In 1999 a promising sixteen year old from East London signed his first professional contract with West Ham United. Over the next quarter of a century, Jermain Defoe would terrorise defenders up and down the land, scoring three-hundred-and-four goals for seven different clubs.

But Father Time is undefeated, and in the blink of an eye that sixteen-year old was suddenly thirty-nine. The body no longer able to do what the mind asked of it. And so Jermain Defoe retired: The routine of a lifetime gone; the camaraderie that made a man, finished; and the cheering stopped.

Outside the Box is a fly-on-the-wall series that follows Defoe in his footballing afterlife as he tries to enter the world of management knowing that so much is against him: age, experience, and most notably, the colour of his skin. With unprecedented access to one of English football’s most clinical finishers, Defoe embarks on a journey of discovery through his past to discover whether he really has what it takes to become a manager. Along the way he meets the men and women who’ve shaped his career; he spends time with current and former managers, chief executives, chairmen and directors of football, asking difficult questions of himself and society.

And he’s challenged to think differently about how he might tackle the cut throat world of management by working with SAS commanders, actors, journalists and others to find his voice.