Celtic duo Ramon Vega (left) and Paul Lambert celebrate their Tennents Scottish cup final win against Hibernian (Photo by Michael Steele /Allsport)
On October 2, 1974, Pelé called it quits on a legendary career that saw him win three World Cups with Brazil and five Brasileirão titles with Santos, cementing his status as the greatest footballer of the first three-quarters of the 20th century. Pelé was expecting his earnings to allow him a long, tranquil retirement, but instead, a cascade of imprudent business deals and abysmal legal advice left him on the verge of bankruptcy, losing nearly all of his 41 investment properties to bank seizures. And whilst he only held a 6% stake in the Fiolax rubber company, he had personally guaranteed a loan for them—when Fiolax went belly up, the bank demanded Pelé foot the bill of over $1 million. After just eight months out of the game, Pelé was forced to cut his retirement short and join the New York Cosmos, where he played until 1977 as the highest-paid athlete in the world.
Pelé’s story is far from an anomaly. From George Best to Paul Gascoigne to David James, there have been countless ex-footballers who have blown their fortunes immediately after hanging up their boots. Some fall prey to alcoholism, drug addiction, or ludomania; some get exploited by unscrupulous advisors, lawyers, friends, or even family members; and some lose their riches following a string of ill-advised purchases and investments.
Ramon Vega could have been in the same boat as them, had it not been for the influence of his mother. Instead, he’s proven that a little education goes a long way.
Rising Through the Ranks in Switzerland
The youngest of five siblings, Vega was raised by two Spanish immigrants in the small town of Olten, Switzerland and began playing football for local side FC Olten. When he was 15 years old, he tried out for the biggest club in the country – Grasshopper Club Zurich – and was accepted. But just when he looked set to play for the Hoppers, his mother threw cold water on his transfer to Zurich and told them that her son needed to prioritize his academic studies over football. Vega was bawling like a baby, but within two days, he was jumping for joy. The club officials called up his mother and informed her that they had found a suitable arrangement for both parties – Ramon would attend school in Trimbach, study for a degree in banking and finance at the Zürich Business School, and work at the Credit Suisse bank, whilst also playing for Grasshoppers.
“It was a real pain because all the other players were not doing their studies, but if I look back now, I’m very happy I did it,” stated Vega in an exclusive RG interview. “It wasn’t easy – all your mates wanted to go out on the weekend, and you had to stay in and make sure you’re fit for the Saturday game, or you have to study for your exams on Monday…that was my sacrifice to get to where I am now. I would suggest to any young player: football is one thing, but once you finish your career, you’ve got another career to build up. You may potentially make a little bit of money, but it will go very quickly if you haven’t got an education behind you.”
“Most times, players are taken advantage of by agents or even family members, and by the time they’ve retired, they don’t have a penny to their name.
These guys need to be supported and guided…some aren’t educated, and for that, I have to thank my mother. She said ‘no education, no football’….if I didn’t have my degree, I couldn’t even think about going into the finance world because the academic point of view and basic understanding wouldn’t be there. If I look back now, this is one of the best things I’ve done, thanks to my mother.”
Fighting Through Pain in England
Despite finishing behind England, the Netherlands, and Scotland in their group, Vega impressed in central defense thanks to his physical fortitude, aerial prowess, and never-say-die spirit. These performances earned him a transfer to Italian side Cagliari: for the first time in his life, Vega was going to be living outside Switzerland and playing in Serie A, which was considered the best league in the world at the time.
However, after just a few months in Sardinia, he found himself on the move once again in January 1997. Real Madrid, the most successful club in world football and the club that Ramon grew up supporting, were interested in signing him and tabled an official bid for the 25-year-old defender. Vega boarded a flight from Cagliari to Milan, where he was preparing to take another flight to the Spanish capital to negotiate personal terms. However, during his layover, he got a call from a Real Madrid official: manager Fabio Capello announced that he would depart at the end of the season after coming to blows with club president Lorenzo Sanz. With Capello, who was pushing for Vega’s signature, soon to be out of the picture, Los Blancos needed to change their strategy and focus on different players. And as such, Vega’s Real Madrid chapter had ended before it even began.
Stuck in the Milan airport, Vega needed to make a decision about his future. Whilst there were plenty of clubs chasing him, such as Leeds United, Milan, and Liverpool, Vega decided to start a new journey in London with Tottenham Hotspur. He developed a stalwart partnership in central defense with Sol Campbell, and after bouncing around from various managers and contenting himself with midtable finishes, he finally found success during the tail-end of the 1998/99 campaign under George Graham. However, just when Spurs were challenging for two trophies, Vega suffered a stress fracture in his ankle.
Rather than quit, Vega chose to train on painkillers and ended up starting the 1999 Football League Cup Final. Despite suffering a fierce challenge from Robbie Keane, and despite exacerbating his injury by delivering a goal-saving tackle on Emile Heskey, Vega played the full 90 as Tottenham beat Leicester City 1-0 courtesy of Allan Nielsen’s last-minute winner to claim their first trophy in eight years. He missed the rest of the campaign, including the FA Cup semifinals where they lost to Newcastle, and spent seven months on the sidelines after undergoing surgery. By the time he returned, he had been relegated to second-choice; desperate for regular minutes, Vega made the move to Celtic on loan.
Transitioning from Football into Finance and Business
Throughout his 13-year professional career, Vega developed a reputation as a goal-scoring defender, scoring 36 goals in 387 club appearances. This was on full display in his Celtic debut, where he bagged a brace against Aberdeen. The Swiss defender emerged as an indispensable cog under Martin O’Neill as Celtic won the domestic treble – the Scottish Premiership, the Scottish Cup and the Scottish League Cup. But rather than stick around in Glasgow, Vega returned to England and joined second-tier Watford as one of the club’s highest-paid players. However, after an underwhelming 14th-place finish, he was released by the Hornets.
“Watford at the time was in a financial crisis, and they exposed themselves with all of the players they brought, and they needed to cut their budget by releasing me. If I had stayed longer, I’m not sure Watford would’ve existed…it could have gone bankrupt because my salary was high. We agreed to terminate my four-year contract after one year but have a certain payment schedule that helps the club, and which allowed me to go forward to the next club.”
Vega spent one year in the French second tier with US Créteil-Lusitanos before hanging up his boots in 2003 at the age of 31. Rather than stick around in football, however, he chose to start a new career as a city trader. He became co-founder of Duet Asset Management in 2002, and six years later, he founded Vega Swiss Asset Management (VSAM), which specialized in foreign exchange trading and fixed income. Having made £15,000 a week at the peak of his Spurs career, Vega has now earned a profit of over £20 million.
“Retirement is the hardest part for any sports professional because you’ve been playing for decades and not thinking about anything else, and suddenly, you’re going to start from scratch.
Every player faces that – the highs where everyone wants you, and suddenly, nobody wants you. You’re playing football every day, you’re traveling around the world, you’re meeting a lot of people, and suddenly you’re stuck in an office and need to make sure you start to make money in a different way. It’s a completely different mindset, and that’s the difficulty that most professionals will have, they might even fall into depression if they don’t have a lot of support around them.”
“I nearly gave up after two years because I wasn’t being taken seriously…these big-shot fund managers who studied at Oxford, Yale and Stanford looked at me and raised their eyebrows, saying ‘What is this football player doing coming into the finance world?’ But it’s like everywhere: once you start to make money for people, that answers all the questions and you eventually build up credibility and get accepted in the industry, although it took me a long time.”
Staying in Touch with Football and Investing in Himself
Since swapping the football pitch for the trading floor, Vega has been able to generate considerable wealth thanks to various shrewd investments and business acquisitions, founding the Swiss real estate company Mattern Capital Rosalp to focus on the development of luxury hotels worldwide, as well as founding “Ramon Vega’s Soccer School” in Marbella, Spain, and co-owning a jewelry store in Romford, England. When the market was betting on Italian sovereign bonds to default with yields of 7.8%, Vega’s firm poured its funds into these bonds and ended up netting a profit of €15 million for his clients. But whilst he continued to make inroads in the finance world, Vega never strayed far from football. In 2009, he made an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Premier League side Portsmouth, and even when he started work at 7 a.m. for VSAM and ended at 10 p.m., he still found time to play five-a-side football matches.
However, Brexit brought stormy weather for Vega’s firm – which, at one point, managed £1.9 billion in assets – with many of its clients taking their business elsewhere. Since VSAM’s liquidation in May 2023, Vega and his wife Claudia have spent their time bouncing around from London to Budapest to Dubai and consulting individual investors, football federations, and football clubs on how to spend their money wisely and optimize their revenue streams. At 53, Vega continues to broaden his horizons and find new ways to utilize his business tact to his advantage. And after previously mulling a potential bid for the FIFA presidency, he still harbors ambitions of returning to his native Zurich as the biggest decision-maker in world football.
As the sun sets on the Dubai harbor, Vega reveals the most successful investment he’s ever made. “My proudest investment is that of my well-being. The one thing you realize when you start to make money is that it’s great because you have to pay the bills, but when you’re sick, you’re going to have tons of money stuck up in your account, and none of that is going to help you. The one thing I realized early on is to make sure to look after my well-being. You have to invest not just in terms of cash but by switching off completely and turning off your electronics. We live in a society where your brain is consistently working, you have no more space, and there’s so much information and data you need to go through, it’s impossible not to explode at one point.”
“The minute you get to a certain stage, the more pressure comes in from your job, you have to do this and that, and you’re going to completely collapse.
You’re not going to work well, you’re not going to invest well or look after your investment well, and on top of that, you might lose your well-being and won’t be so healthy, which causes a lot of trouble because then you have to really look after yourself. I would say the biggest advice is to look after yourself and your well-being. If you can do that, then you can help others as well. Less is more, so that you can enjoy your life more.”
Zach Lowy is a freelance football journalist who has written for leading outlets like FotMob, BetUS, Apuestas Deportivas, and who has appeared as a radio and television guest for BBC, SiriusXMFC, and various other platforms. After pursuing a global sports journalism degree at George Washington University, Zach has been able to tap into his multilingual background and interview major footballing figures in Spanish and Portuguese as well as operate the weekly podcast 'Zach Lowy's European Football Show' on BET Central.
