When Chelsea Women open their season against Tottenham Hotspur Women in front of a full Stamford Bridge this Sunday, one ex-Blues player will be watching with mixed feelings.
Lizzie Durack quit as a Chelsea goalkeeper this summer to follow a new financial career in the City of London, and many of her friends will be in action as the FA Women’s Super League kicks off.
And, while they have been taking part in pre-season training, she has been getting her feet under the table at Goldman Sachs in their Prime Brokerage Division, working with wealthy hedge fund clients.
So why – at the age of 25 – has she quit one of England’s top teams, with arguably the best years of her playing career still ahead of her?
“I made my decision for a lot of reasons, and obviously it was a difficult one to make.” says Durack, who has a degree in economics and neurobiology, and had previously served an internship at Goldman Sachs when she was a student.
“The main one was – I had come to a point in my football career where I had achieved a certain amount that I was happy with. In order to take the next step and be one of the best in the game, it would have taken five years or so – if I was ever going to be fortunate enough to actually achieve
that top level.”
During the 2018-19 season, Durack found herself behind two other goalkeepers in the Chelsea pecking order, and by the end of the season there were four goalkeepers at the club vying for places.
“I had to make this big decision, and take on board the realisation that opportunities for a young goalkeeper are hard to come by,” she says.
“I had thrown myself into football since my teens. It got so I was wondering if I should start a financial career further years down the line, or just say ‘it has been a great time, now is the moment I should invest my energies into the world of finance’.”
‘Stimulation’
Durack – who now works in “capital introduction and consulting” at Goldman Sachs – talked things over with her parents who said they would support whatever decision she made.
Similarly, she said Chelsea women’s goalkeeping coach Stuart Serle was supportive, asking her to think again, believing she had potential and could kick on in football.
Born
in Australia, she was the only girl in her school football team, went on to study at Harvard in the US for four years, won a full international cap for her mother’s homeland England, and played professionally for both Everton and Chelsea.
But a different career was never far from her thoughts, and during her last two years as a player she found time to study for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) programme for investment professionals, and has passed her CFA Level 1 and 2 exams.
“It was starting to annoy me to see my academic peers getting on with their careers,” says Durack, whose father is from Sydney and mother from Doncaster, “I felt I was missing the intellectual stimulation that a career in finance could give me.”
