Story byPlaying on after 40: ‘What life do I want to live for the next 50 years?’Katie WhyattMon, February 23, 2026 at 5:16 AM UTC·13 min readFor a while, Billy Sharp’s pinned post on X was his riposte to the opposition supporter who sent him an AI-generated image of the striker in his Doncaster Rovers kit, hobbling about the pitch on a walking frame. His most recent post is a clip from the press conference that fell in the week of his latest birthday, at which his manager said, “Welcome to my club — the forties.”Such is life when you’re still playing professional football at the age of 40: still scoring, still training every day, still relishing the needle with rival fans, still living with so much energy that, Sharp tells The Athletic, he observed to his wife that “lately, I’ve been having the energy to go to play padel as a cool-down”. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIn November last year, Sharp passed 700 appearances in the English Football League (EFL), the bulk of them coming in the Championship and League One, the second and third tiers of English football. Another measure of the length of Sharp’s career is that he features in the iconic Neil Warnock documentary, which charts the then-Sheffield United manager’s 2004-05 season and has recently found a new generation of viewers via TikTok. The fashion alone — baggy tracksuits, blond highlights — underscores the passage of more than two decades. On Saturday, Brighton & Hove Albion’s James Milner, aged 40, surpassed Gareth Barry’s record for most Premier League appearances.
