THIS former Prem star has largely left the game behind since retiring in 2013.

In his pomp, he was named in the PFA Team of the Year while playing at right-back for Tottenham Hotspur.

But after a serious injury ended his pro career, he opted to move in a different direction.

And Stephen Carr has never looked back.

Having left Spurs for Newcastle in 2004, the Irishman spent the final years of his pro career at Birmingham City.

Blues tried to keep him on as a coach, but Carr had already developed business interests elsewhere.

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"Coaching is very difficult. It’s difficult with kids now – it’s a completely different set-up to what it was,” he told Spurs' media team.

"You’ve got academies. And how many jobs are available? How many ex-players are qualifying as coaches every year? There are not that many jobs.

"I’ve gone from being a footballer, being lucky enough to be going in at 8:30am and be home by 1:30pm. As a coach, you’re in early and home late so you need to have a real desire and hunger. For me, I don’t have any desire for that – you either love it or you don’t.

"If you don’t love it enough, you should never get into it. So, coaching never entered my mind. Instead, I moved to Spain straight away because I’m involved in restaurants and a beach club over there.

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"I thought I’d go there, it’d be a different experience. I had the freedom that I could do that."

On how his life quickly differed from his playing days, he added: "The hospitality industry is obviously different to football in that you’re not going in with a group of lads to train, you’re training on your own, but I never thought of it like that.

"I saw it as 'your time’s up, you need to go, move on to whatever next you’re going to do in your life'."

During an interview in 2013, Carr explained to the Sunday Sun how business in Marbella was booming – having welcomed some celeb guests.

He revealed: "You know the formula is working when clients are waiting up to four weeks for a reservation and we are being visited by the likes of Sir Alan Sugar, Eva Longoria, Katie Price and Jamie Oliver."

A lot has happened in the last decade, however, not least in the last few years – with the hospitality industry having been rocked by the coronavirus pandemic.

Chatting to Spurs in 2021 about the journey he has been on since those early days of retirement, Carr revealed: "I was working in staffing, in the HR department of the business for a few years.

"Then I took a bit of a step out of it, I tried to do a bit with a football agency and at the moment, I’m setting up an online clothing brand which will be made to measure called One of One – it’s going to have a fingerprint as a logo and it’ll mainly be lounge wear.

"Hopefully we will start that up this year. So, I’m actually busy with a few different things at the moment.

“Obviously, the restaurant business is good but we’re going through a stage where that industry especially has been hit very hard. You are just hoping things will change a bit – it needs to change everywhere.

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"These are difficult times at the moment in most industries. You have to adjust to it, and I think most people's attitude towards it is you just fight to next year.

"You fight and hopefully by the spring/summer, things pick up. Fingers crossed but, who knows?"

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