When Cristiano Ronaldo made his return to Manchester United in 2021 he faced a conundrum: having sold the £4million ($5.2m) mansion he previously owned in the north west, where would he, girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez and their children live?

They eventually settled on a £3million property in Cheshire, notable not only for its swimming pool, cinema and garage big enough for four cars, but for its owner: former United striker, Andrew Cole.

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A decade earlier, Ronaldo had been the one doing the letting. After swapping Manchester for Madrid in 2009, his five-bedroom house in the exclusive Cheshire village of Alderley Edge (one of three areas, alongside Prestbury and Wilmslow, which make up Cheshire’s “Golden Triangle,” where many of the area’s finest properties can be found), complete with indoor swimming pool, steam room, jacuzzi, gym and wine area was rented out to then-Manchester City winger Adam Johnson.

It’s not just players. After replacing Brendan Rodgers as Liverpool manager in 2015, Jurgen Klopp ended up renting his predecessor’s house in Formby. And when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer returned to Manchester as caretaker (and then permanent) manager in 2018, he was unable to move back into his former Cheshire home because of a tenant in place by the name of Virgil van Dijk.

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Player to landlord has become an increasingly common career path in recent years, according to Andy Pearce, owner of a lettings agency and the man who, for more than 20 years, has been the go-to individual for footballers looking for somewhere to live in the Midlands.

“Players all seem to like the same type of property” he explains. “So if one player bought a house, similar players would buy it or rent it off them if they moved on to another club. You’d see quite a fun bit of rivalry on derby day when you had a landlord from Wolves renting his property out to an Albion player, and they were playing against each other in the same match.

‘It’s all musical houses. I know of City players who have had Everton players as tenants so I’m sure it’s happened lots.

“Funnily enough, I had a call today from a Villa player who is moving on and wants to rent out his house in Solihull, so no doubt that will go to another player. And it just goes on like that.”

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Pearce first got involved with sourcing properties for footballers after a timely conversation with former cricketer turned director of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Rachael Heyhoe Flint. He had just completed a surveying degree and was speaking to Heyhoe Flint about some club shops Wolves were opening. A casual mention that the company he worked for had a small residential portfolio started the ball rolling and, once word of mouth got around (Heyhoe Flint recommended Pearce to the Player Care officer at Aston Villa), Pearce’s phone was red hot.

“It used to be that the club would get in touch – either Rachel or one of the player care people there. Occasionally, the players would get in touch via agents who you’d have a relationship with as well. And sometimes the player themselves will have a teammate who you’ve helped out and they’ll send you a message saying, ‘I’m signing for the club, can you help me?’

“Occasionally, we’ve even had enquiries come up on Rightmove and places like that when players have been searching online. We had one who was an assistant manager at West Brom and enquired about a house in Wolverhampton. I had to say, ‘Lovely house, but probably not the best area for you to live in…’”

Further south, former player (now agent) Danny Naisbitt and his then-partner Louisa Allen (who now runs a French property company) set up Players Relocation around 2004 – a business aimed at helping players find properties when they were moving clubs.

“Around that time, the Charlton manager was Alan Pardew” says Naisbitt, “and he brought in about 12 or 14 players. I think we relocated about 90 per cent of them.”

Clubs will often put players up in hotels when they first sign. Sometimes that stay ends up being a longer (and more expensive) one than planned. Pearce recalls a player leaving a house he’d leased to him to sign for Burnley where he promptly spent the next 12 months living in a hotel.

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Before Naisbitt and Allen got involved with Charlton, the club was putting new signings into a hotel for three months while they found somewhere to live.

“That was quite expensive for them” says Naisbitt. “So we said to them, ‘Don’t do that, but pay our fee and we’ll get them out of the hotel within three or four weeks, certainly if they’re renting.’ As soon as they signed, we’d meet them, take the brief and get to work straight away. Within a week we’d have them looking at properties. Over that summer period, we saved the club a hell of a lot of money in hotel bills, even after they paid our fee.”

Naisbitt estimates that he and Allen relocated around 70-80 players during their time running Players Relocation (they moved on from the business in 2008 when recession hit and the property market crash meant it wasn’t as viable). And of those, he says that between 80 and 90 per cent were rentals, not purchases.

How much players pay out for that obviously depends hugely on the level of club (and by extension, salary), type of property and location. One player liaison (who asked to remain anonymous in order to respect players’ privacy), says she has had players who don’t want to pay any more than £1,000 per month and others who are willing to pay up to £30,000 per month.

The type of properties players want has changed hugely over the years, says Pearce. “Going back to some of the younger players who were renting, it was a lot of small apartments. Now they’ll have their family come with them, they’ll have a chef, often their own physio come with them. So they’ll obviously want a much larger property.

“They’ll often have home gyms and it’s got to be gated for security reasons. There’s much, much more of a skill in finding that type of property. And particularly with changes in the tax laws and legislation, it’s less rewarding [for landlords] than it used to be. So it can be quite challenging and subsequently, they pay a hell of a lot out in rent.”

He recalls the period after Wolves had been bought out by Chinese investment group Fosun International when there was an influx of new signings arriving at the club. “Every day there was a couple of new players coming and they’re all in a hotel and wanting to move in somewhere, immediately.

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“It was very frantic, really. And all of a sudden it was a step up in the wealth and the demands and requirements of these players, so it was finding 12 multimillionaires an executive house in a matter of weeks.

“That’s probably why a lot of players will move into another player’s house because they’ve all got similar requirements. There’s not a volume of choice. One of the houses in Sutton Coldfield must have had about five or six Premier League footballers living in it over the years, from Wolves to a couple of Villa lads to West Brom.

“During one season, one road had a Wolves, Aston Villa, and WBA player all as neighbours.”

In busy transfer windows, players will often go to view properties in couples or groups, which can create some heated debate if more than one player decides that’s the property for them. In those cases, says Pearce “negotiation and seniority have no doubt settled who has first choice”.

Allen recalls one awkward moment when two Charlton players insisted on seeing the same property together.

“There was one who I had a particular property in mind for because he had contacted me first, so by rights, it should go to him. All of a sudden, we’re at this property, and they’re both there and the player who it shouldn’t really have been for was all over the agent, asking all the questions and virtually saying, ‘When could I move in?’ And the other player is looking at me, and I thought, ‘Well, why did you let your friend come along?’

“So the other one took it and he let him just go ahead. I thought, ‘Good luck telling your wife then.’ That’s beyond my role!”

In terms of location, one of the main criteria is proximity to the training ground, with some managers making it a contractual requirement that they live within a certain distance. Although, a former player liaison for two Premier League clubs says that is often quite hard to enforce. “If they really breach it then they might not get their relocation allowance (HMRC caps an amount of £8,000 tax-free for relocation, which most top-flight players will get), but even then, they probably will.

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“But what they find is that it’s better to live closer because if you’re living somewhere miles away – and I’ve seen players live over an hour away before – they end up just driving constantly and get really fed up with it.”

The other main criteria is exclusivity. “It’s just where the bigger houses are, I suppose” says one player liaison. “The nicer areas, the nicer schools, the bigger houses.”

Combining those two criteria means that players (and managers) often end up living in one or two areas of a city. Sometimes even in the same buildings.

If a high-end new building goes up in the area it will quickly be populated by those players looking for an apartment. Sometimes staff, too.

“One manager moved into apartments where around nine of the players lived at the time” says Pearce. “As you can imagine, they all left.”

Location aside, what makes a property desirable to a player? “Hardly ever was I asked to find a period property” says Allen. It was always something modern. If it was a new build, they would love it.”

One player liaison is a little more blunt: “A lot of them are pretty poor in taste, to be honest. They all want the same sort of white furniture; minimalist. It’s never really that interesting, I don’t find.”

Home gyms, gaming rooms, cinema rooms, swimming pools and saunas are often desired by players at top-level clubs. Naisbitt once recalls being asked to find a property with tennis courts for a QPR player living in Windsor while Pearce says sneaker rooms are now a popular feature.

“One player had a bedroom just for his sneakers. It was massive. He had shop-style racking in there for them. Another one has just built a feature wall for his Nike sneakers in the dressing room.”

Pearce says he has one house on his books that’s owned by an individual in the fashion business and contains a proper display room for shoes or other clothing. “They all seem to like that place for that reason” he says.

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Players’ partners can also have demands, of course. One player liaison working with a lower league club recalls a player’s wife wanting a south-facing window so the light was perfect for doing her makeup. “She viewed so many properties until she found one.”

And if players can’t find properties with the facilities they desire already in situ, they often will simply add them.

“We’ve had clients who’ve built a conservatory for £20,000 and left it at the end of the lease” says Pearce. “A couple have recently spent tens of thousands on gyms attached to the house or free standing at the bottom of the garden. Again, they leave it fully stocked when they go.

“Or equally, we’ve had a couple that have sold it on to other players. One of the Villa players moved and a Wolves player moved in the house and bought the gym off him. But other players just don’t bother. There’s no one to buy it. The landlord doesn’t want to buy it and it’s not really worth shipping, so it just stays.”

It’s not just gyms that can get left behind. Pearce recalls one player who left his Mercedes in the garage when he moved clubs.

“Particularly if it’s a leased car, they’ll just leave it somewhere” he says. Another player left all the furniture and instructed that it go to charity, he adds. And that’s not a one-off. “Some players do actually conscientiously leave things or arrange for collections of items prior to leaving. It has become increasingly common with players realising the impact it can have on those less fortunate. They know that not everyone’s as lucky as they are.”

It’s not only the players who know that they are in a privileged position.

Do some property owners or landlords specifically look for footballers to rent out their properties to?

Absolutely, says Pearce.

“There’s been a big development in Birmingham city centre where some of the penthouses are around £8,000 per month. One guy has bought a couple of those specifically for the football market. And indeed, it looks like the first one has already gone. So there are people who realise that they’re going to have a cleaner, gardener, everything’s going to be looked after. And at the end of the day, if there’s damages at the end of the lease and a few hundred pounds deposit, they’re less likely to argue about that.

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“And then you’ll get others who will specifically not want a footballer renting there because they view them as young and think they’ll all have parties. But that’s decades gone by now. Because most of them are teetotal, will have a live-in chef, cleaner, perhaps the mother-in-law living with them in some cases and extended families. Perhaps that’s a relic of the past where houses used to get wrecked.”

One player liaison warns that some landlords have ulterior motives for wanting to rent out their properties to footballers.

“Players tend to pay a big deposit because it’s a big house and so, any issues, the money will just come off the deposits. The problem with players is that they pay a deposit and then when it comes to giving a property back, they can’t be arsed trying to get that deposit back.

“I’ve had a lot of landlords who will try to rip them off and put in ridiculous bills for ridiculous amounts of money. And players are like ‘Oh, yeah, just take the deposit.’ I’m like, ‘No,’ and I’ll fight back with landlords and go through a dispute to get that money back.

“That has happened more often than players causing damage, to be honest; landlords putting in ridiculous invoices for new carpets and decoration, which players just shouldn’t be paying for. But out of laziness, a lot of time they will.”

In recent years, the role of finding properties for players has more often fallen to player liaisons or player care staff within clubs.

“Every club is different,” says Naisbitt. “Some will just put players in touch with a select couple of estate agents or some will actually take them around. Some clubs actually have houses or apartments available for players that come in and they’ve got the choice to stay in them for a while.

“The clubs might own those properties or the owners of the clubs own them. Charlton now have a deal with the hotel in Greenwich at the O2, the InterContinental. On the side of the hotel, there are apartments and a lot of the players rent in there because there’s a connection between the club and either the developer or the hotel, so they get to use the hotel facilities.

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“Sometimes I’ll go with them and have a look and they’ll ask my opinion but now with Rightmove, Primelocation and a few other sites, everything is there at the touch of a button to see.”

Manchester City have a deal in place with an apartment block in Manchester city centre that houses several players including Erling Haaland and Jack Grealish (who reside on the same floor), Ruben Dias and Sergio Gomez.

The building, which is around 10 minutes away from the Etihad and City’s training ground has a rooftop pitch, outside seating area next to the rooftop pitch (where Manchester United midfielder Donny van de Beek unveiled the gender of his baby on Instagram in 2021), cinema room, private dining room with the option to hire a private chef, library, 24/7 gym, working areas, underground car park and a 24-hour concierge.

In terms of security, residents of the building are only able to access the floor they live on.

When estate agencies are involved in moves for players at the top end of the game, they tend to be the high-net-worth ones, such as Savills, Knight Frank and Rokstone, where you can currently find a six-bedroom townhouse in Belgravia, London with seven-person lift, gym, spa, three terraces and wine cellar available for the minimal fee of £25,000 per week.

Yes, per week.

“Those agencies deal with people more rich than our players,” says one former player liaison.

That’s not only the case in London. “I know a lot of the agents up in the north west” says a player liaison working for a Premier League club. “And one of them said to me, ‘The footballers aren’t the rich people in this area. It’s the businessmen and the lawyers that are the rich ones up here.’

“So as much as they earn, they still have a limit of how much they’re going to spend.”

And the less money they spend on rent, the more they can spend on more important things, like filling up those sneaker rooms.