From Ajax to afrobeats: How Jurrien Timber & Ryan Gravenberch’s ex-team-mate ELIKIA quit football for a career in music

However, despite hanging up his boots, football remains a huge influence on ELIKIA’s life and music, as he fuses the sport he loves with afrobeats. “It was really a very hard thing to do, to make that decision, because I just spent my whole life on football,” he says.

“My whole childhood was spent on football. It was always practice, every day practice. To then make a switch to music and just quit professional football is, of course, really hard.

“But, to be honest, maybe I left professional football, but professional football never leaves me. That’s a feeling I have, and you can hear it in my music. I try to implement the things that I’ve experienced and the things that I’m inspired by into my music.

“That’s really how I experience it – combining two of those worlds together, football and music. That’s really important for me because I still have a lot of friends in football, I have my own experiences, and I feel like I’m still living it.”

Lyrics like “Strong on the ball like I’m Tchouameni”, “Scoring goals like Bellingham” and “Love for the game” have all featured in his songs, as well as plenty of other football references.

The now-former player believes he has also harnessed that the harsh lessons he learned in the Ajax academy in his budding music career. “Outside of football, it shapes your mentality,” he says. “I think you have to get used to the pressure. When you’ve played a lot of games and everything, you get the confidence from your coach and from your team-mates. When you find your spot, it gets better and you find your confidence.

“That’s something that’s also relevant in music. When everything is new and you have to get used to it, build your network and everything, it’s really scary. But then when you find your spot, find the people you want to work with and create your own sound, then it gets more comfortable in what you’re doing.”

ELIKIA’s new album drops in November, and football’s influence therein is obvious, too. “There are slowly a lot of things that are connected to my football story,” he says. “Maybe it’s connections, maybe it’s the song. But now, with this album that’s coming up in November, I have this new album with 11 tracks. It’s like a starting XI.

“It works a little bit the same as a football team. There are 11 tracks, there are 11 players. Everybody has their own role and position, and that’s the same for the album.”