Junior Stanislas walks through the doors of a local cafe in the Boscombe district of Bournemouth, half a mile from his place of work for nearly a decade now.
It is late on a Monday afternoon and his diary is changing. Old routines — increasingly in the shape of time spent indoors recovering from injury — have made way for a life after playing professional football.
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The vacuum that process can leave, though, does not appear engulfing. Stanislas completed his UEFA A coaching licence 18 months ago alongside former Bournemouth team-mate Steve Cook, having initially started working with the club’s under-15s on weekday evenings five years ago, alongside two more colleagues in Callum Wilson and Simon Francis.
Stanislas grew accustomed to being away from the first-team environment. He worked long days in the gym at Bournemouth’s Vitality Stadium home, overlooking the adjacent training pitches. Although his career has been cut short at the age of 33, long periods on the sidelines have softened the blow of leaving the dressing-room microcosm.
Stanislas celebrates against Everton in 2015 (Steve Bardens/Getty Images)“You’re the only person to pick up on that,” he smiles. “I’ve had to explain it to people time and time again. Retirement hasn’t been a shock to the system compared to if I had played every week for three years. I had already crossed over to the other side, I don’t have any fears or anxiety.”
Privately, Stanislas decided to retire towards the back end of last season. A slipped disc in his back 18 months ago resulted in nerve damage to the extent that it still affects the functional signals down to his legs. It was one injury too far and recovery remains an ongoing process, working with the club doctor.
Stanislas made his Premier League debut for West Ham United in 2009, under Gianfranco Zola. An England youth international, he made more than 300 career appearances, playing for Southend United (on loan), Burnley and then Bournemouth over nine years, becoming an indelible figure in the latter’s most successful period.
Over time, his life in football veered towards an internal battle. Fitness and availability jarred with the undeniable talent that team-mates and managers, notably Eddie Howe and Scott Parker, were enamoured by.
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“When he played the full season, he was outstanding and our best player by a mile,” says Cook, the now Queens Park Rangers defender who played with Stanislas at Bournemouth. “If Junior hadn’t had the amount of injuries he did, he would have been a top player. The biggest compliment I can pay him is he gave everything to get fit. Some players just have really bad luck and can’t catch a break.”
“If I wasn’t good enough anymore, that would hurt me,” says Stanislas. “I still feel good enough to play, but my body won’t allow me to. But I’m at peace with it.”
Between 2016 and 2019, Stanislas sustained 10 different injuries, all coming with varying timescales of recovery — ankles, knees, hamstring, calf, groin, hip, thigh, hernia. More broadly, he missed 113 games in a 10-year period, consumed in a constant fight to break the pattern.
The psychological burden was taxing; the repetition of carrying out the same work in the gym and the feeling of isolation away from his team-mates left him going to the well too often.
Yet Stanislas never carried those same scars. As a devout Christian who attends church on the Sundays that his son, Alex, does not have a game with one of Bournemouth’s academy sides, his faith allowed him to disentangle from a damaging mental cycle.
Scoring a penalty against Leicester behind closed doors in July 2020 (Glyn Kirk/Pool via Getty Images)“I believe, if you have an injury, it was meant to be,” he says. “All you can do is work hard. Everything else takes care of itself. So I tend not to worry too much. I believe God has a plan for me and my family.
“I remember one morning, five years ago, when I took my son to training. I was out injured again. One of the parents came up to me and asked if I’d thought about stopping playing. Honestly, it had never entered my mind but that day made me realise people thought that.”
Stanislas still managed impressive longevity at Bournemouth. He was one of two players — Adam Smith is the other — who crossed over their two Premier League promotion-winning sides. Neither achievement, however, ranks highly on a personal level.
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“The first time we went up (as 2014-15 champions), I wasn’t doing well at all,” he explains. “I wasn’t training or playing well. When I arrived (the previous summer), I had an injury which slowed me down. I was playing catch-up.”
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The club’s other promotion from the Championship, seven years on, came under different circumstances.
Stanislas only played seven times under Parker, a former team-mate at West Ham, despite returning to the starting line-up whenever fit. Even if both seasons culminated in success, coaches regarded the winger as Bournemouth’s point of difference going forward.
Stanislas made 177 appearances over nine years, an average of less than 20 per season. His influence was wielded in staccato fashion and in his final two years he managed to play just 13 games.
“He’s extremely strong mentally,” says Cook. “Every day he came in with a smile on his face, working hard with physios. Junior is so mentally strong. There’s no doubt he would’ve gone home, been sad, and it probably sometimes got the better of him, but he never showed that. It’s unfortunate he could never get going and injuries came so soon after the last one.”
“I’ve never thought about that,” replies Stanislas, asked if mental resilience turned out to be his greatest strength. “It’s probably strange for me to say, but when I got injured, I’d go in the treatment room, sort my head out and then focus all my energy on getting back the next day. Once back in training, I forgot all about the injury.”
Stanislas is yet to see any retirement well-wishes. Two years ago, he stopped using social media — barring WhatsApp and YouTube — preferring to channel his energy and hours into something more productive.
“You see a couple of comments, but they do not overly affect me,” he says. “It’s not like I wanted to be injured. I didn’t want to be in the treatment room. So if those online felt frustrated, they should know I felt a hundred times more annoyed I couldn’t play. The boys in the dressing room know if you’re left with your own thoughts, the negativity can spiral really quickly.”
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Bournemouth tend to look after their own and Stanislas is the latest player to remain at the club post-retirement.
Following discussions with senior management, he will join the academy coaching staff, predominately working with the under-18s and under-23s, alongside youth team assistant Andrew Surman, another former team-mate. Stanislas intends to visit Howe with his new team Newcastle United to pick his brains and wants to speak to Jack Wilshere, a close friend following his two spells with Bournemouth and now Arsenal Under-18s head coach.
“I spent most of my career with Ed and learned from the sessions he put on. Gary O’Neil (Bournemouth head coach last season and now in the same job at Wolverhampton Wanderers) allowed me to go into his office while the coaches planned training. We would watch the opposition and discuss game plans.
“I want to be a manager — that’s what motivates me long-term. But I’ve got a lot of work to do to get there. There’s one thing talking about coaching but when you’ve got players in front of you, it’s completely different. You’ve got to do the learning and the graft.”
Injuries have characterised Stanislas’ career, but there is little remorse or contrition. He instead played the cards he was dealt, which still led to a career chiefly spent at Premier League level.
“You get frustrated when you see people you’ve played with go on to play for so-called bigger clubs and internationally,” Stanislas says. “I always felt I could have played higher and achieved more. But I had injuries, and if you have them, you can’t contribute as much. I feel blessed to have the career I did as a player, and hopefully now as a coach.”
(Top photo: Jacob Tanswell/The Athletic)
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