When it comes to football, few people are able to come close to them, but how did some of the best players in Premier League history fare at school?
As football bosses and players hope for three points on the weekend, teenagers will be keeping their fingers crossed for as many 9s as possible. It’s the time of year when students in the UK find out their GCSE grades.
For many, GCSEs lay down a path of promise, while others may have found the exams more challenging. It’s a rite of passage every young person treads before they become an adult.
Even the richest and most illustrious Premier League footballers stood in the grounds of their school to open that worrying envelope. As young people across the country learn their grades, Mirror Football has a look at how those in the Premier League, past and present, fared in their grades.
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Wayne Rooney
Wayne Rooney was impressing people at Everton before he even sat his GCSEs. Not long after exam season finished, he crashed home an iconic 30-yard strike against Arsenal while playing for the Toffees in 2002 aged 16. Judging by his results, life would have been different if he had not become one of the greatest players in English football history.
The former England captain is the first to admit he left school without any qualifications, owing it to the fact he started playing for Everton more regularly just as he was supposed to be sitting his exams. However, he recently hit out at people who deemed him to be unintelligent.
He told BBC Sport: “It’s no secret that I didn’t even take GCSEs but I think people assume because of that that I’m not educated, which is really wrong. I made a conscious effort when I was at Everton and Manchester United to educate myself in a lot of different things, such as black history and religion.
“The reason I did that was because I wanted to hold conversations with my team-mates who are from different backgrounds. That was something I did to help me with my team-mates and help understand how they have been brought up. That’s probably something people don’t understand about me.”
Steven Gerrard
When it comes to football intelligence, Steven Gerrard stood head and shoulders above most when he was bossing the midfield for Liverpool. As is often the case with many players who rose to the top level as a youngster, most of Gerrard’s energy was spent on the pitch, rather than in the classrooms.
Academically, he was not the greatest, earning one C, six Ds and two Es in his GCSE exams. However, when it came to leadership, he was showing excellent traits when he was very young, according to his former Huyton and Roby Primary School teacher Gillian Morgan, who also coached their school football team.
She said: “The thing I remember most about him was his ability as a leader on the field. I think he started playing for the school team when he was nine years old and even then Steven was always trying to help others.”
Gerrard’s time at school did not hold him back, as he finished his career with one Champions League title, a Europa League title, two FA Cups, three League Cups and 114 international caps for England.
Frank Lampard
Frank Lampard is a jack of many trades, excelling academically as well as in football. The Coventry City manager went to the oldest school in Essex, the independent Brentwood School, where he shared classes with the likes of boxing supremo Eddie Hearn.
He earned 12 GCSEs at A* or A, including an A* in Latin. Looking back on his time studying the Roman language in a past interview, Lampard said: “I got an A* in Latin, more through application than talent for Latin, I would say. I don’t know how I did it. In terms of application, I was quite a good boy at school.
“I wanted to do well, I wanted to please my teachers and my parents back home, and Latin was one I think I probably just crammed in a lot of revision at the right time and managed to get an A*, which everyone is so surprised about!”
Marcus Rashford
Marcus Rashford may have wished he’d taken GCSE Spanish now he’s playing for Barcelona. The England international left school with nine GCSEs and even stayed on to do A-Levels at Sixth Form.
While he was doing the latter, Louis van Gaal gave him his Manchester United debut, where he scored a brace against Danish side FC Midtjylland in the Europa League round of 32. No matter how well he was playing for United as a student, a source told the Sun he was never going to take his eye off the ball when it came to his education.
The source said: “Marcus is a very level-headed guy and he knows his education is really important. He could have scored 10 goals against Arsenal and it still wouldn’t have stopped him coming back into school and working hard.”
Bukayo Saka
Similarly to Rashford, Bukayo Saka successfully balanced his footballing demands with his educational goals. He left school to embark on his football career with a string of strong GCSE results in his bag.
Speaking about his time at school with the Arsenal website: “My mum and dad always encouraged me. They never stopped me from playing football, they just wanted to see a balance and I was also interested in my education.
“I actually got quite good grades, so they were pleased on that side. I got four A*s and three As in my GCSEs, so I did quite well at school. My favourite lesson was obviously PE, but I also liked business studies a lot, I got an A* in that.”
Harry Kane
It’s well documented that Tottenham Hotspur’s highest goalscorer Harry Kane was an Arsenal fan as a youngster. However, he was also a good student who did well in his GCSEs, which he sat at Chingford Foundation School, where David Beckham also went.
Former head of PE at the school, Mark Leadon, revealed Kane passed all of his GCSEs and was a “model student.” He told the East London Guardian: “He was conscientious, behaved himself and was a good all-round sportsman. He never saw himself as a superstar, he just got on with it.”
Whether Kane took GCSE German is another matter. If he did, it would certainly be useful now he is playing for Bayern Munich. Either way, he is doing well in Bavaria, opening his account for the new season with a goal in Bayern’s DFL Super Cup triumph over VfB Stuttgart.
Harry Maguire
‘Slad head’, as he affectionately became known during England’s run to the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup, has put his head to good use for more than just on the pitch. Harry Maguire left school with outstanding GCSE grades.
He picked up a hefty collection of A*s and As, impressing teachers with his mathematical skills in particular. The United defender’s former deputy head teacher Sue Cain once said he could have become a skilled accountant had football not been his main passion.
She said: “Harry was such a modest lad. He had his head screwed on even at that age. He did everything you asked him to do and he never questioned why. He was popular, and he was huge.”
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