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From bursting onto the scene at Manchester City to becoming one of the most entertaining pundits around, it’s hard not to love the larger-than-life character that is Micah Richards.
Many today will know him better for his punditry and impressive ability to wind up Roy Keane without getting a walloping, but Richards was also a quality player in his day – and a Premier League-winning one at that.
With that in mind, Football FanCast has created a list of everything you need to know about the happiest man in football, from his wages to his haircuts; we’ve covered it all.
Micah Richards was born on June 24th, 1988, in Birmingham, England and is 35 years old.
The Match of the Day pundit was born in the Midlands but spent most of his childhood in Chapeltown, Leeds.
Despite growing up in West Yorkshire and being born in Birmingham, Richards revealed that he supported Arsenal as a kid, largely due to the exploits of the talismanic Ian Wright.
Micah Richards may be well known for his impressive physique, weighing a hefty 83 kg, but his height is fairly average, with the former City man measuring 1.8m, or 5 foot 10.
In comparison, Gary Lineker is 1.77m (5 foot 9), Alan Shearer is 1.83m (6 feet), and CBS Sports colleague Kate Abdo is 1.73m (5 foot 6).
Were Richards still playing today, he would be slightly shorter than the average player in the league, with that number being 1.82m, or 5 foot 11.
Richards got his first taste of football in Leeds as he was a part of the Peacocks youth system between 1996 and 2000, after which he spent a year at Oldham Athletic before finally joining Manchester City’s youth setup.
After spending several years impressing in the youth teams, Richards was finally handed his first team debut against Arsenal in October 2005, a day he described as “the most memorable day in my life.” He would make 16 appearances across all competitions that season and became a recognisable member of the squad.
The next milestone came in the 2007/08 season when he was given the captain’s armband in the wake of injuries to Richard Dunne, which made him the youngest captain in the club’s long history.
The following six years were very up and down for Richards as he was a part of the teams that won the FA Cup in 2011 and the Premier League in 2012, but he was also blighted by consistent injuries.
With his place in the team up in the air in the 2013/14 season, the team let him go on a short-term loan to Fiorentina; however, upon his return, he was released by the club.
He would spend the next four seasons at Aston Villa, in both the Premier League and the Championship. Still, more injuries and a general lack of fitness meant he made very few appearances at the club, even going two seasons without a single one.
He announced his retirement in July 2019 at the age of 31.
In a vacuum, Richards’ retirement looks like a massive surprise; after all, here was an FA Cup and Premier League winner retiring at age 31. You don’t often see that.
However, it really shouldn’t be seen as that much of a shock, as in the three years before he announced that he was hanging up his boots, he had played a grand total of three appearances.
Injuries and a general lack of fitness had stolen away his ability to play the game he loved. A few years after retiring, he told The Athletic: “I was struggling, demoralised, trying to put on a brave face in front of the boys at training.”
If anything, it’s surprising he didn’t call it a day sooner, but it seems like it was the right decision for his own well-being as he now has a booming career as a well-loved pundit.
Richards has always been quite open about the money he earned from his playing days, revealing that he quickly rose up the wage structure at City from £1,000 a week when he started out, to reaching £50,000 a week before he was 20.
However, he has made a point that it wasn’t just about the money for him, revealing that he turned down a £100,000-a-week offer at Manchester City in search of regular game time at Aston Villa.
However, on the Match of the Day podcast, he told Lineker and Shearer that it was the worst decision of his life, in an exchange that went viral for the hilarious honesty from the former City man.
While he was very open about his wages as a player, it is a little bit more difficult to find exact numbers for his salary as a pundit.
However, last year, the Mirror reported the wages of those working for the BBC and revealed that Richards was the 48th best-paid pundit at the organisation, bringing home around £200k a year.
That’s not a bad wage for watching and talking about football. Still, we can assume his overall salary is much higher considering he also works for Sky Sports – who pay both Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville over £1m – and CBS Sports.
It’s always hard to find an accurate net worth for sports stars, as while we tend to know the ballpark figure they earn at their respective clubs, we can never know everything else that comes with it, such as sponsorships, investments or media fees.
That said, based on the money he earned as a player and the money he’s purported to make as a pundit, the figure from Idolnetworth certainly feels plausible.
According to them, Richards has a net worth of $45m, which currently converts to around £37m.
While that might be less than other recently retired professionals, we reckon he’s probably pretty pleased with that figure.
As far as we know, the charismatic pundit is currently single.
There were rumours of a relationship with Helen Flanagan all the way back in 2008, but neither she nor Richards have ever spoken publicly on the subject.
There were also rumours suggesting that Richards was dating former Arsenal player Alex Scott in 2020, but again, neither one of them ever spoke on these rumours, and it never seemed to be true.
Richards has kept his private life under wraps for much of his career, so it’s unlikely we’ll hear about any relationship news before he is happy to reveal it.
So what does a retired footballer do with all of that money? Well, if you’re Micah Richards, you spend a ridiculous amount of it on haircuts.
Yes, haircuts.
While covering the Champions League for CBS Sports earlier in February this year, the topic of haircuts arose, at which point the former City full-back remarked that he had three trims a week.
This would be odd behaviour at the best of times, but the fact that Richards also spends £200 per trim makes it even crazier.
Some quick maths tells us that the right-back turned pundit spends about £31,200 a year on haircuts, which, understandably, left his co-pundits flabbergasted. Their conversation gets us every time:
Thierry Henry: “What?”
Micah Richards: “I’ve got to look fly. £200 a time, yes. When I say the most, like I’ll get a trim tomorrow for the Champions League, and I’m working the weekend, so I’ll get a trim. I did it today. I’ve got to get a sharpen up tomorrow.”
Henry: “You said you need to look fly…not like one.”
Richards: “I should be putting it through expenses, shouldn’t I?”
We all share Henry’s confusion, although perhaps he isn’t the best man for haircut advice.
In February of this year, Richards released his first book, The Game: Player. Pundit. Fan.
You can get a good idea of the subject by the name alone, but the blurb fills you in on what to expect: ‘The game isn’t what it seems from the outside. The game isn’t quite what I was expecting. The game doesn’t always work like the people on television think it does. The game is better, worse and stranger than you can imagine, and that is coming from someone who saw it all with their own eyes.’
Now, you might expect a book from a former footballer and pundit to be, well, not very good. We all love the game, and we have our favourite players, but let’s be honest, footballers aren’t exactly renowned for their wit.
That said, Richards has always come across as different in that regard, as there isn’t really another mainstream pundit that provides as much entertainment from their personality alone as he does, and according to reviews, that same joyous energy carries over to the written word.
Donald McRae of The Guardian was full of praise for the book, writing: ‘[A]n immensely readable book that takes us deep inside the strange and often unhinged hidden life of a Premier League footballer.’
McRae isn’t alone in his enjoyment of the book either, with Goodreads giving it 3.9 out of 5, amazon 4.4 out of 5 and Waterstones 5 out of 5.
We might just have to give this one a read.
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