Chelsea legend Petr Cech has said that playing ice hockey is something that he always wanted to do. The 40-year-old is a modern day Premier League legend and hung up his boots from the game in 2019 at the age of 37. He was last on the books of Arsenal and opted to retire after losing the fist-choice goalkeeping position at the Gunners to Bernd Leno.
“It’s a completely different level of pressure. This is more fun than when you play a Champions League game for everything,” he said. “I still have that feeling in myself because I want to perform. I want to win. I hate losing. It’s the same feeling I had when I played football.
“You still get that feeling when you’re walking through the corridor, to the ice, surrounded by all these people. Maybe if there were 30 fans, it would be different. But the building is full. That’s what I like.”
He has since fulfilled a childhood dream by playing ice hockey for Guildford Phoenix and now Chelmsford Chieftains. Cech has said that turning to ice hockey was something that he dreamed about since he was a child.
He took up the game in 2019 after he retired from football. He currently wears the no 39 shirt for the Chieftains and is keen to add more silverware to his personal cabinet, even describing ice-hockey as being more fun than playing in the Champions League.
Cech won virtually everything that there is to win in club football during his time with Chelsea. Perhaps the greatest memory of his time with the Blues and one of the greatest performances in Champions League history came during the 2012 final of the competition as he single handedly led the West London club to the title following a penalty shoot-out win over Bayern Munich.
Prior to his time in ice hockey, Cech was working for Chelsea in a backroom role as a directly under former owner Roman Abramovich. The Russian oligarch had to sell the club in 2022 following sanctions levelled against him due to the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war.
The club has since been taken over by American businessmen Todd Boehly and business partners. Cech was released from the club upon the takeover of the new ownership. It remains to be seen if he will ever come back to football in a backroom role.
