The research highlighted a number of important issues surrounding what it is like for this population of professional footballers to experience career transition. The
players indicated that they experienced a lack of control over their careers where the highs and lows of their professional lives were seen as being due to luck rather than their own efforts. Whilst the players felt able to cope with the pressures and
demands of playing professional football, the uncertainty arising from a lack of
control in relation to career transition produced fear and anxiety around their futures. What is more, they experienced the reality of career transition as a harsh one, a reality that they had not anticipated, one that left them feeling a sense of rejection and abandonment. What is more, the players felt that there was limited support available to them during their careers and that the lived world of professional football discouraged help seeking attitudes and behaviours. Furthermore, although the players acknowledged the desirability of planning for their career after sport, they reported a tendency to avoid doing this and instead felt required to commit more to their sporting role at a time when the possibility of career transition was at its greatest.
Previous research has highlighted a number of adjustment difficulties experienced by elite-athletes during career transition, including identity loss, or crisis (e.g. Kerr and Dacyshyn, 2000; Baillie and Danish; Crook and Robertson, 1991), low self-control (Werthner and Orlick, 1986) and alcohol and drug abuse (Mihovilovic, 1968).
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However, in the main, research within this area has been established using
quantitative methods and different sports other than professional football. Therefore, it is argued that existing literature does not shed a significant light on the possible reasons for the adjustment difficulties that are somewhat specific to the experiences of professional footballers in the United Kingdom. Research done outside elite-sport has highlighted how the presence or absence of control can have a profound effect on the overall health and well-being of an individual (Averill, 1973; Miller,1979) and low levels of personal control in the workplace have been found to be psychologically harmful to individuals (e.g. Evans and Carrere, 1991; Ganster and Fusilier, 1989). Therefore, it is argued that a perceived lack of control, anxiety and fear for the future, feelings of rejection and difficulties with support and help seeking experienced by professional footballers are important factors when understanding the difficulties reported by previous research with elite-athletes.
The players’ experiences revealed how pressure was a predominant aspect of their lived world both during and after their careers. However, whilst the pressure within their sporting role was something that they could handle, the pressure experienced within career transition was something that was new to them and something of an unknown quantity. It was clear that the professional footballers in this study were unprepared for the experiences and pressure that they encountered during career transition. What is more, the uncertainty and pressure that came with career
transition reflected back on the players as men and, in particular, it threatened their masculinity in terms of their capabilities to provide for their families.
The players also reported being significantly unprepared for career transition and this was due, in part, to a lack of pre-planning despite the fact that players themselves acknowledged that they had thought about this during their careers. Previous
research has shown that those who pre-plan for retirement (e.g. Reitzes and Mutran, 2004; Noone, Stephens and Alpass, 2009), or career transition in sport (e.g.
Alfermann, Stambulova and Zemaityte, 2006) are seen to navigate through the process of career transition more successfully. In addition, the players revealed that the lack of pre-planning was due in part to a need to commit to their sporting role even greater when their contracts were ending. However, whilst professional footballers may feel the need to show a focus on and commitment to their sporting development to remain in the game, greater attention to players’ personal
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development may help them better plan for retirement and also serve to enhance the development of their sporting excellence (Miller and Kerr, 2002).
The qualitative findings reported in this stage of the study provided an insight into the lived experiences of professional footballers both during and when facing the
possibility of career transition. The above section provides a discussion of the issues that were specific to the players within the focus group interviews. However, for the purpose of clarity any issues that were common in the players’ experiences across all the stages of the study (during stage 1 and stage 2), will be covered collectively in more detail within the discussion chapters of the thesis (i.e. within chapter 7 and 8). The focus group interviews allowed the players to express their experiences of transition within a group context. However, whilst there were advantages to this method, such as understanding a wide range of issues across the players’
experiences, it was felt that there was a need to drill down into these issues in more depth using individual interviews. With this in mind, the on-going research (during stage 2 analysis) adopted a more individual approach to its data collection and, with this, the use of one-to-one semi-structured interviews.
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