Becoming a tattoo artist alongside a football career does have some precedent – former Liverpool centre-back Daniel Agger, for instance – but still stands out as an unusual hobby for an active player to take up.
England midfielder Georgia Stanway has spent the past few years putting her skills to the test, however.
No stranger to ink herself, Stanway has taken things to another level since moving to Bayern Munich in 2022, to the point she has given some of her German teammates tattoos.
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Georgia Stanway: “We just had a thing of, ‘OK, I’ll learn how to do it and hopefully one day we can tattoo each other’, just as a sign of our friendship.”
Stanway told FourFourTwo: “I’ve always had a love for tattoos – I’ve spent a lot of time in tattoo shops and I have loads of them. My family do too, so it was always quite normal for us.
“My dad’s good friend was a tattoo artist and he used to come around to the house. One day I walked into a studio in Munich and ended up becoming friends with the owner and one of the tattoo artists.
“We just had a thing of, ‘OK, I’ll learn how to do it and hopefully one day we can tattoo each other’, just as a sign of our friendship.
“But I ended up really enjoying it and wanting to do more. I enjoy the fact I can give someone something that will stay with them forever, and that they place that trust in me.”
“I can’t tattoo in England – it’s difficult with the licensing, but I’ve tattooed a lot of my German team-mates. It’s cool.
“It brings a bit of pressure because I know I’ll be seeing plenty of their tattoo, so it’s extra pressure to make sure it’s perfect. But I enjoy it.
Stanway has marked big career moments with tattoos with hidden meanings, including one she got after England’s 2021 Euros triumph.
She said: “One of my favourites is the time the whistle went when we won the Euros. My agent was somewhere in the crowd – he texted me to say, ‘You’ve just won the Euros’. I got back into the changing rooms and that was the time he texted me.”
Stanway already plans to give herself another however things go in Switzerland this summer – and she’s had plenty of practice since suffering a knee injury midway through the season just gone.
“I’ll get another one either way,” she said. “I have a habit at the moment of tattooing my own leg. The boredom has been running away with me while I’ve been injured.”
