From footballer to referee: ‘Retirement took my life away from me. Now I have something to get up for’

Carl Baker still finds an awkwardness in using the term.

“I would have thought I’d be the last person in the world who would suffer with any type of depression,” he says. “In weird ways, I was still happy. My missus, my kids, my house. A good life…”

But his wife, Lynsey, knew otherwise. “Speaking for my missus, she said I definitely was (suffering from depression). She obviously knows me better than anyone.”

Baker can now look back on a challenging year that followed his retirement as a professional footballer, after a career involving spells at Coventry City, MK Dons and Portsmouth, through a different lens.

The days when he could find neither purpose nor motivation are behind him as he continues on a programme run by PGMO (Professional Game Match Officials) and the PFA (the Professional Footballers’ Association) to make a new, unique crop of referees out of former players. Baker, without exaggeration, calls the opportunity “life-changing”.

He knows, too, that it was needed.

“To be honest, I had no purpose,” the 42-year-old says. “Nothing to wake up for. I was at home, struggling to get out of bed.”

Baker was speaking candidly earlier this week, with a new perspective ahead of World Mental Health Day today (Friday, October 10). Time had been spent learning with PGMO staff at Loughborough University and lifting weights in a gym where the students all around are half his age.

The development days can be long, not concluding on Wednesday until he and his fellow referees in training have been to observe West Bromwich Albion’s under-21s play Juventus at The Hawthorns in the Premier League International Cup. Not that Baker, now in his second season of a three-year course, would complain.

“It’s given me a completely new outlook on life,” he says. “I’m waking up in the morning: I’m excited, I’m buzzing, I’m learning. Seven days a week. It couldn’t have come at a better time.

“It was probably a bit of a godsend because, looking back now, if I didn’t get this opportunity, I don’t know where I’d be or what I would have done.”

Baker’s story is not uncommon. After close to two decades had been spent playing professional football, mainly in the EFL, there was no clarity on what would come next when retirement came to his door.

Occasional weeks had been spent caddying for his close friend and professional golfer Robert Rock, including at the 2024 U.S. Open, but, beyond a brief driving job, there was little to fill days beyond school runs for the youngest of his three sons.

“I was finding it really, really hard,” he says. “For 20-odd years as a professional footballer, I’d always been told where to be and what time to be there, what to eat, what kit to wear. So then, all of a sudden, nothing.

“You just don’t want to get out. I wasn’t even shaving, and I wasn’t getting showered some days. I didn’t need to get up and get ready to go anywhere. I didn’t need to get my hair cut because I’ve got nowhere to go or nothing to do. I suppose the more you sink into that, it’s harder to get out of.

“I would get to the stage where I would pick my lad up from school at 3.30pm every day and, some days, I wouldn’t even start getting ready until 3 o’clock and I’d jump in the shower and get ready then, just so I looked normal and fresh and happy. So I was literally faking it for them.”

Baker’s mental health begin to suffer and he estimates the dark days spanned much of a year. It became a very different existence from the one he was used to.

Baker had been a latecomer to the EFL but earned a strong reputation as a talented attacker. He was part of an MK Dons side, playing alongside Dele Alli and Will Grigg, that won promotion to the Championship in 2014-15. He was also a League Two title-winner with Portsmouth two years later.

Close to 600 appearances were made in a playing career that spanned 20 years, but a fall from the cliff edge was something Baker was not prepared for. Only now can he see how badly he struggled.

“My wife was telling me to talk to people and reach out to people, but I never did,” he says. “To be honest, I probably spoke to two people to say I was suffering a little bit. But I had the old-school mentality of ‘I’m fine, I’ll be fine, I’ll snap out of it’ and thought I was just going through a phase, probably not admitting to myself how I was actually feeling.

“And sort of lying to myself in a way where I was thinking: ‘It’s probably just normal, I’m just bored, I’m fed up. An opportunity will come along and I’ll be fine’. And three months went, six months went, nine months went… and I still didn’t really have an opportunity that I had to grasp.

“And it was getting worse and worse, but I think me being me, I would just never admit to it and I was always sort of saying: ‘No, I’ll be fine’. I didn’t want to go out of the house, probably didn’t leave the house hardly ever, like zero social life.

“People would call me, and I wouldn’t answer my phone. They’d message me, but I’d take two or three days to reply. I just couldn’t get motivated or had no energy. It’s hard to describe but when you’ve got nothing to get up for, like job-wise and purpose-wise, it is difficult.”

Does Baker believe other retired footballers have been through similar?

“A hundred per cent, yeah,” he adds. “I would almost say I was one of the strongest-minded people. Nothing really fazed me, so I feel like now if I can go through situations and spells like that, then anyone can.

“Especially when you’ve had the football career where you’ve been spoiled a little bit. There’s like 20-odd of your best friends in there and you’re having a bit of banter with them. You’re travelling, you’re doing all kinds; you’re playing, obviously, in front of thousands of people on the weekends. It’s a brilliant life, but then you have it completely taken away from you.”

Baker says his salvation was an email sent out on behalf of the PFA in the summer of 2024. It asked for applications of interest in a new course, overseen by PGMO (formerly known as the PGMOL), that would train former players to become match officials. A three-year course, including a salary, promised a launch of new careers.

Baker was one of 10 retired players picked from 120 applicants, and his estimate is that close to 50 games, from local leagues to academy football, have had him as the referee learning on the job. The hope is that Baker and the nine others will be equipped to oversee professional fixtures at the end of their course.

“I’ve absolutely loved it,” says Baker. “I’ve had some great banter with the players. They seem to be very respectful to us, which I think it does give us a bit of an advantage — when players know you’ve played the game. The feedback from managers, coaches, players, fans has been spot on, really.”

PGMO, the body in charge of match officials across the Premier League and EFL, has placed a strong emphasis on mental health in recent times. A team of psychologists are now employed by it, while there is also regular work done with the mental health charity Mind.

“Because I’ve been through that 12 months, I’m enjoying doing it now,” says Baker. “I’m looking forward to the challenges and looking forward to travelling. People say: ‘Why would you want to be a referee?’. I 100 per cent want to be a referee because I don’t want to be that person who is sitting on the couch.”

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