Race former footballer after invasive surgery (6)
I believe the answer is:
people
'race' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'former footballer after invasive surgery' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'surgery' could be 'op' (short for operation) and 'op' is located in the answer.
'footballer' could be 'pele' (I have seen 'Brazilian footballer ' mean 'pele' so perhaps 'footballer' could also mean 'pele') and 'pele' is found in the remaining letters.
No letters remain.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
(Other definitions for people that I've seen before include "Population" , "Human beings in general" , "Race - mankind" , "Newspaper" , "Folk; citizens" .)