Hal Robson-Kanu takes his laptop with him everywhere these days. Arriving for our interview dressed smartly in a grey polo shirt and beige slacks, the former Reading and West Bromwich Albion forward places his MacBook on the table between us and opens it up the minute handshakes and introductions are completed.

Advertisement

As founder and CEO of The Turmeric Co, a health drink brand that saw a 600 per cent increase in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, Robson-Kanu explains that he deals with “about 300 emails a day” and has “about 15 to 20 meetings”. For the past 12 months, this business venture has been the focus of the 33-year-old’s life (alongside his wife and three young children).

The last time he played a game of professional football was May 23, 2021, when West Brom lost 3-1 to Leeds United at Elland Road.

Robson-Kanu scored that day but it was a campaign that ultimately ended in disappointment as West Brom were relegated to the Championship after one year back in the top flight.

At the final whistle, the former Wales international left the pitch and walked into the unknown. After five years at the club, he’d reached the conclusion of his contract and both club and player decided the time was right to part ways.

Conversations were had about him staying but Robson-Kanu says that the two parties were clearly at odds: “It was almost like, ‘What direction are we going?’. ‘We’re going in this direction’, and I said, ‘I’m going in this direction’. Looking at the season, it shows that’s where they were indicating they would be and what the plan was for the club.”

It wasn’t a plan he was on board with: “It was like; no, coming down from the Premier League, you want to be going straight back up. Why not? Look at Fulham. So that was that.”

There was no grand plan on Robson-Kanu’s part. At the end of the season, he decided to switch off from football and spend time with his family. He wasn’t giving too much thought to the future. He mentions offers from Championship clubs and also from abroad. But nothing that really forced him into making a decision.

“It was like, ‘OK, no problem’. If I wanted those opportunities I could probably get them if I spoke to them now and showed my fitness. So there wasn’t a massive amount of urgency in terms of making any decisions.”

Advertisement

What is he looking for in a club, then? What kind of opportunity would have secured his signature last summer? “The biggest thing I was looking at was a project,” he says. “In football, everything is very much short term — the turnover of managers, the change of ownership, of players — and that is often the mindset of the club and ownership of the club. When you’ve had a career at the top level you can identify very early on if a club you’re coming into is a project as opposed to short-termism, where it’s like, ‘We need to win the first three games of next season. If we don’t, there’s going to be massive change’.

“I wasn’t able to identify that with the opportunities I had, including the club I was (already) at. That was the biggest thing for me. If it was like: ‘this is the project, this is your role in the project — senior player, going to offer value on the pitch but also significant value off the pitch’, then that would make me think, ‘OK this would be interesting’.”

When asked if retirement has been on his mind at any point the 33-year-old says: “I wouldn’t say no. I’ve not played a professional game for 12 months so one could argue, ‘You are retired’. But I’m fitter than the majority of the players playing professional football — that was always one of my strong attributes. And I’ve got a wealth of experience. It’s nice knowing that and I’m willing to apply it, but it has to be right for me.”

It’s a bold claim, to be fitter than those players who have been competing every week. But Robson-Kanu says that for the last eight years of his career, he had been “setting his own schedule” for physical activity — monitoring how much he did on a day-to-day basis and managing his own workload, “all in discussion with the coaches and physios, but I knew what I needed to do to be optimal”. So for the last 12 months, he’s simply been replicating what he was doing, to the level he feels is necessary.

“I don’t need to be at Premier League fitness level now,” he says, “but in four weeks, could I get to that level? I could comfortably do that. It’s just a case of that consistent daily activity, key movements, keeping key muscles stabilised.”

Advertisement

Knowing his body and what works for it is something that has been a key part of Robson-Kanu’s career from a young age. As a teenager, he suffered two cruciate ligament injuries a year apart that left him with restrictive inflammation and knee pain. When anti-inflammatories started having adverse effects such as nausea and passing blood, he and his father started researching natural remedies.

It was the start of a journey that ultimately led to the creation of The Turmeric Co. But it was also one that resulted in Robson-Kanu developing a deep interest in the physical workings of the human body. “A big thing around physicality is understanding the chain,” he explains. “A lot of the time you’ll see sports scientists, physical trainers in top clubs will get a player in and will immediately go and do a squat on the squat rack. They won’t have assessed their technique, they won’t have assessed their biomechanics, their movement patterns, or looked at what muscles are firing within a sequence.

“I’m talking about a granular level of understanding: when you walk, how are you using your feet? How does that then impact the flexion in your ankle? How does that impact the flexibility in your calf? The range in your knee? This isn’t spoken about. This all comes from me externally seeking how I could perform and maintain optimum condition at the highest level, which is what I did given the injuries I had.”

Robson-Kanu sought out the knowledge of multiple trainers — all outside of the football club — whose focus was on biomechanics. “There’s a massive gap in professional football of the understanding of physical condition and recovery,” he says. “It’s improving all the time but for me, to seek that top level, it was always external. I’ve built friendships with a few key individuals — movement specialists, pattern specialists. In 15 or 20 years, it will be the norm in professional sport, but I was ahead of the curve.”

Most footballers would be fearful of stepping away from the game as Robson-Kanu has done over the past year. What would they do instead? What if they couldn’t get back in? He is impressively phlegmatic about it: “It’s not like I’ve been twiddling my thumbs as a lot of professional footballers would do.

“With the business, I’ve been able to stay occupied mentally and continue to stimulate and push myself. The challenges of running a growing business every day are demanding, just as playing in the top league of any sport is demanding. It allowed for a smoother transition out of football — whether it’s just for that one-year gap. It wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision (to take a break), it was just like: this is the route that I’m taking.”

Retirement can be a loaded word for professional sportspeople. Without their sport, many struggle — not just with filling their time but with knowing exactly who they are once they’re no longer a footballer, a boxer or an athlete. “It’s true,” nods Robson-Kanu. “We’re taught to identify with what is external to us. That’s utter bullshit because it’s like, no — you’re a sentient being.

Advertisement

“If I’m a fireman, a policeman, a bus driver, an athlete — we’re then taught to associate that thing with ourselves. When that thing is not there anymore you immediately have that loss and that gap. But actually, you’re not that. You are you. How do you feel? How do you think? What are you passionate about? Understanding that deeper connection with yourself is almost a completely different mindset.

“As I grew older in football it was like ‘No, you’re not a footballer, you’re a being who has a profession of football and you have to be very appreciative for that’. Having that gratitude, you realise the only thing you can guarantee is change, and that’s in every walk of life. That continual change is what you need to accept.”

Robson-Kanu believes this is an area that affects young players more than ever and that the PFA, FA and Premier League should be increasing their initiatives and communication around it. “The younger generation really do associate who they are with their performance, their profession, their title. And that’s amplified now because of social media” he says. “At a cellular level, our hormones are being influenced because when we post on social media and we get a ‘like’, that is a sense of immediate gratification.

“Then we identify that with ourselves and that self is then identified with the image we’ve just posted. And it’s creating this shell of an individual with no core because we don’t understand ourselves at a deeper level. Even more so for a young professional athlete. It’s going to create a lot of gaps in terms of mental stability, which bleeds into performance.”

This ability to separate himself from performances, results and playing statistics was a valuable trait throughout a rollercoaster five years at West Brom, from arriving at a club where the manager made it clear he hadn’t been a “main target” in the 2016 summer transfer window to dealing with relegation, promotion and relegation again — all under the guidance of five different managers, as well as two caretakers.

The strength of his performances for Wales at Euro 2016 in the summer of his arrival in the Midlands meant there was “strong interest from abroad” in Robson-Kanu, but his passion was for playing in the Premier League and he felt that West Brom was the best fit for his attributes. It’s a decision he has no regrets about, and he remains proud of his time there.

But he admits that the impact of such frequent managerial change at West Brom was damaging for the team as a whole. “It’s very destabilising. At an individual level, you can say it doesn’t really bother me, but you’re impacted by it because the group is impacted by it. Stability is everything to any performance and success, so as soon as you take that away, it’s very difficult. This is what modern day football is like — at all clubs at all levels, the turnover of managers and players is extremely high. But the biggest thing I’ve learned is that with success you need to create that stability.”

Advertisement

He cites the transition from Tony Pulis to Alan Pardew in November 2017 as a particularly challenging one. “We’d come out of a period with Tony Pulis where it was very regimented,” Robson-Kanu says. “There are no grey areas of how he wants you to play. From a footballing level, when you step away from that it’s always going to be difficult.

“Then, more importantly, off the pitch, outside of football, that transition to a new manager with a new culture… it was very different as well. There are obviously some strange stories. But ultimately you just want that stability. That wasn’t achieved.”

Ah yes, the stories. Perhaps the most memorable one being that training trip to Barcelona in February 2018. West Brom were bottom of the Premier League at the time and had four days in between a Premier League game against Chelsea (a 3-0 defeat) and an FA Cup tie against Southampton. Pardew filled that gap with a trip he felt would help the team “get ready and up for the run-in”.

“At the time I remember thinking, ‘This probably isn’t the right time for a trip abroad’. Difficult season, lots of frustration, pent-up emotion to be released. Don’t get me wrong, the training pitches were decent, there was a clear agenda to the trip but it obviously wasn’t followed and a bit of craziness ensued.”

That “craziness” included four senior West Brom players being interviewed by police after allegedly stealing a taxi outside a fast-food restaurant, having broken a midnight curfew imposed by Pardew. Less than two months later Pardew left the club and West Brom had another new manager (Darren Moore) in place.

Robson-Kanu says the last six years (and particularly the past 12 months) have given him a deeper insight into what it takes to build and manage a team. The Turmeric Co now employs 25-plus people who its CEO wants to get the best out of every day and he’s taken bits of what he’s learned from 14 years in professional football to try and do that.

“I’ve taken a lot from what I’ve seen in football management — good and bad — that I’ve observed or played against, and from management, I’ve experienced first-hand; successes in terms of Euro 2016 and that togetherness of the group, having a clear definitive vision and generating that traction. I’ve taken all of that to my own management responsibilities within the business.”

Advertisement

What is it that makes a good manager then? It’s something Robson-Kanu has clearly given a lot of thought to, judging from this tweet:

Sir Alex Ferguson.

Pep Guardiola.

Jurgen Klopp.

What do they all have in common? 🧵

— Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu (@RobsonKanu) March 31, 2022

“Removing all the glorification, a big part of being a top manager for me boils down to empathy and emotional intelligence,” he says. “If you have those in abundance then it doesn’t guarantee you’ll have success at any level but it improves the odds and the likelihood of generating that consistent level of success.

“As a manager, you’re managing people. Technically and tactically we can talk about shape and how we can affect the opposition and combat their attack, and of course, that’s all important. But regardless of the score at the weekend, that group of players is going to come into the changing room on a Monday morning and it’s your job to ensure they’re motivated, that they are aligned with a common goal and have a clear vision of why they’re there and where you as a collective want to get to.

“At that very high level, the likes of Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola, tactically and technically and as great the players are that they have, you can see they have a higher level of emotional intelligence and that group is truly together. They will fight to the death for each other and for the manager. When it comes to management there are lots of different elements we could discuss but that level of empathy and emotional intelligence is key.”

In five to seven years, Robson-Kanu says he’d be “very interested in considering management”. Why the wait? He feels as though The Turmeric Co is heading towards big things and wants to see that success come to fruition before making his move into the all-encompassing realm of football management.

Spending an hour in Robson-Kanu’s company, it becomes clear why so many who’ve shared a dressing room with him highlight his self-confidence. “As a young kid I was very lively,” he says. “In the changing room, I’d have discussions with senior players, asking, ‘What’s the plan? What do we need to do to be better?’. I think it’s a case of knowing where you’re going. It was like, ‘this is my journey, I’m enjoying it and I’m not going to try and dampen my own light to fit in with the norm’.”

It’s an assurance he says was borne of coming through major adversity as a young player. At 15, he was told by a knee surgeon (after successive ACL injuries) that he would never play professional football at any level. “So I’d faced my adversity — to a degree, because we’re continually facing it — but I had already gone through so much. To come through that, at 18 I was like, ‘Guys, we’re here, let’s crack on. There’s no time for hiding’.

Advertisement

“It (facing adversity) gives you inner knowledge. It wasn’t belief because if you have to believe it’s like you’re not knowledgeable about it. Actually, I knew we were going to face challenges and hit road bumps but I know that this is my journey.”

Knowledge is a recurring theme when talking to Robson-Kanu. He was one of the first footballers to speak with authority on cryptocurrency, setting up his own blockchain-based data aggregation platform. “In 2014-15, it was really exciting for me, but now you’ve seen Bitcoin go from £50 up to £300 and back down to £70. At the time, it was really big news but all of that is superficial.

“The fundamental of what crypto and blockchain is, is just the first true step of technology beginning to eat the financial industry. And it will happen. In 10 to 15 years, if you say you don’t have crypto it will be like, ‘How do you pay for things?’.

On the topic of investors like WAGMI United taking over Crawley Town, he shrugs and says it comes as no surprise to him at all. “I don’t like to say too much because it’s not a case of, ‘Go and buy crypto’. It’s, ‘Go and understand what’s happening. Go and educate yourself and then you can make an informed decision’.”

With our allotted meeting time coming to an end, there is time for one more question before Robson-Kanu heads to his next meeting: when the 2022-23 season kicks off, is he back on a football pitch or still attached to his laptop? “Come August I want to be in the best possible place for me,” he says. “Whether that’s in the starting line of a professional sports team or if that’s continuing doing what I’m enjoying doing now.”

In the meantime, he says he will wait to see what approaches come his way and that there is no agent sending out his CV or highlight reels — all the discussions are directly through him. He misses the intensity and physical demands of being a professional athlete and says that playing football is something he’s still very passionate about. “If an opportunity arose which I couldn’t refuse then I would still get involved.”

And if not? “I’m very passionate about the business — we’re changing peoples’ lives and really making a difference. At the minute, we’re impacting tens of thousands of people daily. The dream is to be impacting hundreds of millions. That’s something I’m massively passionate about.”