Socceroo Lucas Neill opens up on his ‘humiliating’ slump to bankruptcy

The ex-Premier League player and Australian captain has made some rare public comments after a seven-year bankruptcy fight.

Neill has suffered a sad and very costly fall from grace since his retirement. Photo: Gregg Porteous

Former Socceroos captain Lucas Neill’s sad decline has been laid out in court after the ex-Premier League player, who earned $76,000 a week at his peak, was acquitted following a seven-year bankruptcy fight.

Neill, who made 96 appearances for Australia including leading the nation to the 2010 World Cup, avoided jail on a charge of failing to disclose an acreage that had been sold and netted $AU4 million into an offshore trust.

“Behind my chair in the dock were stairs going to the cells,” he told The Times.

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The former West Ham captain disappeared from the public eye after his 2014 international retirement, but was bankrupt just two years later stemming from advisers taking cuts out of investments for tax breaks, defaulting on a loan for a UK barn.

He was asked to declare all of his assets when meeting with an insolvency service but did not mention the 144 acres beside the barn, thinking they were repossessed and worthless.

Lucas Neill (left), seen here alongside Tony Vidmar in 2006 World Cup qualifying, had a long and successful career. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

“People say they want to advise you. Help you. People just constantly want to take a tiny slice out of you. Telling you they’re going to add value to what they’re doing. That’s just a lesson for all footballers,” Neill said.

“Do you need these professional financial advisers? I was very successful in the world of football, but I clearly wasn’t ready for this other world — the world of business. And I’ve learnt the hard way.”

The investigation into his bankruptcy left him unable to even own a mobile phone over the past seven years.

“My head was a mess. I could barely say sentences … I had just written out the whole tragedy of my life, and I was going to face my happy, innocent schoolchildren on a school pick-up – a new school, because we could no longer afford to pay for school fees for their old school,” he said.

Neill has suffered a sad and very costly fall from grace since his retirement. Photo: Gregg Porteous

He had a $1700 footballer’s pension to rely on plus his partner, Lindsay Morris, who worked as a beauty therapist and personal trainer.

“There were some really humiliating moments,” Neill said.

“Like at 7:55am on a school morning, my kids answer the door to bailiffs trying to claim a council tax bill for £400 ($765).”

Neill was facing a three-year jail term but will now focus on rebuilding his life, including coaching women and girls at a local football club and working as a project manager.

Originally published as Socceroo Lucas Neill opens up on his ‘humiliating’ slump to bankruptcy