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The Work of Professional Football
A long-term study providing rare insights into the precarious career and ordinary working culture of professional footballers. Away from the celebrity-obsessed media gaze, the work of a professional footballer is rarely glamorous and for most players a career in football is insecure and short-lived. A former professional, Martin Roderick’s familiarity with the world of football is the foundation for this privileged research into a world that is typically closed to the public gaze and ignored by media reportage and academic research which prefers to focus on a small, unrepresentative group of elite players. Key themes explored within the text The text deals with a wide range of issues of interest to sports students and academics, particularly those with a focus on the sociology of sport but also including sport development, sport management and coaching studies. The text will also be of interest to researchers in the fields of careers, industrial relations and the sociology of work.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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April 1, 2020
Roderick essentially converted his PhD thesis into this book. But not to worry; while the thinking, approach, and initial purposes were thoroughly academic, the prose itself is not. Indeed, this book is easy to read, and provides an insightful look into the inner working lives of professional footballers.
The study focuses on professional football in the UK, about 50 players or ex-players of all divisions, and a few support staff such as physiotherapists and agents. They were interviewed anonymously, so much of what they said on tape was candid. This is quite a different view of athletes than one gets through ESPN or Sky Sports.
The picture Roderick paints is that the work lives of footballers is uncertain and unpredictable. Their work performance is often just that; an act of performance, as players are often judged by managers on their attitude, desire to work, and professed love for the team and game, when at the end of the day (especially as they get older and have dependents) it may be just a paycheck.
While outsiders and fans see football players' lives as glamorous, the vast majority of players (based on his in-person interviews with this sample, and outside reading from secondary sources) live from contract to contract, always worried that their injury will sideline them from the first team, never sure that a new contract may be waiting for them, and often restrained by concerns over dislocating their spouses and families from making long-distance moves. In many ways, they live like other contract or gig employees; you know, us poor slobs. Their lives are tenuous and filled with uncertainties. Often injured, they play through their pains or even fake being well in order to stay on the team; once injured, they become persona-non-grata, ignored and marginalized figures, ghosts. The worse fate for a player, it turns out, is to not play, especially in the starting 11.
To answer the question of the subtitle, footballers may start by playing for the love of the game. However, that changes over time, due in large part to life course issues (mortgage, dependents). Too, experience with the profession slowly erodes players' initial dreams, forcing them to realize that the clubs treat them as commodities. As a result, players eventually become cynical, and playing football becomes predominantly just doing a job. Cynicism in some ways helps protect the player's true self while he maintains the front of a hard-working professional. To work through their perpetual uncertainties about what's next career-wise, footballers develop informal networks (mainly former players, coaches, and managers) who can open doors to potential new jobs.
As typical for a dissertation, Roderick starts by defining terms, setting out his terms of analysis, and covering off on potential biases. There are at least 3 potential biases that Roderick didn't sufficiently explain away. First, Roderick was a former player, and one wonders whether he may have sought out, heard, or reported evidence that supported his own experiences. This point is somewhat related to the next two.
The second source of bias may be that he didn't talk to former managers and other suits; this is critical because while he sees much of the sport from the employee's perspective, talking to managers may have provided a broader contextual framework for understanding the footballer team as a workplace. This is odd to me for a sociological work, but what do I know. No doubt further work can be done in this regard, elaborating on what Roderick has done here, examining the clubs more comprehensively.
A third bias: Roderick didn't talk to the all-stars, it seems. There are reasons for that, probably, but in any case the experiences of someone like David Beckham may provide a counterpoint to some of what is seen here; or perhaps maybe not. In a similar vein, Roderick tends to ignore statements where some players express that, despite all of its frequent doubts and compromises, they know that they'd rather be playing a sport than working in a factory (they still have factories in England, don't they?). This is true, at least, until they retire, and Roderick doesn't spend much time analyzing these nebulous end dates for players; indeed, when does any player know their career is over?
In any case, the book is a highly readable account of journeymen footballers in the UK. It can be read from a number of viewpoints -- sports fan, sports psychologist, work sociologist, soccer moms and dads, and so on. One hopes that the teams themselves will read this work (or call up Roderick to present the 30-minute PowerPoint version, if they haven't done so already). Or maybe not; the teams could learn how to apply added pressure their players from this work. That said, some of the attitudes revealed in this book seem to be contrary to the professed goal of creating the type of tight-knit organization that wins, and therefore are worth some self-reflection and soul searching by managers.
Beyond the headlines, and the palatable tweets and quotes offered up by players in their public personas, Roderick's study lays bare the inner workings of football club houses.
The study focuses on professional football in the UK, about 50 players or ex-players of all divisions, and a few support staff such as physiotherapists and agents. They were interviewed anonymously, so much of what they said on tape was candid. This is quite a different view of athletes than one gets through ESPN or Sky Sports.
The picture Roderick paints is that the work lives of footballers is uncertain and unpredictable. Their work performance is often just that; an act of performance, as players are often judged by managers on their attitude, desire to work, and professed love for the team and game, when at the end of the day (especially as they get older and have dependents) it may be just a paycheck.
While outsiders and fans see football players' lives as glamorous, the vast majority of players (based on his in-person interviews with this sample, and outside reading from secondary sources) live from contract to contract, always worried that their injury will sideline them from the first team, never sure that a new contract may be waiting for them, and often restrained by concerns over dislocating their spouses and families from making long-distance moves. In many ways, they live like other contract or gig employees; you know, us poor slobs. Their lives are tenuous and filled with uncertainties. Often injured, they play through their pains or even fake being well in order to stay on the team; once injured, they become persona-non-grata, ignored and marginalized figures, ghosts. The worse fate for a player, it turns out, is to not play, especially in the starting 11.
To answer the question of the subtitle, footballers may start by playing for the love of the game. However, that changes over time, due in large part to life course issues (mortgage, dependents). Too, experience with the profession slowly erodes players' initial dreams, forcing them to realize that the clubs treat them as commodities. As a result, players eventually become cynical, and playing football becomes predominantly just doing a job. Cynicism in some ways helps protect the player's true self while he maintains the front of a hard-working professional. To work through their perpetual uncertainties about what's next career-wise, footballers develop informal networks (mainly former players, coaches, and managers) who can open doors to potential new jobs.
As typical for a dissertation, Roderick starts by defining terms, setting out his terms of analysis, and covering off on potential biases. There are at least 3 potential biases that Roderick didn't sufficiently explain away. First, Roderick was a former player, and one wonders whether he may have sought out, heard, or reported evidence that supported his own experiences. This point is somewhat related to the next two.
The second source of bias may be that he didn't talk to former managers and other suits; this is critical because while he sees much of the sport from the employee's perspective, talking to managers may have provided a broader contextual framework for understanding the footballer team as a workplace. This is odd to me for a sociological work, but what do I know. No doubt further work can be done in this regard, elaborating on what Roderick has done here, examining the clubs more comprehensively.
A third bias: Roderick didn't talk to the all-stars, it seems. There are reasons for that, probably, but in any case the experiences of someone like David Beckham may provide a counterpoint to some of what is seen here; or perhaps maybe not. In a similar vein, Roderick tends to ignore statements where some players express that, despite all of its frequent doubts and compromises, they know that they'd rather be playing a sport than working in a factory (they still have factories in England, don't they?). This is true, at least, until they retire, and Roderick doesn't spend much time analyzing these nebulous end dates for players; indeed, when does any player know their career is over?
In any case, the book is a highly readable account of journeymen footballers in the UK. It can be read from a number of viewpoints -- sports fan, sports psychologist, work sociologist, soccer moms and dads, and so on. One hopes that the teams themselves will read this work (or call up Roderick to present the 30-minute PowerPoint version, if they haven't done so already). Or maybe not; the teams could learn how to apply added pressure their players from this work. That said, some of the attitudes revealed in this book seem to be contrary to the professed goal of creating the type of tight-knit organization that wins, and therefore are worth some self-reflection and soul searching by managers.
Beyond the headlines, and the palatable tweets and quotes offered up by players in their public personas, Roderick's study lays bare the inner workings of football club houses.
Displaying 1 of 1 review