\u201cI don\u2019t think of football at all, which sometimes, when you are younger, you think of this and that and maybe worry a little bit about things. But when I go home, I relax even more, so I think I need to give a shout-out to my son.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a reminder that fatherhood and football are often overlooked despite affecting the majority of players during their careers.<\/p>\n
But how does it all work in reality? How do players manage the inevitable lack of sleep, and how does this impact their ability to perform to their highest level? What support are they given by their clubs? And why is the idea of paternity leave still virtually unheard of in football?<\/p>\n
From juggling triplets \u2014 including on a team bonding trip to Thorpe Park \u2014 to rushing out of a stadium on matchday to attend their child\u2019s birth this season, The Athletic spoke to several players about their experiences of fatherhood in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the toughest period of my life. We didn\u2019t really know what we\u2019d let ourselves in for \u2014 we\u2019d never experienced having children. And we certainly went in at the deep end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Danny Hollands is recounting\u00a0his memory of having triplets, Sofia, Annabella and Mia, in September 2011, just months after signing for Charlton Athletic from Bournemouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a credit to my wife (Natalie) that she didn\u2019t let it affect my schedule in terms of the fact I needed rest and sleep,\u201d he told The Athletic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d do the 10pm feed and then I\u2019d go straight to bed. My wife would do the overnight feeds. I would have to get up after that, and help with the kids while she had a little sleep and then I\u2019d go off to training. It was all very regimented; it was like an army camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hollands acknowledges his wife was doing the heavy lifting, but he still remembers that he loved away matches, as it provided an opportunity to have a full night of uninterrupted sleep in the hotel room the night before a game.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy roommate at the time was Royce Wiggins, and he must have thought, \u2018Jesus Christ, you are so boring\u2019,\u201d Hollands said. \u201cBecause I\u2019d literally go to bed early and I\u2019d sleep all the way through. I felt bad for my wife, but at the time, I\u2019d make sure she was never on her own.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also recalled catching some sleep in any empty room he could find when Charlton met up for home matches. Manager Chris Powell liked his side to meet at 11.30am for a 3pm kick off, which was earlier than most.<\/p>\n
Hollands also recalls being invited to Thorpe Park amusement park on a team bonding day and bringing the kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lads were looking at me like I was some kind of alien, with three kids, trying to feed them. It\u2019s kind of like 100 miles an hour and everyone was looking at me like, \u2018Oh my God, how on earth do you do it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet despite his hectic home life, Hollands had one of his best campaigns that season. He played a starring role in a Charlton side that won the League One title in 2012.<\/p>\n
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\n Danny Hollands celebrates scoring for Charlton against Hartlepool in May 2012 (Phil Cole\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were times where I was really, really emotionally and physically drained, I was just shattered,\u201d Hollands said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t want my kids to be an excuse for me playing badly. As soon as your children come into the world, you don\u2019t want to let them down, and you feel like you need to provide for them. I never wanted that to be a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parenthood is often an extra motivator for new dads. After scoring Liverpool\u2019s winning goal against Chelsea last year, Curtis Jones said fatherhood had given him a new lease of life.<\/p>\n
\u201c(I\u2019ve been) a dad (for) a week. It\u2019s the best thing ever,\u201d he told Sky Sports<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019m playing with a smile on my face. It\u2019s a different type of joy. My little girl would be proud as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Kenyon played more than 250 matches for Morecambe in League Two. He is now assistant head coach at AFC Fylde and celebrated the birth of his second daughter, Penelope, last month. His first daughter, Harper, was born in March 2022, just nine days after he signed for Ayr United from Scunthorpe United.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t get as much sleep but, for myself, it gave me more of a purpose,\u201d he told The Athletic. \u201cI would put 100 per cent into every game no matter what, but I then wanted to do well for my little girl. She was only a few days old, she didn\u2019t even know what football was!\u201d<\/p>\n Stepping up into a coaching role, Kenyon has now experienced fatherhood from both sides.<\/p>\n \u201cThis time, my little girl was born late on Monday evening. We were still in hospital on the Tuesday, but I was back in training on the Thursday,\u201d he said. \u201cStaff said I was a bit of a zombie, but I was there, I didn\u2019t want to miss stuff.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to miss my little girl growing up either. But I need to, as a coach now, help the team as best I can to progress. As a coach, I don\u2019t think you ever stop.\u201d<\/p>\n The move into parenthood often sees players thrown into challenging situations.<\/p>\n Kenyon was three and a half hours away from his partner Morgan and firstborn Harper, who were living in Preston, when he signed for Ayr in the Scottish Championship.<\/p>\n \u201cI was there (at Ayr) for three months, so the baby was going up and down the motorway to Scotland,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very tough. But the manager at Ayr (Lee Bullen) was great with me.\u201d<\/p>\n Kenyon recalled how during his first match for Ayr, a Friday night televised match at home to Kilmarnock, he was frantically checking for news from the substitutes bench as his wife had gone into hospital that evening.<\/p>\n He\u2019d agreed with the manager that if he needed to go, he\u2019d give him a quick nod and then shoot off. However, there was no need in the end, as his daughter arrived two days later.<\/p>\n In a similar tale, Oxford United captain Cameron Brannagan was ready to come off at any point during his side\u2019s 3-1 away win against Bristol City this season on September 21, as his partner was due to give birth.<\/p>\n \u201cMy missus had James Constable\u2019s (Oxford first-team player liaison manager) number, so I basically said \u2018Look, if you go into labour, or you need me at any stage, just call Beano (Constable) and I\u2019ll come straight off\u2019,\u201d he told The Athletic.<\/p>\n \u201cFunnily enough, when I came off in the 80th minute, we got the call, I literally grabbed my gear and sprinted out of the stadium. I was on the way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford before the game had even finished. It took me about an hour and a half. I managed to make it. It was a bit of a stressful day, but we got there.\u201d<\/p>\n Brannagan\u2019s son, Leo, was born five minutes after midnight on September 22.<\/p>\n \n Brannagan made the 80-mile trip from Ashton Gate to John Radcliffe Hospital to make the birth of his son (Alex Burstow\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Following the birth of his daughter Ocean in August this year, Tranmere Rovers striker Josh Davison became a father for the second time. His first daughter, Nala, was born on October 14, 2023. She was born at 12.45am in the morning \u2014 yet Davison still turned out for his former side, AFC Wimbledon, later that same day.<\/p>\n \u201cI hadn\u2019t been in the team for a couple of games and I thought \u2018Well, everything went fine with the birth, thank God, and we had family over to help out and stuff,\u201d he told The Athletic.<\/p>\n \u201cI said that I felt like I had to go and play to see if I could take my chance to get in the team. I didn\u2019t score, unfortunately, but I had an OK game, nothing special. But, yeah, I think I ended up going to bed at 4am, and then I was up around 9 or 10am to shoot over to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n In some painful instances, though, players can find their lives turned upside down due to complications around the birth.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Ben Gibson told The Athletic about his ordeal<\/a> after his second child, Mylie, was born two months early, when she arrived on December 17 last year. Mylie, who weighed just 3lb 3oz, had to spend 44 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.<\/p>\n At the same time, Gibson had to look after his 11-month-old son, Taylor, who had also been in intensive care for five days after he was born, while trying to work his way back into Norwich\u2019s team after injuring his foot.<\/p>\n In the same interview, he recalled the horrible moment when, walking off the pitch at the end of Norwich\u2019s game against Southampton on New Year\u2019s Day, he was met by Jonny Martin, the club\u2019s head of first-team operations,\u00a0who said he must call his partner, Ashley.<\/p>\n \u201cThat moment of fear just hit me,\u201d he said. \u201cI rang her off his phone and she said Mylie had basically stopped breathing eight times. I went straight to the hospital. That moment was, \u2018Wow\u2019. It was, \u2018What\u2019s going on?\u2019. I should have been there.<\/p>\n \u201cAshley didn\u2019t want to call to disrupt what I was doing in terms of the game. I said to her after, \u2018Football is not important compared to that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In a reflection of society more generally, attitudes have certainly changed.<\/p>\n Martin Allen was fined two weeks\u2019 wages for missing a Queens Park Rangers match to attend the birth of George, his first child, in 1989 by Trevor Francis, his manager at the time. The story became front-page news and was even discussed in the Houses of Parliament.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no way I was going to miss the birth,\u201d Allen told The Athletic in a previous interview<\/a>. \u201cForget sport. Forget football. Seeing a baby coming into the world is the most special moment of my life \u2014 the same with my second son, Charlie. It beats anything I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n However, even in 2010, John Barnes missed the birth of his seventh child, a son, as he was working as a pundit for the Liverpool vs Chelsea match on Sky Sports. Asked by host Richard Keys at half-time, and with Liverpool leading 2-0, if he wanted to go, Barnes chuckled, before replying: \u201cI\u2019ll stay. If we were 2-0 down, I\u2019d go.\u201d<\/p>\n Then there was the tale involving Phil Neville, who left his wife, Julie, to attend training when she was \u201chaemorrhaging quite badly\u201d during the birth of their daughter, Isabella, in 2004. In a later interview with the Manchester Evening News<\/a>, Julie said her husband admitted, \u201cThat\u2019s the only time probably football maybe shouldn\u2019t have come first.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Martin Allen playing for QPR in 1986 (David Cannon\/Allsport via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Andrew Cole, a former team-mate of Neville at Manchester United, has also spoken about his regret in a documentary, as reported by the Mirror<\/a>, about missing the birth of his first child, Devante, to play in a match against Southampton in 1995.<\/p>\n Some, however, were adamant they did not want to miss their child\u2019s birth, which created rifts with their managers.<\/p>\n Xabi Alonso, for example, missed Liverpool\u2019s Champions League round-of-16 match against Inter in 2008 to attend his child\u2019s birth. Alonso told El Pais<\/a> that he offered to travel solo to Milan \u201cwhen everything was fine\u201d, but his request was rejected by his manager Rafa Benitez.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Ben Foster told the Football Fill-In<\/a> that he stepped back from international duty following manager Fabio Capello\u2019s handling of the situation when his wife was about to give birth to their son. He was initially given permission to attend his son\u2019s birth by Capello, but ended up missing it by 10 minutes. He was then told he needed to return as Capello wanted him to play the second half of a friendly the following night. However, once he was back, Capello left him on the bench.<\/p>\n While there have been recent instances of players missing their child\u2019s birth to play in a match \u2014 such as Alexander Sorloth, who, despite having permission from Villarreal to miss the game, went on to score a 93rd-minute winner against Almeria in April\u00a0 \u2014 they are now the exception, rather than the norm, with managers generally now taking a more sympathetic and understanding approach to a player\u2019s personal circumstances.<\/p>\n France\u2019s Kingsley Coman, for example, left the national team camp at both Euro 2020 and Euro 2024 to attend the birth of his third and fourth child<\/a>, while Phil Foden left the England camp at Euro 2024 to attend the birth of his third child<\/a>. Earlier this season, Liverpool\u2019s Ryan Gravenberch missed the Community Shield game as he\u2019d just become a dad<\/a>.<\/p>\n But while it\u2019s now widely accepted that a player would skip a match to attend their child\u2019s birth, the idea of a footballer taking paternity leave is still unthinkable.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2232977912-scaled.jpg\")
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