Lee Sandford: Exchanging Football for Trading
Ex Footballer Lee Sandford
Retired footballers that remain at the forefront of our minds tend to be coaches and pundits. Of those who hang up their boots only a few transition into a new dimension of the game, leaving many players next chapter of their life hidden from the sporting world.
This was the case with former Sheffield United, Stoke and Portsmouth footballer Lee Sandford. After making the last of his 626 professional appearances he found a new challenge and passion, playing the markets as a stock market trader.
Stepping into a New Field
During Sandford’s 16 year-long playing career he started to prepare for the ever-closer reality of life after football. In this time he explored many alternative prospects, ones that involved remaining within the sport and experiencing a different facet of the game. Sandford told us:
“I had already done my Sports Science and Coaching degree at Manchester Met and I wanted to get into sports psychology, but I retired at 34 and busted my neck in a game where I broke my disc and I had to have a big operation through the front. So, I thought you know what, I’m going to do something else.”
This led Sandford to pursue a new career as he entered into the world of trading, something he had a side interest in during his playing days:
“When I was playing football, it was just all about football and actually it was quite boring really, at the end of the day you’re training to be a professional sportsman playing football with other interests. So, I started to look at the stock markets as friends of mine outside of football were buying stocks and shares, so I was buying stocks and shares as well and I just got really interested in it…… and that’s when I flew to the USA to learn how to trade the markets. As soon as I retired from football I started trading.”
Bringing a Sporting Mindset into Play
Like every footballer Sandford experienced the unstable dynamics of the game, the thrills of promotion, the heartbreak of relegation and even defeat in a league play-off final. However, the seesaw of events that Sandford contended with in his playing career helped him navigate the unpredictable grounds of trading:
“In trading, there’s no end. It’s not like coming to the end of a course and you get a certificate. It never ends, you can make as much money as you want and you can lose as much money as is in your trading account. So, there’s loads of ups and downs, it’s all mindset and psychology. It’s just like professional sports.”
We’ve often seen young footballers with meteoric rises, only to struggle when they start to receive setbacks. Football and trading may share some parallels as Sandford believes that the biggest drawback that can occur when entering the trading industry is to promptly burst onto the scene. Sandford said:
“The worst thing is getting instant success at the start of trading, because now you think you’re the Wolf of Wall Street. And you can do it easily. I mean without failure you’re not going to get successful. You need failure in your life to learn from it and to try and fight that off and not accept it, you’re blind to it. So, you have the down moments just like sport. It’s how you react to what has happened to you, that makes you better. That’s a skill really.”
The former ‘no-nonsense’ defender shared how the euphoria of making a profit in trading compares to securing three points:
“At the start of my journey when I made good money, several thousand pounds on a trade it was a buzz, but now it’s just routine because you’re managing your losses as well as your profits. I think there’s no better buzz than scoring a goal in front of 20,000/30,000 people. There’s no better buzz than that and it won’t replace making a few grand on trading at all. The buzz is at the football. Absolutely.”
A Missed Opportunity
Traders tend to tempt fortune through investing in new enterprises that have the capacity to escalate. One opening that he avoided however, after achieving his sports science and coaching degree was in becoming one of the first sports psychologists in football who had played at high level. Sandford admitted this was an opportunity missed:
“I could have seriously got into being the first sport psychologist that had played six hundred first class games, I probably would have been the first sports psychologist that had the football experience, and that is one regret. My lecturer at the time said you got to do a sports master’s in sports psychology, because you will be the first one in the world to have the qualifications and the playing experience. And I didn’t do it.”
Becoming a Mentor
After mastering the skill in stocks and shares Sanford has now set up a course called Trading College, a training provider where Sandford mentors others who wish to create a success in trading.
“Going from football and then going into trading I didn’t mentor anybody for a long time. I mean, the first 18 months, I lost about 44 grand trading the markets. And that was my apprenticeship. The thing with me, I had the money to come back. So, I could go again. It took me a good three years really to be any good at it. But I didn’t have a Trading College to teach me, I had to go to the US and learn from a few other individuals. I didn’t have an organisation like Trading College to teach me how to do it.”
Sandford had the initial challenge of persuading aspiring traders to enrol on his course:
“This is a financial industry, people wear suits and ties in the city, they’re teaching people how to trade. Then you’ve got somebody who comes along in a tracksuit and starts teaching people. I got so much stick but I was a good trader by that time. I was just honest with everybody, why would you learn to trade from somebody who works for a bank that has got millions and millions of pounds in their trading account, when you can learn for somebody who’s actually done it, and grown their trading account themselves? It was a different level and it’s great, I loved it. As we grew and grew and grew, we got more stick but now we’re just so established.”
https://www.tradingcollege.co.uk/trading-college-online-trading-courses/
Finding Your Passion
Sandford offers advice for retiring footballers:
“You’re a long time retired, you play football, if you’re lucky, you get to 30. I was really lucky, I got to 34. And then you’ve got until 80, to do something else. I would say, just find something you want to do and have a passion for it and educate yourself really. It’s so easy these days… I came out of school with an O level in pottery, so it doesn’t matter does it? You just got to keep on growing, do what you want and find the passion.”
Lee Sandford interview on Sports Gazette Youtube channel; edited by https://linktr.ee/felipemdlima