Danny Drinkwater has insisted on his decision to paint on structure sites after receiving abusive messages saying he would “hit rock bottom”.
Drinkwater announced his retirement from football in October, having been unable to locate the club following a loan spell at Reading for the 2021/22 campaign. The 34-year-old midfielder has enjoyed an impressive career, starting at Manchester United before winning the Premier League with Leicester, winning 3 caps for England and sealing a £35m transfer to Chelsea.
He was paid £120,000-a-week for his time with the Blues but was around a bit, being loaned out to Burnley, Aston Villa, Turkish club Kasimpasa and Reading. Drinkwater has been unabashed about his intellectual fitness issues, having made headlines for being accused of drink-driving and being attacked outside a nightclub.
Since stepping away from football, he has tried to break into the business world, but The Sun reported in November that he lost £782,000 at a failed restaurant in Manchester that went bankrupt after accumulating £2 million in debt. He bought a 70 percent stake in a restaurant that has since closed.
So Drinkwater looked for more concrete paintings and shared a photo of him running on a structure site with his 585,000 followers. “Today on site,” he wrote on a photo showing him in front of a scaffold.
His career choice provoked negative comments, to which Drinkwater felt a desire to respond. Sharing one that read: “Damn Danny, hit rock bottom,” he replied: “Some of those posts, behave. I love being out there grafting! It’s a pick. “
Drinkwater continues to find his way after football, having admitted that deciding to end his career is a complicated process. “Anyone who thinks that making a lot of money will solve all their problems is not true at all,” he said last year. “Mental fitness is more vital than physical fitness. It’s the darkest I’ve ever felt.
Speaking about his retirement on the high-performance podcast in October, he said: “I think I’ve been in limbo for too long, or I was looking to play but didn’t get the chance to play at a point where I felt valued. I just think that I got agitated here for no reason, I’m satisfied that I don’t play football, but I’m satisfied that I play football, so do I shake hands with sport?
“It’s all I’ve ever known, it’s been my life since I was six or seven years old, it’s never been a simple thing. I think the way he calmed down definitely helped me. If I played week after week and “
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