He was a partner of Cristiano Ronaldo, he retired at 24 and is now a millionaire

In the world of football, it's very common for the great promises to be classified as "the new..." with the sole objective of filling the fans of the various clubs with enthusiasm. And in many of these cases, the players fail to meet the expectations that were on them and end up in delicate financial situations. The Ramon Calliste story fits perfectly into this area, except that his ending is different: he became a millionaire once he retired.

At the beginning of the millennium, the name Ramon Calliste was synonymous with hope in Wales as this young man who served in some youth teams in his country had shown enough capacity to become a megastar and give his country some joy. So much so that he came to train with the Manchester United first team and the local newspapers dubbed him "the new Ryan Giggs".

In the 2004-05 season, he shared several practices with the Red Devils first team, since his level in the minor categories, with which he won the youth FA Cup in 2003, caught the attention of Sir Alex Ferguson. It was thus that he had the fortune to meet players of the stature of Cristiano Ronaldo, Río Ferdinand, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Gerard Piqué and Paul Scholes among others. “We don't always train with the first team, but sometimes we had matches of five. He aspired to train with them permanently, and it was amazing when I got the chance. I trained with Rooney and Ronaldo, which was very important”, he recalled in dialogue with The Sun.

He also ran into another rising megastar, in a friendly between selected youth teams from his country: “I remember seeing Gareth Bale when we had a Welsh Under-21 training session at Wrexham. He didn't really know who he was at the time, but he knew that he was in Southampton. But after training we were kicking on goal and I could see him practicing free throws. From that moment you could see that he was a special player. It was great to play alongside him and other great players in the world”.

Without a place, he decided to emigrate from Manchester United

The presence of such names ended up being counterproductive for his future at United and that is why the following season he went to Liverpool in search of adding a few minutes, but he did not succeed either. At Anfield he could not even step on the grass and after a campaign in which he ended up being one of the figures of the reserve tournament, he followed the advice of the Wales coach, John Toshack, who recommended that he look for a team where he will start to thus be able to have continuity and be summoned to the selected one. He then chose to join the weak Scunthorpe United, but there his fate played a trick on him.

A serious injury forced him to retire

In 2006 he dislocated his ankle, broke a bone and seriously injured his ligaments, so he never physically recovered again and after brief and forgettable steps by other lower ranking teams of the British promotion he retired. “If he had had the injury at Man United and Liverpool, it could have been fine. But since I received the treatment at Scunthorpe, I don't think I received adequate medical care”, he analyzed.

His new life away from the courts

"I started to get involved in watchmaking through the contacts I had in the world of football. Once I saw that it could become a viable business, I created Global Watches in 2013 and it has become a really strong company that is now billing million". It's that the company that sells high-end watches today makes a profit of more than USD 5 million a year. "The idea is to continue growing and, hopefully, to sell the company in five or ten years, just like Watchfinder did recently.".

“When it comes to high-value products, you have to take a lot of regulations into account. We do everything by the rules here and it is very important to be clear about what you are doing. I was lucky that it was very lucrative from the beginning. Some watches that we sell can cost from 250,000 pounds sterling (more than USD 410 thousand)”.