While most footballers spend their injury layoffs doing physio and posting gym selfies, Xavi Simons has enrolled at Harvard. The Tottenham midfielder, out with an ACL injury until at least February 2027, has been accepted onto Harvard Business School's Crossover Into Business Program — a semester-long course that pairs professional athletes with MBA student mentors to develop business skills during and after their playing careers.
He announced it on LinkedIn. Naturally.
"I'm going back to school," Simons wrote. "Football is still my main focus, but I also want to keep learning and improving away from the pitch." At 23, with a knee that cost him the 2026 World Cup and the better part of two seasons, he's clearly decided to treat the downtime as an asset rather than a write-off. Hard to argue with that logic.
The connection that made it happen
The Harvard link isn't random. Simons has a relationship with Dutch-American economist and HBS professor Anita Elberse going back to his Barcelona days, with the pair staying in touch through his time at PSG. When Simons was in Boston — he's been splitting time between both US coasts during his rehab — he visited campus and reconnected with her. The program was clearly already on his radar.
Harvard ranks the course among its more serious athlete-facing initiatives. It launched nine years ago in partnership with the NBA, and its headline graduate is Chris Bosh — 11-time All-Star, two-time NBA champion, and now a genuine business figure. Simons is in distinguished company.
What comes after football?
The obvious post-career paths are well trodden. Coaching. Punditry. A director-of-football role somewhere. Simons says he's thinking beyond that. "I want to understand the business side of the game better, learn from people in different industries and keep developing as a person," he said.
He has real blueprints to study. Edwin van der Sar went from goalkeeper to Ajax CEO and helped rebuild the club into a Champions League semifinalist. David Beckham co-founded Inter Miami in 2018 and became the UK's first billionaire sportsman in 2026. Gerard Piqué is assembling a multi-club portfolio before most of his former teammates have even hung up their boots.
For Tottenham, the practical reality is unchanged — they're still waiting on a player who won't feature until deep into the second half of the season at the earliest, assuming the rehab goes cleanly. Spurs' depth in the creative midfield positions remains a live concern, and no amount of Harvard credentials changes that calculus in the short term.
But as a portrait of a footballer taking his own future seriously? "I want to invest in myself beyond football" is about as clear-eyed as it gets.
