Jabo Ibehre on Carlisle United and life after football

A serious and complex knee injury ended Ibehre’s career and, initially, led him into an easy trap. “What I found, post-retirement, was that when you play football, you don’t factor in how lucky you are just to be outside, and what it does for your mental health,” he says.

“I love being out in nature, out in the air. When I was finished, and incubating in recovery, I would eat [the wrong things] and enjoy a bit of life.

“I’d always been rigid in what I ate – no Coke, no takeaways, but that changed when I didn’t need to train for anything. To snap out of that…I found that so hard. I found it really difficult to have that motivation to keep fit.”

Ibehre says he instantly knew that the injury he suffered whilst with Cambridge United in October 2019 would end his career. It might have had drastic ramifications given that a hospital visit found that an opponent’s teeth were embedded in his knee. That, and a growing infection around the ruptured patella tendon, could have resulted in him losing the limb had medical attention not been immediate.

It did not, thankfully, come to that but Ibehre was still left with ongoing consequences. “After so many months, I was supposed to be at a certain stage [in recovery] but I could still barely walk,” he says. “I thought I’d get back to a stage when I could run, or play football, but I tried a five-mile run and I was, ‘Wow – I can’t do that’. The pain…I knew I had no chance of playing football again.

“Then lockdown came, and after that I was like, ‘what can I do?’”

Ibehre decided that cycling was the only way he could think of to remain mobile. He visited a bike shop in Crouch End and paid £60 for a “rusty racer, an old-school bike”. “I don’t know what made me do it,” he adds, “but I went on YouTube and Pinterest and learned how to sand the bike, respray it. From an old blue rusty thing I had a really cool silver, slick bike.”

Ibehre later upgraded to a road bike and, now 40, has become a dedicated cyclist. Being on two wheels is central to his new life’s routine. “It gave me the energy to go out, lose weight, get out in the fresh air – just cycling, with an earpiece in, some music on.

Jabo Ibehre says cycling helped him through a tough time as injury led to his retirement (Image: Richard Parkes)

“It’s such a different world. You go deeper and deeper, you meet interesting people, and it really helped me to get lean and back in shape again. It’s like rehab – I’ve got a lot of old scarring, and a lump there [on the knee]. If I do anything slightly strenuous, any real pounding, that becomes bigger and painful. Cycling helps pump the muscle up, alleviates the stress and pain.

“I did find the hardest bit getting back into those habits. When you give your body that energy, you feel different. You’re more certain. And when I’m on my bike, I feel sharper. When I wasn’t doing anything, I felt sloppy. If I was writing things, it wasn’t as good as I know I can do it.

“I need routine, then – boom, boom, boom – everything takes care of itself.”

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Ibehre is engaging company, as fans who recall his presence at Carlisle from 2015-17 will know, along with those who listen to his occasional punditry on BBC Radio Cumbria. He is also uncommonly generous given that he spent half an evening driving from north to south London on a Friday evening for our conversation. “You’ll have already driven six hours, bossman,” he told me when we were arranging the meeting and I’d offered to meet closer to his home.

An evening with the man dubbed ‘The Islington Assassin’ by Blues fans covers lots of ground and depth, from his post-playing business to questions of life, identity, mental health and family – as well as those eventful days at Keith Curle’s Carlisle United.

Ibehre was a Londoner who took himself out of his comfort zone to move to Cumbria at 32. The subsequent period delivered lasting mutual affection but he is now back on home soil, giving himself to football in a different way.

He runs an academy called Finishing Touch which works with young players who need a different route through the system. Some may have fallen out of academies, others may be uncut diamonds who’ve never been at professional clubs.

“Because I had a slower retirement, knowing I was never coming back from the injury, I could prepare myself,” he says. “So, for a period of time, I was watching a couple of games for a friend. I watched games locally to Cambridge until my knee started really killing me, but it led me onto the thing I’m doing now.

“I watched a game at Hornchurch and saw this kid who I couldn’t believe hadn’t been recruited by anybody. I was doing this for Brentford at the time. I took his name down, went to another game, and after a while I had seen a few players.

“This was on the doorstep of some league clubs, but no-one was seeing these players. That summer, me and two friends had a list of these players and we invited them all to a trial. We said with our contacts we’d be able to facilitate some of the better ones into a football team in the league.”

They staged a game to which 70 players turned up, a number whittled down to a squad of 25.

“These are lads who were playing semi-pro, step two, step four [of the non-league pyramid],” adds Ibehre. “A couple were released from academies and then languishing. As time went on we started a showcase academy, where we put on games, train them now as well, get people to watch them, and made a business from it.”

Ibehre’s contacts and his personality opened doors. One success story already is Liam Humbles, who Finishing Touch helped into Salford City’s academy. He has since made his first-team debut and has scored for the League Two club’s first-team this season.

FT - A late stunner from Liam Humbles earns a point for The Ammies 🤝

[2-2] #SALSWI || @salboyltd pic.twitter.com/T86lc0QkPi

— Salford City FC (@SalfordCityFC) October 21, 2023

“Liam was brilliant technically, but just a little bit slight at the time. But he had a good brain – you could see he could play. He’d had a little spell with QPR, and was just out of the system. He could play, and he had the voice, the mouth. He just grew.”

Ibehre says the academy also tries to impart discipline and professionalism, and helps young players find different routes in life if the pro game remains elusive. He also wants to pair up with a charity that helps kids from challenging urban backgrounds.

Does this float Ibehre’s boat more than the idea of first-team coaching or management? He says that, in some ways, his injury forced him down this alternative path.

“When I had the injury I was out for two years,” he says. “When you’ve had a good time as a professional you can often filter back to one of your previous clubs. But when I was out for so long, I was away. I was done.

“Also, with the way my knee is, I don’t do any coaching. I’m behind the scenes, facilitate the coaches. I’m admin, trying to make deals. Because of my knee, I can’t stay on the pitch. After about half an hour I’d just be in pain, and the next day it gets worse.

“I would have loved to have gone in to coaching, then into management. You never know in the future, if things get better for my knee. But initially I think when you finish, those couple of years are your hot years – your name’s still there, people know who you are, people behind the scenes at clubs are the same people. You have to strike when you finish.”

Ibehre’s work with young players, though, gives him new insight into the pressures of modern football and life.

“The ones that have come from a top academy or have been in the system…they’ve got a bit more guile about them,” he says. “They’re picky and choosy. The other ones don’t care: ‘I’ll play tomorrow’.

“Half the time it isn’t in the feet, it’s in there [the head] and there [the heart]. Ability gives you a headline but professionalism gives you a career. That’s what I say to them all the time. You can have the ability but if you show it one in 20 games, it’s nothing.

“Agents tell them things. A young player says, ‘My agent can get me Watford [under-]23s. But I say, ‘Boreham Wood want to take you, and you’ll play games. If you go to Watford Under-23s they’re only gonna loan you to a place like that’.

“But they want the banner of an Under-23s player when they’re 20. It should be about going to non-league and playing. They want the image, whereas the hungry one will just go to Boreham Wood and muck in.”

Ibehre says the false status that can be conferred on social media is a factor too. “If you’re 20, and still playing under-21s, it’s over. But on Instagram…you can show your mates, ‘I’m still a player’. There are so many sharky agents as well.

“Some stuff is delusional. I think a lot of it is social pressure, social media pressure. They’ve got a lot more to deal with than when I was a child. When we were youngsters, if anyone got released, it wasn’t out there. Now, on social media, it is. It’s almost an embarrassment.”

“That’s why more have mental health issues. I wouldn’t say necessarily because of being released, but they have more pressure with their peers. At school, a boy can be the kid who played for Arsenal under-9s …and now that means clips on your phone, ‘the next best thing’, 10,000 followers.

“That individual has bigger pressure than ever. That’s where problems come from. Don’t get me wrong, I understand there are more safety nets for kids who come out of the game at 16. But sometimes there is a reluctance to face the big, bad world.

“Knockbacks help you. They make you grow. Some clubs will keep you around, educate you, even if they’ve let you go. But you have to go somewhere else, fight back. It toughens you up.”

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Ibehre says there is not a huge amount he misses about his playing days. He remains in close contact with the game but also appreciates time away from it.

“It’s only when you finish that you appreciate…the sacrifice,” he says. “You enjoy it [your career] but you miss out on so much. If every other weekend you’re travelling, the onus is on your partner with the children, to do the stuff you all want to do together.

“Most people work in the week, and weekends is when everybody congregates and does cool things together. So when I get weekends now, it’s like, ‘Oh – this is nice’. A couple of weeks ago we were in east London [Ibehre’s children are eight and six], having a mill around Columbia Road Flower Market, and before that we were in Covent Garden. Family time.”

Ibehre recently caught up with the News & Star to discuss his life after football and his time with United (Image: News & Star)

His main regret, he says, is that, because of his knee he can’t even have a relaxing kickabout. “When you retire you want to be able to kick around with your mates, because that’s the best football. Playing professionally is not the same – it’s much more pressured. It’s work. Afterwards, it’s fun again.

“I wanted to enjoy that, but I can’t. I’ll never play football again. I get invited to charity games, and I can’t do it. That’s gutting.”

In other ways, though, Ibehre is comfortable with life away from the forefront of the game. He has never defined himself purely by his profession and this has made the transition easier.

“I enjoyed football, don’t get me wrong…but I wasn’t a ‘footballer’. The banter and all that. I had so many other interests away from football. I read something in my 20s that said when players retire, everything they’ve invested and all their friends are in football. I made sure my world was beyond football. Some of the banter wasn’t for me anyway, to be fair.”

Was Ibehre at odds with some of the ‘traditional’ dressing-room culture? “When I was young, maybe some of those conversations are cool. But at 20-something, I don’t want to hear nonsense. I would associate with people more on the level I was thinking. There’s a strong nucleus of what you’d call ‘typical’ players [in an average changing room] but I had zero interest in that sort of thing.”

Did that ever cause him problems, in terms of integration? “I was good at dipping in and out. I wouldn’t be reserved, and I’d be there, but when it came to certain things I knew I wouldn’t like, I wouldn’t bother going. I wouldn’t put myself in it.

“Team nights out, I had to be there – cool. But when a couple of lads were meeting up, going out to a bar, etc, and I knew what it was gonna be like, I’m not interested. I knew where my line was drawn.”

Ibehre has strong thoughts on the way people in the game do and don’t look upon themselves.

“In the real world, I’m not a professional football player. I judge people and look at people via who you are. I never really ask people what they do.

“The amount of people who come up to you and say, ‘What do you do, how much money do you get?’ It’s like, ‘How much respect am I going to give you by what you tell me?’ I find that fascinating. If you’re a good person, you’re my cup of tea, not because of what money you make or what job you do.

“A lot of footballers struggle – they identify so much as a football player they forget the person they are. Me, I’m very chilled, moral-driven. I try and live by a certain code. I wouldn’t treat people the way I wouldn’t want to be treated. If you’re a d*ck, cool, I’ll be a d*ck. Very simple and straight to the point.

“Back in the day, when I’d go out in the dating scene, people would say, ‘You’re a footballer then – so you guys are all the same?’ It used to wind me up. Why judge me? I’m not a ‘footballer’. I’m a human being who plays football.

“Judge people by what they are, not by the job.”

Ibehre says his rounded world view was shaped partly by his upbringing in the game, and also his childhood. At Leyton Orient, he was helped to grow into an established young professional by some sound mentors.

“I remember a good pro, Matty Joseph, taking me aside [at Orient]. When I was around the first team and picked for a match, I’d always get there five minutes before I had to be there, but rushing. Matty said to me, ‘Don’t be punctual – be early. Get here at half past, don’t get here three minutes before 1pm sweaty and stressed’.

“I listened. Everywhere I go now I’m at least 20 minutes before. It put me in good stead.”

Ibehre broke through as a young player at Leyton Orient (Image: PA)

Ibehre says his youth was also grounded in friendships that are genuine, that matter. “A lot of my friends also got into professional football, but we’re all the same: humble, go quietly. One of us would have done something in football and often we wouldn’t know. That’s just the way we were – seven boys who had a football, would go in a cage all day.

“We didn’t have phones in those days, and where we lived [in Islington] was like a square system. By the time we got to my friend’s house, we’d turn left, then left again to go to the others. We called ourselves the Dreaded Left Crew. We’d walk for hours with our ball.”

Family also shaped Ibehre’s outlook. “My dad was very…proper. He was on it. He was grounded, real humble.

“All of this, I think, put me in good stead when I did finish. Even during my career, I had no problem in not doing the things lots of footballers do. I was doing yoga at 19 or 20, pilates, I was gluten-free. I did all this stuff before it became a thing. I didn’t care.

“If you’re your own person it helps more. People love their jobs, and I’m not saying they shouldn’t, but too often that’s what gives them their fulfilment. My fulfilment comes from the simple things.”

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There are many words to describe Carlisle United from 2015 to 2017, but ‘simple’ cannot be one of them. It became one of the most enjoyable times in Ibehre’s career, in part because it was the last place he expected to be.

Until then he had played most of his football in the south, from his formative time at Orient to spells with Walsall, MK Dons and Colchester United, only venturing north on loan to the likes of Stockport County, Oldham Athletic and Barnsley.

He had left Colchester in the summer of 2015 and was approached by Curle, the idiosyncratic Carlisle manager, and his recruitment chief, Lee Dykes. They were rebuilding the squad after a tough 2014/15 season which had run the risk of relegation from League Two, and Ibehre agreed to meet them in Manchester.

“I knew Portsmouth were interested, and initially I wanted to be down south – we’d just had our first child, and usually when I was going to sign for clubs it was location first. I generally couldn’t care less who the manager was. I knew I’d deliver [for anyone], because I’m that sort of person.

Ibehre struck up an instant rapport with Keith Curle at Carlisle (Image: Barbara Abbott)

“Then I met Keith Curle, and…’wow, this guy’s a character!’ He just did something for me. The way he spoke, he put some fire in me. Initially, I thought, ‘I’ll chat to him, and I respect anyone who comes in for me, but it’s too far’. Once I met him I was like, ‘I’ll sign tomorrow!’.”

What in Curle’s sales pitch ticked so many boxes for Ibehre? “Managers usually go by the book in what they say to you. Keith Curle was saying things like, ‘You can come up, and then **** off home. You don’t need to be here. We’ll look after you.’

“He said he played well into his 30s, and they would condition me, look after me. Normally managers talk about training facilities, vision…he talked about family, then he went off-centre, He was a bit of a character, the way he dressed. He was different – but very honest. Strict, and to the point.

“He said, ‘If you don’t do the business, you’re a long way from home. I’ll make sure you work hard, I’ll get the best out of you. You should be scoring more…’ When he was talking about longevity and so on, I found it interesting.

“I decided to go up and see the ground and, typical, the day I signed and got back in the car, Portsmouth came in and offered me a contract. Technically, if I’d wanted to wriggle out, I could have done, because the contract had gone in the drawer until you could officially register in July. But I told my agent I couldn’t do that to Keith or to Carlisle. It wasn’t my nature.

“When it was all done, my agent left and I was up there on my own. I stayed in the Halston [the hotel on Warwick Road], looked out of the window…and thought, ‘This ain’t for me!’ It was raining, and I was so far from home.

“But I went training the next day and by the end of the week, I loved it. I was settled. I’d never been that far away from home, and if I’m honest there weren’t that many black people up there [in Carlisle], but the gaffer was brilliant, the players were really nice: Raynesy [Michael Raynes], Joycey [Luke Joyce], Danny Grainger.

“And wow – how nice the people were. When you were part of the team, doing team photos, open sessions, the fans came and embraced you. People would say, ‘Good morning’ when they saw you in Nando’s. There was the Lake District round the corner. ‘This is class. I ain’t going back!’

“It just felt really personal. So when you did play you felt you were playing not just for the club but for the people. It elevated you. I felt I wanted to play for the gaffer and the people. It was all tight. It gave me energy.”

When Ibehre explains this it is easier to understand why he started his first Carlisle season in such ferocious form. His mind was refreshed and his body had also been punished in a good way.

“Him [Curle] taking us to that Cassius Camps [an outdoor fitness and endurance site in the Lakes] was a genius stroke. I’ve always been a fit person but I was super strong after that. It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.

Ibehre at Cassius Camps (Image: Chris Gray)

“I don’t like to swim, I would only get in the pool for recovery, but they dropped us in this water, and we had to swim to this buoy miles away… ‘I can’t do that, I’ll drown!’ I had this life jacket on and got in there. I wanted to zip the life jacket off and call it a day, but I got through it – boom.

“We had a really nice, close-knit squad. We were just on it.”

Ibehre scored a hat-trick in a 4-4 draw with Cambridge United – “what a game” – and after his first month at Carlisle was the leading goalscorer in Europe. Infamously this was not enough to earn him League Two’s player of the month for August, but the memories override awards.

“Some of the games were amazing. Hartlepool away [a rowdy 3-2 win] was one of my favourite games ever. We were on a good little run at that point. It was a decent derby as well. It was insane. I’ve got a really good picture of that game, when I scored and the crowd were going mad…I loved it.

“Keith Curle and Colin West, and Dykesy…they just made it special. They were quite cool, they’d do random things, they really looked after us. Not many of us were from Carlisle so we were all in it together. The fans, the Paddock [terrace] when you came out of the tunnel…just class, man. You really felt the energy.”

Under Curle, Carlisle achieved an improved 2015/16 season before making the play-offs in Ibehre’s second season. He was, it’s fair to say, one of United’s more distinctive managers of modern times.

“He’d do things on feeling rather than stats or whatever,” Ibehre says. “He’d come up to me sometimes, look at me and go, ‘You don’t look on it today. What have you been doing?’ And I couldn’t lie to him. I knew inside I wasn’t on it.

“He’d say, ‘Have you got the juice?’ And I’d say, ‘Yeah’, and go and do a madness. He had the intuition.

“We were unbeaten all the way until November in my second season, then we lost at Newport…and then we hardly won a game for months. Then in the club one day, he put on all these random old comedy clips, like the scene in Only Fools and Horses, where Del Boy and Rodney are trying to hang the chandelier, and Albert is telling them where to pull it, and they drill the wrong one and it drops.

“Keith said something like, ‘We can be best prepared but still fail, and it’s how you rise from it’. It was so random. And it worked. Next game, against Stevenage, we beat them, we were back on it and eventually we snuck back into the play-offs.”

Some did not know how to take Curle but Ibehre says he always had it straight from the manager. “You’d know if he was p*ssed [off]. He’d be your best friend one moment, and then he’s on you.

“I remember that Newport game. I didn’t have the best of games, but I wasn’t the worst player. I’d scored a number of goals in a small period, my chest was a bit up. But he ripped the a*** out of me. ‘If you don’t want to be here, get back to London, you look like you’re still on the train!’

“Inside I’m thinking, ‘I scored last game!’ He was giving me the hottest lyrics, and took me off at half-time. Later on that season, he said, ‘Do you know why I did that? If I go hard on you it means everyone knows they can get it, and I need everyone in line’.

“There was always a method to everything. He didn’t just do things for the sake of it. There was something behind it. That was Keith.”

Ibeher signs an autograph for a young fan at Carlisle (Image: Mike McKenzie)

Ibehre also relished, and reciprocated, the community’s embrace. “It felt like they’d found me. The way everyone took to me, looked after me, was unbelievable. But it wasn’t just me – they were just nice. They’d talk. Down here in London people don’t really do that.

“I did a mentoring thing up there on a Thursday, through Carlisle Youth Zone, with this kid. He’d been in trouble in school, a bit lairy. Initially, you can’t get into it too much…you give him your time, they ask you questions, make them feel comfortable, then get talking, and they might share things.

“Not that I’ve got any sort of qualifications in that but I was trying to give him some advice from when I was a kid or as a man, that perspective.

“It was awesome. I saw him change. We would play the computer, play pool, play a bit of football. From him turning up, not saying much, he was, ‘Let’s go, we’re on it’. We’d have banter. He got better in school. I really enjoyed that.

“I’d love to see how he’s getting on now. I was so happy doing that.”

If anything these thoughts have even greater staying power than the memory of Ibehre’s 31 goals in 85 appearances. He says Carlisle and Orient are the two places where he has felt rooted in football, and doesn’t mind when fans, with a joking fondness, accuse him of exerting a jinx when he summarises on Radio Cumbria, given that United’s record in such games is poor.

“It’s good to have tongue-in-cheek comments and banter, but it’s all love, from a nice place. I love to have the interaction.

“Other clubs I’ve been to, like MK Dons, I very rarely go back. Yet I’d definitely go to Carlisle. I’d like to visit more. There was something special there, and you don’t get that everywhere. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

“The message there is you’ve got to step out of the comfort zone. Sometimes, make the decision you don’t want to make. If you get two decisions, and your mind’s already made up…go for the other one. You’ll be surprised what happens.”

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If the impression of Jabo Ibehre at 40 is a former footballer with perspective, there are still times when the game pulls hard at the old strings. We have now moved onto Carlisle’s recent journey.

“When Simmo [Paul Simpson] took over, Carlisle were languishing, and the turnaround he’s done is phenomenal. It’s such a nice story. He’s such a legend at the club. What they did last season was just class, like a fairytale.”

In May, Ibehre took himself to Wembley to watch two of his former clubs contest the League Two play-off final. It was four years since he last played professionally, and although he was firmly with United, he anticipated a more detached set of emotions.

Then Omari Patrick equalised for Carlisle, and something inside Ibehre erupted. “Honestly, it was the first time I felt like I was back playing football,” he says. “I felt so in the game. When they scored I felt like I’d scored. I’ve not felt that feeling since I retired.”

For a moment, Ibehre’s knee, its consequences and all of life’s broader thoughts were not in play. “I was jumping around. Get in! I felt it so hard. I felt alive.”