Jamie Redknapp

Jamie has today announced his retirement from football due to a persistent knee injury.

Those who know me , also know that I was in the same year as Jamie at school although I rarely took classes with him as he was in a lower band.

As the years have gone on I've realised that although Jamie is not the sharpest tool in the box, he does appear to be more intelligent than I originally thought.
He is a regular pundit for the BBC and is one of the few footballers who manage to talk about our game without including a football cliche every other word.

At the end of the day , he speaks more intelligently than I ever imagined he would, despite his academic background.

In all honesty , I shouldn't be surprised that he didn't really achieve anything at school. (I hope I'm not doing him a disservice)
Everybody knew he was Harry's son and that all he wanted to do was play the beautiful game for a living.

I remember watching Jamie (or Redders as we used to call him) flicking a ball up and down in the corridor when he should have been in lessons. Nobody cared about his education. Why should they? ( Hold on one moment, they should care, it's their job)

I believe the consequences of this were that he was never really given a chance to achieve anything in academia.

I'm not saying he could have worked for a bookmaker or anything super intelligent like that, but I do think he could have done better than he did.

Anyway, me and him didn't really get on at school.
I'd like to say that it was because we were both very good at sport , so I will , coz we were.

I didn't make it and he did.

At one stage in his career , it looked like he may actually become one of the Great Playmakers.
I thought he was that good! (without bias)

I suppose my only criticism would be that he always wanted to play safe and therefore played a few too many square balls for my liking.
That was a pity, coz I know he had the ability to play the little diagonal balls which can unlock tight defences.

Still , he managed to play several times for his country and scored an absolute screamer in a friendly against Belgium (I think) in addition to being Liverpool club captain and spokesman for many years.

Unfortunately, due to constant injuries, he never managed to reach the heights I thought he might. I'm sorry about that, I really am.

But lets be honest, it's not all bad news.

He's got a beautiful wife (I hope he doesn't mind me saying that. He shouldn't do. She is) and he looks like he's going to have a very successful career ahead of him talking about football all day.

Mmmmm Football.