A professional athlete whose entire career depends on leg fitness installing a swimming pool they’ll almost certainly never do laps in seems a little ridiculous, but if you drive along the private roads bordering Highgate or Hampstead Garden Suburb, where CCTV cameras and 24-hour guarded gates watch over sweeping carriage driveways, you’ll find that almost every property marketed to Premier League players has one. Football players’ pools are now more about making an announcement that they have literally reached the top than they are about working out.
Consider Woodley, an expansive estate with eight bedrooms located on Compton Avenue, one of the most prestigious private roads in north London. It rents thru Glentree for about £9,995 per week, which would make most people cringe but hardly compares to a top-tier salary. Instead of being tucked away in a corner of the basement, the indoor swimming pool is located on its own wing, surrounded by a large, empty, contemporary entertaining area.
That seems more suited for Instagram stories than for real life. When they first arrived in England, many of these players including Mesut Özil, David Ospina, Olivier Giroud Hugo Lloris decided to rent properties just like this, settling into the north London expat circuit before committing to ownership. The pool might not have been the draw at all. It was always included in the package.
The evolution of football players’ pools from a useful feature to something more akin to interior theater is fascinating. Ten years ago, the pool in a football player’s house was just a tiled room with a rectangle of blue water. With their infinity edges, mood lighting, integrated spa areas glass walls overlooking well-kept gardens, the installations now compete with boutique hotel projects. The briefs have changed, according to experts who work on these properties.
“A pool” is not what players request. They want an experience, a place that looks good on camera and makes an impression on teammates who stop by to play after training. Although many players still insist on both, it seems that the pool room has taken the place of the games room as the focal point of the modern football player’s home.
Here, geography is important. Players from Tottenham and Arsenal, especially those from Europe, have long congregated in the villagey streets of Hampstead and Belsize Park. Arrivals who are concerned about their privacy tend to favor Kenwood and the gated communities where paparazzi can hardly get in.
There isn’t a swimming pool visible from the street in these neighborhoods. The mystery is further enhanced by the fact that everything is concealed behind electric gates and hedgerows. When the phrase “leisure suite with pool” appears in a property listing, real estate brokers are aware of the caller’s identity.
Football players’ pools are part of a larger culture of competitive domestic luxury, which is difficult to ignore. Heated poolside lounging areas and retractable glass roofs are requested by the same players who order Porsche-designed kitchens from Poggenpohl without even an oven or commission six-figure aquarium installations from Aquarium Architecture, including Samir Nasri, Joe Hart Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
Actor Tom Conti, Thierry Henry’s neighbor in Hampstead, famously fought him for permission to build a 25,000-square-foot fish tank. Most likely, the pool had already been sorted. When your kitchen is merely decorative and your meals are delivered by Deliveroo or the training ground canteen, the pool becomes the space you truly devote your emotional energy to creating.
It remains to be seen if any of these pools are frequently used. A wet poolside, an awkward dive, or even the wrong kind of muscle fatigue prior to a match are among the activities that players are wary of. Premier League clubs’ physiotherapy departments are not thrilled about their employes engaging in unsupervised aquatic workouts at home.
The pools continue to grow in size, complexity cost. No one seems prepared to put an end to this status arms race, which is being played out in imported Italian tile and chlorinated water. If anything, it’s likely that the upcoming generation of signings will desire something even more ostentatious. In football, that’s how things operate. Whether they have to or not, someone raises the standard that everyone else must meet.