Football HistoryBy Tochukwu Mesigo

Footballers Who Almost Chose Another Sport

A handful of the game's greatest players were once equally good at something else entirely — an ice hockey goal, a taekwondo black belt, a scratch golf handicap. Here is what football very nearly lost.

Every footballer has a story about how they started. Most involve a garden, a brother, a school team. But a select few have a different tale to tell: they were genuinely good at another sport first, sometimes better, and football only won because of a twist of fate, a body that grew the wrong way, or a decision made by a parent.

Petr Cech — The Ice Hockey Goalkeeper

Petr Cech is the most famous example of a player who nearly ended up in a different sport. The Czech grew up wanting to be an ice hockey goaltender and played competitively as a child. He only abandoned hockey at around age ten, when his legs outgrew his equipment, and turned to football instead. The positional instincts stayed with him: after retiring from football he actually returned to hockey as a player, turning out for Guildford Phoenix in 2019, and later played for Oxford City Stars. The man simply never lost the goalie's mentality.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic — Taekwondo Black Belt

Before he was the most theatrical striker of his generation, Zlatan Ibrahimovic trained in taekwondo at a club in Malmö as a young boy. He was good enough to hold an honorary black belt, and his famous bicycle kicks and impossible acrobatics are routinely credited, in part, to the footwork and flexibility he learned on the mats. He gave up the discipline for football, but the martial arts movement stayed in his game for twenty years.

Gareth Bale — Scratch Golfer

After retiring from football, Gareth Bale set about a second sporting career in golf, and there was nothing casual about it. The former Real Madrid and Wales winger carries a handicap close to scratch — the level of a very serious amateur — and has played in celebrity pro-am events at Pebble Beach alongside professionals. His famous 'Wales. Golf. Madrid. In that order' celebration was a joke that turned out to be half true.

Karim Benzema — The Tennis Prospect

Before France's record-breaker committed fully to football, Karim Benzema was a promising young tennis player. Growing up in Lyon, he played the sport seriously, and friends and coaches from the period remember a talented junior who could have pursued the game further. He chose football, and the world is glad he did, but the hand-eye coordination he built on the tennis court never hurt his first touch.

Peter Schmeichel — The Handball Athlete

Long before his Manchester United heroics, Peter Schmeichel was a gifted handball player, a sport with far more prestige in Denmark than football had at the time. He was a junior athlete before his growth spurt pushed him toward the goal, and his extraordinary reflexes and the famous 'star jump' — arms and legs spread wide to make himself impossible to beat — came straight from handball goalkeeping.

Why Cross-Sport Athletes Thrive

What connects Cech, Zlatan, Bale, Benzema and Schmeichel is more than a trivia answer. Athletes who nearly chose another sport tend to bring a transferable skill set with them:

• Hand-eye coordination — from tennis, golf and hockey, improving striking and reflexes.
• Body control — from martial arts and gymnastics, enabling acrobatic finishing.
• Explosiveness — from sprinting and basketball, adding pace and leaping power.
• Composure — from individual sports, where you only have yourself to rely on.

The Ones Who Did Both

Some players did not have to choose at all. Cech returned to ice hockey after retirement, Bale keeps playing elite amateur golf, and former sprint champion Usain Bolt famously attempted a football trial after retiring from the track — proof that for elite athletes, the sporting instinct never fully switches off.

So the next time you watch a striker produce an impossible finish, wonder what they might have been doing instead. The answer, somewhere, is probably a hockey rink, a tennis court or a golf course.

Last updated: August 2026 | By Tochukwu Mesigo | Category: Football History