I dreamed of being Tottenham’s answer to Steven Gerrard - but nine clubs later I'm managed by a FIFA streamer
How did a Spurs youth prospect wind up playing for a FIFA streamer - and how did he once get away with fighting Virgil van Dijk?
The football landscape is littered with former prospects at Premier League teams who didn’t quite cut the mustard at the top level – but few were defenders who wanted to play like Steven Gerrard, who got into a fight with Virgil van Dijk which got the wrong man sent off, or who are now being managed by a FIFA streamer at the age of 34.
That, however, is the unusual career path followed by Calum Butcher. A Tottenham Hotspur academy product who has played for ten clubs and become something of a cult figure at several of them, Butcher saw himself as a dynamic midfielder but spent much of his career operating as a no-nonsense centre-back – and now he’s taking instructions from a man approaching his mid-20s who still goes by the name Angryginge, who’s more used to issuing orders to virtual players than real ones. So how did he get here?
What happened to former Spurs & Dundee United star Calum Butcher?
Butcher spent four years at Spurs up to 2011, but never made it further than the bench of the first team. A difference of opinion between player and his coaches may have played some part in his failure to launch a career in the Premier League – because where Butcher saw himself stepping into Gerrard’s shoes, his coaches saw him as a defender.
“I always thought I should play in midfield but managers insisted that I play in defence,” Butcher later told The Courier. “I really like playing in midfield. I have said it so many times now, but that is where I want to play... When I was younger, it was Steven Gerrard with the way he wins the ball back and then passes.”
Eventually, Butcher did get to play in midfield, but that was years down the line – after his release by Spurs, after a year trying to make it in Denmark with a little-known side called Hjørring, and after a spell in non-league with Hayes & Yeading. It was not a promising start to a career, but he was to leave more of mark in Scotland with Dundee United.
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Used as both a defender and midfielder at different times, Butcher earned a reputation as a tough-tackling enforcer who wasn’t above putting in challenges that even Gerrard might have winced at – and who once managed to get one of his team-mates sent off.
Playing against Celtic in 2015, Butcher got into it off the ball with an up-and-coming Virgil van Dijk. The referee decided to send both players off – but misidentified the Dundee United player involved and sent off one of Butcher’s colleagues by mistake. Scottish FA rules meant that even once the error was recognised after the match, Butcher couldn’t be suspended.
Spells with Burton Albion – where Nigel Clough briefly and unsuccessfully tried Butcher out as a striker – Millwall and even Billericay Town followed, but it was at Tannadice that he was remembered with the most fondness after he returned for a second spell between 2019 and 2022.
A long and varied career seemed to come to a natural conclusion at the end of the 2023/24 season, when he was released by Motherwell at the age of 33 despite playing 30 Scottish Premiership games for the club. Butcher was a free agent reaching the end, and no new team came calling. Until 2025, that is, when his career took an unexpected left turn.
Why the Baller League has given Butcher’s career a late revival
In April this year, Butcher was announced as a ‘wildcard signing’ for Yanited – not a traditional football club, but a six-a-side team who were competing in the first UK edition of the Baller League, a streamer-led tournament which would be watched by hundreds of thousands of viewers online.
It wasn’t quite the same game that Butcher had played at Spurs as a child. The action was presented by YouTuber KSI, new rules (such as long-range goals counting double) would be introduced mid-match, and while the players were former pros or academy products looking for a second chance, the managers were rather different.
While some of the players got to be coached by the likes of John Terry or Robert Pirès, Yanited were led by a man calling himself Angryginge, best known for streaming FIFA and other football content on social media.
Still, it can’t have been all that unpleasant of an experience – because Butcher has returned to Yanited for the second season of the Baller League, which gets underway this autumn, with team-mates including fellow former Spurs starlet John Bostock, who was at White Hart Lane at the same time as Butcher. Other players in the league range from England international Joleon Lescott to Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, a former Arsenal wonderkid recently released from prison after a conviction for drug smuggling.
While some of the players on show are hoping to show off their skills and perhaps use the competition as a platform to break back into the professional game, for Butcher it’s probably more of a last hurrah – and one last chance to prove that there’s a little bit of Gerrard in there despite what all of his coaches once believed.