DAN ROSE TELLS me he is currently reading up on Stoicism, with a copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on the desk in his dorm room.
At 19, he has already lived many of its lessons.
Two years ago, Rose was training with Schalke’s first team – for whom he turned down a new contract renewal at Everton – having already made an outstanding debut for the Irish U21s against Denmark. He was born in England but his mother is Irish, and Ireland’s belief in him was borne out by the fact Stephen Kenny personally phoned Rose’s father to check in on his progress and offer some words of encouragement.
Now, Rose is a college student at Marshall University in West Virginia, studying psychology, indulging an interest in philosophy, and striving for NCAA glory with the college footba-, sorry, soccer team.
He has decided to leave the world of professional football behind, if not forever, at least for now.
“In a way I had fallen out of love with the game”, says Rose. “I thought the best way to leave the football door open while having an option to do something through study would be to go to America.”
Rose was released from Manchester City’s academy at the age of 13 and joined Everton’s, where he rose through the ranks. In 2020, with Everton keen to keep him and amid reported interest from Barcelona and Newcastle, Rose made history in joining Schalke, becoming the first non-German goalkeeper ever to play with the club’s academy. The pandemic’s onset threatened the move, but Rose got it over the line himself when he texted the club’s transfer negotiator in German, plainly stating his desire to play for the club.
Schalke felt the right place for his development as it was, in Rose’s words, a kind of Harvard for goalkeepers, having produced Jens Lehmann and Manuel Neuer. But the pandemic immediately complicated things. Rose found himself living alone in Germany at the age of just 16, and went eight months without seeing his parents. Covid also meant there were no matches played, which meant there was nothing to do but train. And above him, the first team were relegated from the Bundesliga for the first time in 30 years.
Rose nonetheless got his Irish U21 call-up at the end of his first season, and his second season started well, playing regularly for Schalke’s U19s. He spent the Bundesliga’s winter break training with the first team and then returned to the U19 team for the season’s resumption. It was in the second of these games that Rose took a blow to the AC joint in his left shoulder that forced him off. He didn’t play again for Schalke that season, but took two painkilling injections to be able to play for Ireland’s U19s in the final round of qualifying for the European Championships. It was impossible to divorce his subsequent errors against England and Portugal from the fact he hadn’t played in six weeks.
“I focused on getting it sorted and that took me through to the beginning to the next season”, explains Rose. “I hadn’t been able to be in the gym so I’d lost a lot of muscle, I was down to about 79kg, which was much less than where they wanted me.”
At this stage Rose was playing with Schalke’s U23s, who compete in the fourth tier of German football against senior teams. Hence Schalke prioritise physicality, and Rose was omitted for a 23-year-old who weighed 90kg.
“There was no real chance of me playing and they made that clear”, says Rose. “So rather than force a move that summer I decided I’d spend the six months to Christmas bulking up. By Christmas I was back up to 87kg, so that was quite a transformation but I wasn’t enjoying the football. It wasn’t a great time, and I wanted a big, big change. That’s why I looked into America.”
This is the enduring, brutal reality of professional football: every moment of your daily life is shaped to best prepare you for an opportunity that is someone else’s to bestow.
“I was in Germany for football and I wasn’t playing, so I didn’t have a great deal of purpose there”, reflects Rose. “I had training in the morning and then had the whole day to do nothing. I’m a guy who likes to learn and try and develop myself through studies, and I couldn’t get into the habit of doing an online course. It just wasn’t working for me.
“I went there to make it and I didn’t, so you could classify it as a failure. But I found out a lot about myself. Going over there, you have to mature very quickly. I don’t regret the move.
“Having to put the pressure on myself was probably the hardest thing, and one of the reasons why I didn’t do so well there. When you’re back home, your parents push you as you’re there, so you don’t need that internal motivation, you get all the extrinsic motivation you need. When you go [to Germany] you’re being paid more than enough to live on, so the motivation has to come from within. And if you don’t have that fire and that love, there will be players who are not as good as you who will train better than you.
“That happened. There was a goalkeeper I was ahead of in the U19s, and now he is way ahead of me because he loved to train. I didn’t train well enough as I was often of the mindset that, ‘I may not be the best in training but I have the quality in games I was showing.’ And I was showing it. In games, I was turning up. But that only lasts so long, as you are not improving at the same rate.
“That’s what a lot of people don’t realise. Unless you are ridiculously talented, becoming a footballer is hard work. It’s dedication. You have to get everything right. I am a good goalkeeper, but to make it, I have had to work so hard. Probably harder than a lot of people I’ve been with since I was nine. That dedication, day to day, you can only do it for as long as you love it. And if you get to the point where you’re not loving it, then everything collapses. The diet, the gym. You have to love it.”
Rose had offers to stay in the professional game. Clubs at Championship and League One level expressed an interest, as did clubs in Germany and the Netherlands. A Swedish club offered him a contract as their second-choice goalkeeper with a hefty wage packet.
But he knew he wanted America. He had several suitors but picked a scholarship offer from Marshall University, won over after a meeting with manager Chris Grassie. Marshall’s soccer team won the NCAA Championship in 2020 for the first time and Rose says recapturing the title this year is “all they think about.”
Marshall get crowds of around 5,000 to their home games and even had a few ardent souls make the six-hour trek to Michigan for a recent friendly game. Pre-season preparations included a tour of Brazil and games against Palmeiras’ U20s and Botafogo’s U23s. The season kicks off next week, with the ultimate ambition to win the NCAA title in front of more than 10,000 fans at the end of the year. (The final is slated for the day before Rose’s twentieth birthday.)
Rose is their first-choice goalkeeper, but, like anyone else, has to maintain his grades to be eligible to play.
“It is good to have more structure to my time”, says Rose. “At university you have classes and deadlines to meet, rather than being at home thinking, ‘I could do this’, but also have so many other things you could waste your time with. Here I have got to do it. And if you don’t do it, you won’t play. It’s great to have that discipline.”
Rose’s path to this point attracts fascination in college, surrounded as he is by people who strive for what he has stepped away from.
“The natural thing people ask is, ‘You had the opportunities to be a pro and you turned it down?’”, says Rose. “Everyone here is working on being a pro, whereas I am at the stage where that’s not really what my ultimate goal is. But it’s difficult, sometimes you feel you’re making the wrong decision. ‘If everyone wants this, am I the one who is wrong?’ But you have to convince yourself that it is about what you want, rather than what everyone around you wants.
“And I have lived it. I am the one with the most experience. I have had money, and cars, and a nice house, and lived in a different country. It was nice for a while but after a while the mindset catches up with you. If you don’t enjoy the training, you can’t be a footballer. It’s impossible.
“Being a footballer sounds nice off your lips, everyone loves you for it, but it is not real. It isn’t. Some of the guys I see every day who want to be players, they love football and, amazing for them, they need to go for it.
“For the last year-and-a-bit, I haven’t had that absolute love. I also know I have the capabilities of making it in other areas of life which are perhaps better suited to me. That’s what is so great about being here: I can build on that while training with a very good team and hopefully play with a very good team for four years. And at the end of that, if I want to continue playing, I will have those options and have everything else.”
Rose knows he won’t be picked for Ireland while playing on the college circuit, but that passion still flickers.
“I would love to play for them again”, he says. “If I continue playing, then I’d back myself. It would mean I have fallen back in love with the game. When I look at the boys playing, you feel that twinge in your heart, ‘Ah, I could be there.’”
Moving to America has already brought about a sense of rejuvenation. It may not yet be what it was but i exists and it is unmistakable.
“I love the feeling of stepping onto the pitch”, he says. “The feeling of warming up in a big stadium and making those saves…it’s so good. I am really enjoying training now, I feel I am getting stronger and getting better. If I have a season playing week in week out and feel I am really building, it could come back. It could come back.”
