Do footballers have their own support staff?

We all know that football is a huge business. Clubs are worth billions, and players at the top can earn ridiculous sums of money. £100k a week, 200k a week, its seems to keep getting bigger.

However, the players have a relatively short career and so maximising their longevity and finding an extra edge, can be the different between earning an extra few million and extending their career, finding a new club on a better contract, or not reaching their potential.

One way in which modern day players look for this longevity and increased earning potential is by employing their own staff. An elite football player can essentially be seen as a business in itself. They earn more than a lot of businesses, and also have associated costs. It is some of those costs that we will be exploring today.

What roles might players employ for? Why? Is this bad for the clubs? Lets get into it.

A few bullet points on the 'why' first as I have touched on this already:

- Increase earning potential
- Stay in the game for longer
- Gain an extra edge
- Convenience
- More personalised to the players needs
- A tax deductible cost 

So, as for a few areas that players might look for support in, let's start with personal analyst, as you probably know by now that is my background...

Personal Analyst
Of course, players have analysts at the club at their disposal, but (like most things included in this post) this comes down to the personalisation and convenience. A player may want really specific analysis of their performance and be able to work with the analyst, at the players convenience. The player may want to the analyst to do a certain research project, or help them work on something specific, that they teams analyst couldn't do, or simply wouldn't have the time. 

This comes down to taking ownership and understanding that an analyst working just for you, on your instructions, is probably going to add more value than just the analysts employed by the clubs. Sticking with the analyst theme, I've separate the next one out as it's linked more to data...

Data Services for contract negotiations
This could be with an individual data analyst or a consultancy company. You may have heard about the story when Kevin De Bruyne commissioned some research into his value when negotiating a new multi-million pound deal with Man City.

The company he used for that (Analytics FC) offer similar services for coaches too but also not just around contract negotiations. They (and other companies too) could do research into potential next moves for players based on the playing styles and compatibility of each. As I write this, I am soon to have the Managing Director of Analytics FC (Jeremy Steele) on my podcast and plan to ask him about the piece of work with Kevin De Bruyne. So depending on when you are reading this, it might already by available on my channel. In the meantime, you can check out THIS article on the Analytics FC website.


Skills coach
If players want to become the best they have to put in the additional training. It wouldn't be unheard of for a player to have a one-to-one coach that can work on specific skills for the player. This would also be linked to the next role actually for the fitness and conditioning of players too


Fitness / S&C
This is one that may cause the most conflict between the clubs. Clubs should know what the players are doing outside of their time at the training ground. If a player became injured from extra curricular activities, this would cause a big problem. This also brings in the point around data. Is data shared between club and private practitioner? Should it be? Should the club staff facilitate or at least have input on what the player does with their own staff. All things mentioned in the video further down this article.

Personal Chef
It is no secret that a lot of your performance and health can be attributed to the diet that you consume. If you have the means to employ a high quality chef that takes all the stress and uncertainty away about what you should be eating, why wouldn't you? By having a personal chef, the players can eat a diet specific to them and never have to spend time cooking or preparing meals.

Massage Therapist
I don't know about you but if I could, I'd have a massage every single day. Maybe even more than once a day! At a club, there may be a small number of people that can give a massage that have to be shared around a squad of 20-30 players. Having a personal massage therapist gets rid of this problem. Dave Carolan touches on this in the video below.

Concierge style services
Money buys time. If you are earning large sums of money like these players are, you can easily buy some of your time back. For example, many players will have a personal assistant that will take care of all admin or day to day things. Booking restaurants, planning holidays, sorting out your utilities. The things that aren't fun and can easily be done better and more efficient by someone else so the players can spend their time doing something else, and not stressing over smaller things that don't matter too much.

Below is a short video taken from my podcast with Dave Carolan. Dave has been involved in elite sport for 25+ years and I asked him about the growing trend in players using their own support staff. Dave knows his stuff, give it a watch...

This is of course, not an exhaustive list and there may well be other roles that I have totally missed off. All players are different and will have different needs and wants.

Clubs have to consider how these external staff members integrate with what is going on in the club. It would be a disaster if the personal coach or trainer is contradicting the club staff. Is data shared etc.

This is clearly something that is not new in football but as Dave explained above, it is certainly growing, and becoming more like other sports that maybe had this a little earlier.

One that wasn't on the list was an agent. This seems more normal now as all players have an agent to help with contracts and finding clubs. Isn't it just the same to employ or seek the help of other professionals that are the best at what they do in each facet of the game?

The whole aspect of 'running your career as a business' is a really interesting take and if I was earning as much money as some of these players I would certainly use a chunk of that money to improve my physical health, longevity and lifestyle.

Would you?

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