuch to become a professional film and commercial director.

"Somesuch has a film and advertising department, and I am also responsible for photography," Whiteman said. "I have some photography and short film project ideas, and plan to shoot a few short films first, hoping to direct a feature film one day. But there are no strict steps, everything can be decided by yourself. I just want to be on set, work with the most talented photographers, DPs, producers, and meet new people. There is still so much to learn. "

Although he has not watched a football game since retiring, he has not completely separated from the sport. He already has a movie idea based on next summer's North American World Cup, and he is also looking forward to putting on gloves to play football again soon - without the intrigues in the industry, purely enjoying football itself.

"I am looking forward to playing football with my friends on Wednesday night," he said. "A lot of friends have already asked me! I just love playing football with my friends, it's a pure feeling. "