Continuing Education for Professional Football Players

 

Presumably, a survey would be unflattering if it could be placed among the footballers who have just moved into winter quarters on the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca with their clubs. For example, who put something in their luggage to further their education? The fact that there would be enough freedom for this can always be seen at training camps by how extensively footballers deal with their smartphones in the lobby areas of luxury hotels, browsing through sites about football like hesgoals. Some even take their Playstation with them. One would think that the variety would be helpful in order not to come up with stupid thoughts, but wouldn’t it be better to think completely differently? Thinking about the time after your career?

“Three out of four players are then without a retrievable professional qualification. Only about 25 percent do something for further training in addition to their career,” warned Ulf Baranowsky, managing director of the players’ union VdV, in an interview with Die Welt a few years ago. Misconceptions about professional life are still widespread. “It’s legitimate that 90 percent want to stay in football after their career. “But that’s mathematically difficult because the jobs are very limited and also require qualifications that have to be acquired hard.”

The educational debate in the glittering world of professional football has been in full swing since Nils Petersen put forward the thesis of a creeping dumbing down. The 29-year-old center-forward from SC Freiburg said before the turn of the year: “Casually speaking, I’ve been stupid for ten years. Sometimes I feel ashamed because I have so little knowledge of the world.” There was conspicuously little counter-speech to the open admission. After all, national player Sami Khedira replied: “If you concentrate exclusively on the job, he is right.” But it is up to everyone to continue their education.

“In my opinion, you should also try to keep your head fresh outside of work. You don’t have to read 500 books,” said the 30-year-old. “Instead, you can talk to people from other areas, for example. That makes you more mature, promotes vision.”

For world champions, such input is even organized. National team manager Oliver Bierhoff has repeatedly brought together the representatives of the A-Team with personalities such as mountaineer Reinhold Messner, golf star Martin Kaymer or Formula 1 driver Nico Rosberg.

Principles for the correct “wording” in socio-political issues, for example, are stored in an internal app for safety reasons – such as the correct use of language on sensitive topics during the Confed Cup in Russia. So the embarrassing knowledge gaps of the young stars, who are more familiar with the car and fashion brands than with politics or history, do not even come out.

 

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A German U21 international, for example, is said to have learned only at last year’s European Championships in Poland that the country whose jersey he wears once consisted of two parts. Nevertheless, it would be slander to generalize and assume enormous educational deficits. Around two-thirds of the players now have a high school diploma or a technical baccalaureate, which assures the VdV, which has conducted a survey on the subject of education. The survey is currently being evaluated scientifically.

The players’ union, founded three decades ago by the former professionals Benno Möhlmann, Ewald Lienen and Frank Pagelsdorf, always points out to its approximately 1200 members the big funnel and enormous competition in the foosball industry. “From all the junior performance centers, only less than five percent of all players make the leap to the top,” explains Baranowsky. The public perception is shaped by the few figureheads such as Manuel Neuer, Mats Hummels, or Thomas Müller, but the majority are professionals from the second and third league, who are already happy when they crack the monthly 10,000 euro mark for a limited time.

And finally, there are the legions of young players from the five regional leagues, who, according to VdV data, often do their job for the equivalent of four or five euros per hour, if you extrapolate their earnings from training twice a day and travel-intensive competition. Is it any wonder that to this day more footballers have debts than taken care of after their careers?

Also for VdV President Florian Gothe, the leagues below the license leagues and the youth area are the real problem area. There, his institution is regularly confronted with precarious employment and helps in particular those who have not (yet) made the leap to the top and those who are finally washed out of the system of professional football. “For these, the following usually applies: existential fear and empty pockets instead of fame and fat cars,” wrote the former professional (including VfL Bochum) recently in the foreword of his association magazine.

Gothe misses in Germany the serious will to regular prevention training in order to “protect the players from dangers and prepare them early on for the post-football career”. England is a shining example here. “There, associations, clubs, and leagues actually work hand in hand when it comes to fulfilling the duty of care for the players and social responsibility.”

But aren’t the consultants responsible for this, who have recently withdrawn 148 million euros in transfer commissions from the Bundesliga’s money cycle alone? Changing clubs and contractual matters, however, are more important than further training and security. In the case of the large consulting agencies, the “career advice” primarily includes the footballing career – the drive and the ideas for the time after, depend decisively on the actor himself, it is said.

There are exemplary examples: Stefan Reinartz, who ended his career at the age of 27 to promote the Cologne startup “Impect”, which founded a completely new form of game data collection. The former Bundesliga player finds his new job in many ways more exciting than active football. But many colleagues would have to learn about life afterward. “Footballers are hardly prepared. I think that both clubs and consultants or the player’s immediate environment could have an even better impact on him,” says Reinartz.

Baranowsky would also like the actors to be educated to become mature personalities because he has basically stated “that the players who are curious and self-critical, who get into it and have goals, are precisely those who later managed to gain a foothold in normal life. On the other hand, if you only have football in your head, you usually crash later. Probably the talent that comes from circumstances in which, in addition to sport, great emphasis is placed on education.”