The Englishman realized that he was not talented enough for football and decided to dedicate himself to another career that “pulled” him.
Serbian footballers Aleksandar Kolarov and Matija Nastasić played together for Manchester City at the beginning of the previous decade and maybe there noticed the talented English defender Risa Vabara. “Citizens” brought him as a 16-year-old and had high hopes for him, however, after several loan spells in lower leagues (Ipswich, Oldham, Blackpool, Doncaster), then Barnsley, Wigan and Bolton, he decided to end his playing career already at the age of 26 because he realized that he had no quality.
It didn’t break him, he was looking for a new career and it didn’t take long for him to “find” himself in a completely different industry so he today at the head of a company worth as much as 37 million euros. And he probably doesn’t regret at all that he decided to end his football dreams…
What did Vabara do? As a Manchester City player, he earned 1.2 million euros, he saved some more money playing in the second and third tiers of English football, and then invested 17,000 euros in an online clothing store that changed his life.
In a few years, he has progressed so much that now his company is “turning over” a profit of 37 million euros, and he will not stop there, as he is preparing to open a store in “Oxford Street”, a street in London known for its luxury clothing. It is expected that his business will continue to grow in the coming years.
“I signed for City at a time of transition, when there were two or three coaches and the same number of owners. I knew that my days at City were coming to an end and my father always told me that I needed to have financial stability. We started in 2013 when we launched a collection that included tracksuits, t-shirts and hoodies, things that I could sell to football players, so that we could slowly adapt to the market… My path from a football player to a fashion businessman went slowly because I did not progress in football and I was It was difficult to decide on a different career at first, but I had to,” said Ris Vabara.
Interestingly, Vabara was also a young representative of England, but today nobody in the fashion industry knows him for that, only for the “Maniere de Voir” brand, which is followed by more than a million people on Instagram.