Every season finale the same scene is repeated in all the academy clubs of the world. Coaches, sports directors and other technicians evaluate the performance and the behaviour of footballers of all categories and are forced to make difficult decisions: this player is still at the club, this one is not going to.
It is a situation that is reproduced in the first teams, with the difference that in these cases those affected are not adults, but teenagers who on many occasions have imagined themselves debuting in the First Division and living for more than a decade of professional football, of which it is their passion.
And when the dream vanishes, many times the emotional abyss. The clubs have gone a long way in recent times in providing their youth squads with internal structures that help them develop as people and mature psychologically, but with the loss, with the dismissal, that cushion disappears. The player leaves the club, but the club also leaves the player. Y nothing remains.
There are several possible scenarios. Boys who have kept up with their studies and continue with them, like any other adolescent; others with training already completed who can directly access the labor market; and of course those who find another club, even if it is of lower rank, to continue their sports career.
reality check
But there are also those who suddenly lose the one who, in a way idealistic and beautifulThey thought it was going to be their livelihood for many years. A problem that football clubs have historically ignored, as if it had nothing to do with them.
Hence, the initiative announced a few days ago by the Crystal Palace of the English Premier League supposes a rupture with the way of relating to the clubs with the players with whom they decide not to continue counting.
The London entity has launched a program that during three years will ensure the well-being of the boys between 18 and 23 years old whom he fires from his quarry teams. It will do so in three directions: helping them to find a new club, to resume their studies if they have left them parked or to look for a different professional opportunity, whether or not it is linked to football.
“Moral obligation”
“We feel like we have a moral obligation with these guys. They may feel that it is the end of the world when they leave the club and we must offer them our support during that process and guide them in the next steps they take in their lives”, argued the president of Crystal Palace, Steve Parishwhen he introduced this innovative program.
The first step with these boys, as explained by the London club, will be to prepare reports and contact third-party clubs in order for them to hire the players they are no longer interested in. They also include the possibility of continuing to align them in unofficial matcheseven after the end of his contract, to allow scouts from other entities to check his football virtues on the spot.
“In the past we have seen players who come to the club after five years to ask for help or guidance for their lives. Now we seek to reduce those deadlines, finding a solution so that these boys can overcome the barriers they encounter to develop a new career,” he explained. Gary Issottdirector of the Crystal Palace academy, to the British outlet The Football Family.
Expectations
“In the big quarries, the boys generate expectations that are often not real. Only a few reach professionals and it is necessary to educate them in that reality, in which it is most likely that they will never play in the First Division,” he points out. Genie Martinezdirector of the Health Department of the Association of Spanish Soccer Players (AFE).
This union has two programs that support some of the needs that Crystal Palace intends to cover, although they are not limited to young boys. One of them is AFE Employs, that helps those who have to leave football (because of age, due to injury, because they don’t meet the level…) to open up a professional future. the other is Mens Sanawhich offers affiliates a service of ‘coaches‘ Y sports psychologists to deal with your personal problems.
In both cases, it is the closest thing in Spain to programs similar to the one now promoted by the London entity, given that no club has protocols to help boys who come out of their quarries. “It’s a very positive idea that says a lot about the entity of Crystal Palace, it’s something that I would like to do if I had the means to do so,” he says. Fran Garagarzasports director of Eibar between 2011 and 2012.
Garagarza recounts how “complicated” those end-of-season meetings are in which casualties are communicated and appeals to a key factor in the process: parents. “I believe a lot in his figure and in the need for the club to re-educate them about the false expectations they may create around their son. In Eibar there was and is a project called ‘Parents also play’, in which they are involved in the club and the role they have to take is stressed. I have had to summon two parents to the club to draw their attention for his behavior in the matches,” he says.
unsuccessful?
“Curbing those expectations is always complicated. Put yourself in the shoes of a boy from a small town whom Real Madrid signs at the age of 10. From then on he becomes ‘the Madrid player’ at school, for the girls. .. They even win more money than their parents in some cases, when they were still teenagers. Later, when he is 16, for example, they tell him that they no longer have him, all that social status disappears and the boy feels a failed. But how is he going to be a failure at 16? It is necessary to work on that, to make the boys aware that it is most likely that they will not arrive and that they will not neglect their studies,” Geni deepens.
“You find cases of boys who are so focused on football that they don’t think about anything else. We at Eibar made a track your noteswith the permission of their parents, even children, but from then on… You meet young people who tell you that they go to class and don’t, with whom they have decided to leave school… We do our part, we educate them in valueswith specific programs and measurableand in a couple of cases we discharged very valid players with bad behavior, but each boy is a world”, Garagarza deepens.
Abilities
“The skills and competences they acquire in the youth academies offer them advantages for their future employment outside of football,” highlights the Crystal Palace youth academy director, who emphasizes that “the initial trauma having to leave professional football often blocks them and prevents them from seeing how to adapt the skills they have gained over the years to another work environment”, a difficulty that they want to correct with this program.
And many times, the opportunity may lie within the club, as Garagarza and Issott agree. “It is important that those who do not become professional footballers see and understand that they can live from their passion in another way, being delegates, physical trainers, goalkeeping coaches…”, says the Basque sports director, while the British widens the spectrum of departments: doctor, communication, attention to the soccer player, psychology, marketing, finance…
On many occasions, you just need someone to make you see it. And Crystal Palace has given a decisive step to do it.
