Reece Wabara, once a promising talent in Manchester City’s youth academy, has built a multimillion-pound fashion empire after leaving professional football behind. The 32-year-old full-back made a single senior appearance for City on the last day of the 2010/11 season before loan spells at Ipswich Town, Oldham Athletic, Blackpool, and Doncaster Rovers.
Football Career and Retirement
Wabara signed permanently with Doncaster in 2014, followed by short stints at Barnsley, Wigan, and Bolton. He retired in 2017 at age 26 to focus on his growing fashion brand, Maniere de Voir.
In a 2022 CEOCAST interview, Wabara reflected on his complacency early in his career: “It’s my fault, I was complacent, I didn’t go hard enough. It was too easy up until 18, then everyone started to catch me up. I was the best player.”
During his time at Wigan, where the team earned promotion and he made the team of the year, management raised concerns about his business focus. Wabara recalled: “A member of the management said I’d been fantastic but they felt I was focusing on the business too much. I thought to myself, I can’t have my future in someone else’s hands.”
On the 2020 High Performance podcast, he explained his retirement: “I decided to completely stop because the business was doing really well and focus is important. I was 25 or 26, I had to make a choice, what’s more long term?”
Fashion Empire Success
Maniere de Voir now generates around £35 million in annual revenue, with its flagship store opening on London’s Oxford Street in 2023. Wabara views his football exit as a pivotal decision: “I already threw away a high level, prosperous career. I’m happy that those situations happened to me so now I know that if I can achieve ‘x, y and z’, don’t let myself be the root of that failure.”
He added on the High Performance podcast: “I’m glad I missed the opportunity of Man City, England, being very highly rated. I was too complacent, that’s the bottom line. If I could live life again, I’d be playing in the Champions League or Premier League now.”
Wabara believes he could have reached the top in football: “100 per cent, without a shadow of a doubt.” Yet he embraces his path: “At the same time, if I didn’t have that failure or slight regret, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve what I have now.”
Early Romance with Helen Flanagan
During his Manchester City youth days, Wabara dated Coronation Street actress Helen Flanagan briefly. In her memoir Head and Heart: Break-ups, Breakdowns and Being Rosie, Flanagan shared: “I went out a few times with a Manchester City youth player called Reece Wabara who – and this is too funny – Brooke [Vincent] later ended up going out with.”
She described a humorous incident: “There was one night he took me back to his lodgings after we’d been out in Manchester and his furious landlady kicked me out. ‘Er, you’re not going upstairs young lady,’ she said. Dead!”
Flanagan noted: “Reece was gorgeous but it fizzled out as quickly as it had started and I think he was a bit of a ladies’ man anyway. He’s actually gone on to have a really successful career away from football with his clothing brand Maniere De Voir which has a flagship store on London’s Oxford Street.”
