Hello, I'm Juliett Farrington and welcome to a Sky Sports one-on-one special.

This episode features an interview with Chris Birchall.

He started and finished his playing career at Port Vale.

In between that time, in no particular order, he also played for Coventry, Brighton, Columbus crew in MLS,

and was one of David Beckham's teammates at LA Galaxy. He also played against England in the 2006

World Cup with Trinidad and Tobago. But now he's retired, he's one of a number of former

professional footballers who are stepping into the world of refereeing after signing a three-year

deal with PGMOL, the organisation who look after the officiating of matches in the English game.

It's a three-year course and by the end of it, Chris hopes he'll be refereeing games at the highest

level. You'll hear him talk how it's given him a new lease of life, how the pathway to do

something like this for players has been a long time coming,

how his mates told him he'd gone to the dark side after signing up,

but also how they're totally invested into seeing how he gets on.

The goal is to referee in the Premier League.

Welcome to one-on-one, Chris Birchall.

It's all happened all of a sudden.

I mean, there was always an interest for me when I finished playing

to stay within the game,

but not go down the kind of typical coaching aspect with clubs

was always an interesting referee but there was no opportunity at the time

then last may I did my badge with my staffs FAA and then from there I think it's give everyone

a kind of new lease of life and a purpose really because because when you finish football, when it kind of happens all of a sudden, your whole life changes because all you've ever known is kicking a football, dedicating all your life to that, to then, right, you're out in the big wide world now and what you're going to do. So for me, I can only say for myself, like, mentally it's just give me a bit of excitement,

...