Most people would consider a long-term injury a potential derailment of career progress – but not Xavi Simons. Spurs’ gifted Dutchman had his season cruelly cut short by a serious ACL injury sustained in April, and he is not expected to return to action until early 2027.
But whilst Spurs are eagerly waiting for Xavi Simons to return to the pitch, he is using an enforced spell on the sidelines to think about what life might look like once his footballing career is over.
Xavi has spent recent weeks in the US as part of his rehabilitation, even being spotted at the Spurs supporters’ club in Boston. But he wasn’t just in town to share a drink and commiserate with fellow Spurs fans; he has also enrolled on a course at Harvard Business School. He has joined the ‘Crossover Into Business’ programme, designed to help professional athletes understand the business world.
The semester-long online course is run by Professor Anita Elberse and was launched in 2017 in partnership with the NBA, before opening up to athletes from the NFL, WNBA, MLS and UFC, as well as tennis stars such as Caroline Wozniacki. Each athlete is matched with Harvard MBA students who act as mentors, working through real-world case studies using the school’s famous case method, with the content tailored to the athlete’s own interests and fitted around their schedule. There is a personal connection for Xavi too: he has known Elberse for years and visited her at Harvard while he was in Boston.
Xavi Simons waving to the Tottenham Hotspur fans. (Photo by John Patrick Fletcher/Action Plus/Icon Sportswire)
For those who have followed Xavi closely and listened to him speak, this path won’t necessarily come as a surprise, as he has spoken about his desire to understand the commercial side of sport. He is part of a growing trend of young athletes investing in their education whilst their on-field careers are still ongoing. Most professional sports careers are short, and only a few can support future livelihoods on these earnings alone – let alone sustain fulfilment and general engagement beyond sporting retirement.
Footballers often spend their entire youth preparing for a professional career, with education competing against the demands of training, travel and matches. This doesn’t always prepare players for the question of what comes next. Simons’ decision offers a refreshing counterpoint to the assumption that a footballer’s identity and ambitions must start and end on the pitch.
Simons will undoubtedly have faced some dark times during the physically and mentally demanding rehabilitation of an ACL injury, but the desire to learn and develop away from the game will likely give him motivation at a time when he can’t help Spurs on the pitch. This isn’t intended as a distraction, though: Simons has explicitly said that returning to the pitch remains his priority.
The course won’t necessarily determine Simons’ future, nor should an online course suddenly turn into a grand statement about his character. But it is a reminder that elite athletes can prepare for the future without waiting for their playing careers to end.
Simons’ immediate ambition remains a return to the pitch. But football careers are finite, and the best time to think about what comes next is not once they have ended – it’s while there is still time to prepare.
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