Phil Jones has graduated from the PFA Business School, completing the professional development programme designed to prepare former players for life after football. The news was reported by 90min, which noted that Jones was among a cohort that included Tim Krul, Danny Simpson and Ilkay Gündogan.
The PFA Business School, run in partnership with the players' union, offers former professionals structured grounding in business and commercial thinking — a recognition that careers in the game, however long, leave many players ill-equipped for the decades that follow. Jones, whose time at Manchester United was severely disrupted by injury across the latter portion of his contract, retired without having played a first-team fixture for several years.
According to 90min, Jones used the graduation to hint at his future plans, though the precise nature of those plans was not detailed in the report. The presence of Gündogan in the same cohort — a player of considerable experience at the highest level of club and international football — underlines the breadth of the programme's appeal, drawing in players from markedly different career trajectories.
Krul and Simpson, both of whose playing careers wound down through the lower reaches of the professional game, represent the more typical graduate profile: players for whom the transition out of football can arrive abruptly, without the financial cushion or public platform that the game's top earners enjoy. The PFA has expanded its off-field support in recent years in response to well-documented concerns about player welfare after retirement.
For Jones specifically, the graduation marks a public step forward after a prolonged and often painful exit from playing. Injuries had reduced him to a peripheral figure at Old Trafford long before his departure, and his post-playing years have been largely kept from view. A business qualification offers no guarantee of a second career, but it signals intent — and, in this case, a willingness to be seen taking those first steps.