Ex-Everton defender Johnny Heitinga has been breaking hearts in his native Holland after giving an interview that exposed the hardships he and his family are facing since he retired from professional football.

Turns out that since calling time on his career at the end of last season, Heitinga has been scrimping and saving to get by, even having to forgo some of life’s basics – private jets, luxury villas, personal shoppers – as a result.

In a dual interview with 1limburg, the 33-year-old and his wife Charlotte-Sophie (the sister of Boudewijn Zenden) lifted the lid on the harsh life that awaits post-football.

Warning: the following quotes contain bleak and harrowing accounts of almost inhumane poverty…

When I was still playing football we had a lot more money coming in. Our expenditures were likewise. Now we are trying to adjust. In the past, we sometimes chartered a private jet, but we don’t do that now. On holidays we do still rent a fancy villa, but you get different categories of ‘fancy’.

Charlotte-Sophie then piped up to really ram the destitution home:

We are trying to get used to it. Sometimes it is difficult. We could not easily go to Paris, Milan or New York for shopping.

Christ. Next stop: The workhouse.

However, Heitinga did reveal that it hasn’t been all doom and gloom, with he and his pauper wife discovering the plebeian joys of getting themselves dressed of a morning.

[Our stylist Danie Bles] would do it for us – but we are now having fun doing it ourselves!

Warms your cockles, don’t it?