With more than 40,000 contracted players distributed across 900 professional clubs, football is the most dominated sport in Europe, both financially and in terms of media. It is estimated that major clubs such as Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester City have annual revenues of 5-6 billion DKK and that football today accounts for more than 80% of the total economic revenue in European sports. Football clubs with ambitions for European success are controlled by extreme capital interests, where one of the most important means is the recruitment and development of talents. The European Football Association (UEFA) rule that a number of players in a club must be homegrown, i.e. played at least three years for the club before they turn 21, means that youth players under the age of 18 have become extremely attractive. The consequence is that clubs are signing contracts with more and more youth players under the age of 18 – especially from Africa and South America – for ever larger sums of money. The explosive development of recent decades has also had a major knock-on effect on Danish football. Young talents from Danish Super League clubs are sold to foreign top clubs in huge transfers, such as 19-year-old Conrad Harder from FCN who was sold to the Portuguese major club Sporting CP for 22 million euros (165 million DKK) in the autumn of 2024. It is in the light of this development that the (impossible) choice of the greatest talents between football and education must be viewed.
Dual Career for the greatest football talents – an unrealistic vision?
In both Denmark and Europe, the focus has been on dual careers in the past 15 years, i.e. the opportunity for young sports talents to combine everyday life with both elite sports and education. Both Team Denmark, elite municipalities, youth education and higher education institutions have independently and in collaboration articulated visions, developed specific programs and coordinated efforts for the benefit of many talents in Danish elite sports, but with extremely limited effect in Danish football. This is due to several overlapping factors.
Blinding economies
Youth football talents in Denmark experience conflicting interests between education and sport, where financial incentives often push them away from education. Many boys dream of a lucrative contract and are tempted to focus solely on a football career. Here, football differs from all other sports due to extremely large economies and enormous media attention.
Studies show that youth talents perceive obligations in a youth education with greater and greater demands for homework, study trips and exams as a heavy burden that clashes with the dream of a professional football career. The studies also show that the professional clubs make greater and greater demands on the talents’ morning and afternoon training sessions, training camps, matches, diet, recovery and much more. There is therefore a significant risk that the two worlds will become polar opposites, pulling on the talents from each side.
The clubs’ focus on full dedication and commitment to football creates competitive environments where educational ambitions are given low priority, even though the clubs officially and externally support the talents’ education. The clubs’ flexible solutions often prioritize football over education, which can lead to poor exam results and dissatisfaction among the talents. And for the vast majority of them, in the long term, a shattered dream of a professional contract.
To wave a clean flag
The ideal of a holistic dual career and the prevailing educational imperative that education is good and more education is even better, thus harmonise very poorly with the framework and conditions for youth talents in professional football clubs, both nationally and internationally. Unfortunately, there are many youth football players today with a half-baked youth education, which in addition to a reduced learning outcome only gives access to a few university courses.
But perhaps it is not so bad at all to let the greatest 16-18-year-old talents focus solely on football and be “exempt” from education for 2-3 years. Educational delays are hardly a big problem – they really just correspond to sabbatical years, which many young people take anyway in a long education process. It is of course important to have clear frameworks and agreements between the talent, the club and the parents about a wholehearted, single-minded focus on football for a period of time.
In our opinion, elite sports – including football – can give youth athletes tools and skills that go far beyond sport, both personally and professionally. And in the big picture, a few years of delay mean very little compared to the personal development that elite sports provide.
That is precisely why the time has come for professional clubs to instead acknowledge that buying and selling the greatest talents is governing the club’s actions and that youth education is an (too) disruptive element in relation to optimal personal development as a professional footballer. It will be far more credible for the clubs and meaningful for the greatest talents to spend time and effort on education when their potential has been tested or a professional football career has ended. To professional football clubs – now let’s wave the clean flag.
Sources:
Kristian Raun Thomsen: “Fostering Dual Career Development in Danish Male Elite Football: Considerations on the Navigation of School ad Elite Sport Values” (The International Journal of Sport and Society” (Volume 15, Issue 4, 12/23/2024 – https://cgscholar.com/bookstore/works/fostering-dual-career-development-in-danish-male-elite-football)
Olesen, Jesper Stilling, and Martin Treumer Gregersen. 2023. “Exploring How Education and Sport Are Brought Together in Two Different Dual Career Programs for Danish Soccer Players: Effects for the Player’s Current and Future Life.” Soccer & Society 24: 223–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2022.2061469
Storm, Louise K., Kristoffer Henriksen, Natalia B. Stambulova, et al. 2021. “Ten Essential Features of European Dual Career Development Environments: A Multiple Case Study.” Psychology of Sport and Exercise 54: 101918 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.101918
The blog was prepared in collaboration with Kristian Raun Thomsen, Associate Professor, Department of Public Health – Sport Science, Aarhus University.
