Kemar Roofe (Photo by Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)
“The grass wasn’t cut, the pitches would be frozen at times, there’d be dog poo on the pitch and dogs running on the pitch as well.”
In May 2022, Kemar Roofe scored a penalty in the Europa League final. Last winter, he was training by himself on a waterlogged pitch in a local park, avoiding dog poo.
When soccer players’ contracts end, there’s no support system to help them get back in the game. Roofe, who is still valued on Transfermarkt at $900,000, went from playing at Rangers, one of the biggest clubs in Scotland, to literally being left out in the cold.
He says “these little things can derail me,” but he had a secret weapon to keep him motivated: his journal.
The Power of Writing It Down
“It’s something that I’ve been doing my whole career since the age of seven,” Roofe says in an interview with RG Media, “whether that’s watching the game back with my dad and analysing it” or “remembering in my head and rewriting it down on a piece of paper.” Roofe says his journal has been “kind of like an anchor, it keeps you centered,” and with words on paper, “there’s no kind of hiding place.” His routine throughout his career has been to write down his targets and break down the steps needed to get there.
He says, “I find that important because it stops you from overthinking, and a lot of the problem in football and in sports and in life is overthinking.”
He’ll then look back at what he wrote and ask himself if he made the improvements needed.
After eight months out of the game, Kemar Roofe finally found a new club in February, joining Derby County, who were in the middle of a relegation fight. Derby were dead and buried, seven points adrift of safety when new head coach John Eustace joined in February, and one of Eustace’s first moves was to bolster his attack by signing Roofe.
He says joining a new club at that point “was always going to be a risk because I was out for eight months training by myself,” and wasn’t quite up to speed. But Roofe was thrown into the thick of it, coming on as a substitute in the two games immediately after joining, with a view to starting games soon after. But then disaster struck as Roofe injured his hamstring.
“So I was pushing myself a bit more to try and get a bit of extra fitness into me, so I’d be better prepared for the game, and yeah, I probably pushed a bit too much,” he says in hindsight.
But “You either take your time and miss out on a few games by taking time or you try and risk it a little bit and do that extra bit more fitness-wise.” He says if he had taken his time, he would have missed a few games anyway because that’s how long it would’ve taken him to get up to speed.
But Roofe says he’s at the stage in his career when his experience means he can join a club midseason and make a difference. Even if he isn’t playing, he can help the rest of the team with little things to help them win the game. “For me, it’s all about winning the game, it’s not about who’s playing or who’s the hero.” Derby ended up surviving in the Championship, avoiding relegation by one point. But for Roofe, who had recovered from his hamstring injury in time to make an appearance in the final match of the season, the summer has come too soon.
“For me, I still want to continue, and I don’t feel the mental and physical fatigue as all the other players,” he says. “I still need the season to continue.”
Rather than taking an end-of-season vacation, he is still running and working on his fitness.
At the other end of the Championship table, Kemar Roofe’s former club Leeds United won promotion back to the Premier League. Roofe says, “it’s a massive task for teams that get promoted … to one, survive, and then strive,” but he says Leeds have the experience from their last spell in the Premier League, so “I’d imagine they’ve learned from any disappointment from the first time they went up there and will correct it this time.”
Turning Journaling Into a Resource
As keeping a journal has been a massive part of Roofe’s career, he decided to use his time without a club to create the Two Sides Player Journal. He says when you just write things on a piece of paper or on your phone, it can get lost easily, so he looked to see if there were any soccer journals out there. When he couldn’t find anything, he decided to create one himself.
“I spent a few days doing it and found out that I could publish it on Amazon fairly easily, so that’s what I did.”
Roofe says the journal gives you targets and something to aim for, and “also allows you to debrief and analyse your game.” He says he will set himself several goals for each season and that there’s also a page in the journal where you can write down your fixtures.
“I’ll print off the fixture list and I’ll break it down month by month, how many goals I want to score in that month,” and that this helps prevent him from overthinking during matches. He says that in the journal you can write down a certain routine, like a stretch or mental exercise, and that this can help you understand why you had success in that particular game or training session.
And the player journal has another benefit.
He also recommends that any players that find themselves without a club this summer keep a journal to stay motivated and grounded and to not overthink. “You overthink things, panic, stress yourself out, and then probably just give up, whereas if you write stuff down, you make it simple.”
Kemar Roofe says one of the highlights of his career was scoring for Jamaica.
“Scoring a goal for an actual country is a special feeling. It’s hard to explain, but knowing you’ve contributed something to a country, it’s a really good feeling.” His other highlights were winning lots of silverware with Rangers and reaching the Europa League final with Rangers against Eintracht Frankfurt and dealing with the pressure of such a massive match. His career has also taken him to Iceland and Belgium, where Vincent Kompany called him up and asked him to join him at Anderlecht.
This summer, his plan is to keep working on his fitness and see what options he has closer to the start of preseason. He says he really enjoyed his time at Derby, saying Eustace is “a really good guy and a top, top coach as well” and that he wants to find a club with a similar work ethic and surround himself with good people. While others might be taking a break, Roofe is just getting started.
Steve Price is a freelance football journalist and regular contributor to Forbes.com. He has been on the International Sports Press Association’s shortlist for Best Column and has been on the Korean Football Association’s head coach hiring committee. Steve has reported from major tournaments like Euro 2024 and appeared on major outlets like the BBC and The Guardian. He has interviewed FIFA executives, Premier League players and international coaches among others.
