Havertz: Not all footballers are into luxury. Kanté has had the same mobile phone for 10 years, Kroos is terribly frugal

Many people see footballers as spoiled millionaires who live in luxury and lose sight of reality. But according to Kai Havertz, not everyone is like that, and he gave two examples of teammates who don’t really fit into the bubble of football life.

Kai Havertz started playing at the highest level at Bayer Leverkusen as a teenager. He was seen as a huge talent in Germany, also why Chelsea paid £70 million for him and made him the most expensive Blues player in history at the time.

“I was Chelsea’s most expensive player. I don’t understand paying so much money, but it’s normal in football, look at our recent transfers. It brings with it pressure because people think you are Messi. But I was only 21 years old. People don’t see that, they just see the transfer fee,” Havertz said in an interview with The Guardian.

He was alluding to Enzo Fernandez and Mykhail Mudryk as recent transfers. The Argentine midfielder arrived from Benfica for €120m, while Chelsea paid Shakhtar €100m for the Ukrainian.

There is obviously a lot of pressure on players with such transfer sums. But Havertz isn’t exactly looking for that.

“I don’t want to be the centre of attention. At Leverkusen I was also under the microscope, but when you add the amount at Chelsea… I felt the pressure. When I was 18, 19, football controlled my life. If I played a bad game, my week was… When you’re young, you read what people write and you think. In a sense, you believe it,” Havertz muses.

But you can definitely say that the 23-year-old German does not fit the stereotype of superstar footballers who like to flaunt their wealth and buy everything they can get their hands on.

“There is an image of footballers with diamonds, luxury and all that. I’ve known players who spend so much money on so many things that you think, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ” the Chelsea striker says.

“But there are players who don’t care about that. Toni Kroos is one of them. He’s calm, he keeps his feet on the ground, he’s humble. He’s not interested in things that attract attention. He knows that life is not just football. N’golo Kanté is another. He’s had the same phone for 10 years, doesn’t care about cars or clothes,” Havertz says.

Source: The Guardian