The teenager who quit Manchester City for Oxford University: ‘I felt I could do more’

Freshers’ week, Oxford University, early October. A time for the heart to hammer with excitement, when horizons are broadened inexorably. For minimal sleep and maximum fun. And for one or two tall stories, a bit of personal reinvention, perhaps.

Take one new law student at Brasenose College, because he can certainly spin a few yarns. About the time, for example, he was coached by Yaya Touré at the Tottenham academy. He did not recognise him at first but then saw him on the ball and the penny dropped.

About when he trained with the Spurs first team while he was still a schoolboy. Or, more recently, when he was a part of the Manchester City Under-21s squad and would regularly work with the seniors. You want to know what it is like in a Pep Guardiola session? To have Kevin De Bruyne run at you with the ball? This guy has the answers. But the thing is that there is nothing made up, zero embellishment. If anything, he is a reluctant raconteur.

Han Willhoft-King is the 19‑year‑old who seemingly has it all. A standout football talent, long tipped to make an impact in the professional game as a deep-sitting midfield controller. A star of the classroom, too, with the knack of grasping everything so quickly. His A-level grades in maths, economics and history? A*. A*. A.

Willhoft-King was, in the end, the kid who had to make a choice. Between a boyhood dream, the one that millions harbour but so few can realise – a career as a footballer. And an elite-level educational pathway. He is aware of what everyone thought towards the end of last season, what they continue to think.

“I don’t know many people who, when they reach Man City Under‑21s, would pack it in at that point,” Willhoft-King says. “Because when you are playing for Man City Under-21s, the expectation would be to pursue a career.”

Willhoft-King was that person. He decided after the early weeks of the season to apply to universities and sit the law national aptitude test, which he aced despite giving himself little preparation time. Oxford invited him to interview and the offer of a place came in January. It burned away at him and the past few years have, frankly, been an emotional rollercoaster.

Willhoft-King’s decision to enrol at Oxford followed plenty of soul-searching and there is really only one question for him. He says he was asked it “by about 90 different people” in a matter of days at Oxford once the word had spread about his football life. Why?

The simple answer is the injuries. Willhoft-King was flying in his under-16 season at Spurs in 2021-22, the club that he joined at the age of six. They had scouted him at TFA, the north London grassroots club at which he played with Myles Lewis‑Skelly and Ethan Nwaneri. Both are now established at Arsenal. There were England Under-16 caps for Willhoft-King and the involvement in first-team training at Spurs under Antonio Conte, where he remembers the kindness of Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Eric Dier.

Willhoft-King’s first big injury struck towards the end of that season and it would undermine him for the remainder of the calendar year – when he had started his scholarship at Spurs. He would suffer further injuries in his second season as a scholar and then again at City in 2024-25; he was out from September until the new year. After that, with the City Under-21 team settled, he found it impossible to break in.

The injuries are only one factor. Willhoft-King has always felt the pull of academia, which probably comes from his father, Jorg, a former university lecturer in philosophy who now works for a company that mentors international students, and his mother, Laura, who is an architect.

Willhoft-King attended Highgate Wood comprehensive school until Year 11 and Spurs got him personal tutors for his maths and economics A-levels. “I’d do that around twice a week … we’d do, like, two hours and the rest of it was essentially self-study,” he says. He did his history A-level while at City.

It was during his second year as a Spurs scholar, which he describes as a “pretty dark time” mainly because of injury, that he started to think about going to a US university. His interest was piqued when the club brought in a guest speaker from an agency that helped players in England to get sports scholarships in the US.

Willhoft-King had been named by the Guardian in September 2022 as the most promising first-year scholar at Spurs and the agency used the coverage to push him to US universities; the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard were especially keen. He was not enjoying life at Spurs and came to see the US as the answer. The idea was that he could combine education and the professional football dream by ending up as an MLS draft pick.

Willhoft-King turned down contract offers from Spurs and accepted a place at UCLA to start in January 2025. At that point two things happened. Firstly, he signed for FC Cincinnati 2 – who play in MLS Next Pro – and travelled out to begin training with them. It was a six-month deal to tide him over until UCLA but he lasted only a couple of weeks because City offered him a one-year contract with the option of a second year. He knew that he had to accept.

“At that point, the plan was still to go pro and I felt like I’d always regret it if I didn’t join Man City,” he says. “I would always say: ‘What if I’d taken that chance?’ Now I’ve had that and I can step away from football knowing I’ve given it my best shot. That’s a lot more comforting for me.”

Willhoft-King talks about feeling “starstruck” at first when he and his under-21 teammates were called up by Guardiola for first-team sessions, which tended to involve them mimicking the pressing patterns of upcoming opponents.

“Tottenham is a good team but Man City is another level,” Willhoft‑ King says. “De Bruyne, Haaland … these are the best players in the world. But you also realise they are normal people. They have a bit of banter, they call each other out for making mistakes. And seeing Pep … he is just so, so animated. The energy he brings, the hand gestures, raising his voice. It’s actually pretty remarkable.

“Then … I don’t want to say disillusioned but you realise … well, training with the first team became a thing that no one was really looking forward to, strangely enough. Because you would just be pressing. We would be running after the ball like dogs for half an hour, 60 minutes. It’s not a very pleasant experience, especially when you are trying to press De Bruyne or Gündogan or Foden. You can’t get near them, so the feeling of not wanting to do this overcomes being starstruck.”

Disillusionment feels like a good word to sum things up, even if Willhoft-King continues to love playing the game and has the varsity showdown against Cambridge at the forefront of his thoughts. It is worth noting that City would have been happy to give him the extra year. So, in the final analysis: why?

“I wasn’t enjoying it,” he says. “I don’t know what it was, maybe the environment. I’m bored often, as well. You’d train, you’d come home and you wouldn’t really do anything. If you contrast it to now … I’m struggling to find hours in the day. I’m either studying, going out with friends, playing for the university first team, also my college.

“I always felt understimulated in football. Don’t get me wrong. I still loved it. But I always felt I could be doing more. I was wasting hours of the day. I needed something different and Oxford excited me; the people, too. I guess that’s the reason. Injuries were a big factor but that’s the easy answer. I felt I needed something a bit more … mainly intellectually, which sounds quite pretentious. But, yeah.

“Say I had a career in League One or the Championship … you make good money. But how much would I enjoy it? In my head I wasn’t sure. Also, best-case scenario – you’ll play for 10, 15 years and after that, what? I thought going to university would provide a platform for me to do something at least for longer than the next 10 to 15 years. So, it’s a bit of a long-term thing, as well.”

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