Relieved to Leave the Dream
99% of young footballers don’t ’make it’. What happens once they’re released? (Part 2)
For many young players, being released from the football system is filled with devastation and heartbreak.
As covered in the last post, release was described by some of our participants as the ‘worst experience’ of their lives. This is a familiar story across much of the media and research out there.
Yet, some participants in our study felt something different: they felt relief.
So, why do some players react so differently? Why were they not devastated?
Like a weight being lifted
Within our interviews, participants spoke of how entering professional football had gone from something they enjoyed to a source of relentless pressure. One participant put it simply:
I felt constant pressure… I didn’t enjoy it at all. So, at the time (of release) it felt like actual relief.
Another participant described being released as:
Like a weight being lifted really, like, thank God I don’t have to deal with that anymore.
This finding was surprising given how coveted a football career is. From an outsider's view, professional football is often associated with the bright lights of the Premier League, as well as lavish lifestyles and high salaries. But for many youth players working their way up the system, the reality is different.
The precarious life of a young footballer
Participants described a constant battle to prove themselves – to impress coaches and managers, keep their place, and avoid being released. Football is precarious – if you don’t perform, you’ll be replaced.
Take Aaron, for example. Scouted by a Premier League club at just five years old, he worked his way up the academy system successfully, but instead of feeling joy at his achievements, he was just glad to survive. As he put it:
You’re relieved about playing well, relieved about scoring or whatever, you’re relieved about getting the next contract. So how can you really enjoy it when it’s just relief?
For some who went into first-team environments, they found it even more challenging. They were now competing with full squads of seasoned professionals – the best of the best from the last 15 years of academy football.
Despite years of sacrifice and winning contract after contract at youth level, many participants realised the final jump to first-team football was simply too high. No matter their effort.
Some participants also sensed their release was coming – their clubs had slowly pushed them out to the periphery, giving them less attention and less game time – while they focussed on players who ‘had a chance.’ In the end they felt they were there just to make up the numbers. ‘Cannon fodder’ to fuel the system. A soul-crushing experience.
In this light, being released puts an end to the struggle. It also ends the constant will I or won’t I get another contract internal battle that you have with yourself each season.
In the end, participants were just relieved they didn’t have to turn up where they weren't valued anymore. Relieved they didn’t have to keep struggling for approval.
The Love's Gone
A natural bottleneck happens in football around ages 18 to 21. Not everyone can make it. There are only 92 clubs in the Football League. Roughly 20 first-team players a manager picks from. And clubs often prefer buying first-team proven talent from all over the world rather than give opportunities to untested young players. Seats at the top table are limited.
And our participants started noticing younger players were getting the opportunities they were once getting. The path to the top was fading. They became acutely aware of this and motivation dropped.
Some of our participants admitted they had become deeply disillusioned with the sport long before they were let go. The fantasy of football had worn off. The childhood fairy tale ground into ‘work’.
At first you may think this sounds ungrateful. How could you ever fall out of love with football? But many of us have been in situations, jobs, or relationships we once loved. And slowly, the joy fades.
One participant described reaching breaking point:
You just get to the point where you genuinely hate it, don’t you really? You absolutely despise the game.
And what was it all for? 100 odd quid a week as a scholar, or maybe a bit more as a first or second year pro. Some participants highlighted this was less than minimum wage. Cheap labour. Some even reflected on how they could earn the same or more in a normal job, without the stress of it all.
Considering stress, one participant found it all too much, stating he felt ‘burnt out’ and ‘dread(ed) games.’ So much so that he would feign injury to avoid playing. And when his club released him, his reaction?
I sort of remember walking out (the meeting) thinking, I don’t really give a f*ck.
This response could arguably be self-preservation – to shield from the devastation of release. But it also reflects his strong resentment towards the system. A system he was relieved to leave behind.
Power and control
A sense of powerlessness overhung many of our participants as clubs micromanaged their lives. When to eat, train, sleep, and even how to dress and when to go out. Chipping away at their agency day by day. All during their formative years where they should be testing out identities and exploring new interests.
More significantly, participants recalled missing out on major life events. Missing friends' birthdays or family holidays in academy years, skipping weddings, or not attending funerals because it was more important to train. But with your future in the palm of your club's hands – you do as you're told – and so do your parents.
The influence of their club wasn’t confined to the training ground. At home, participants spoke of how their own parents got caught up with the club's wishes for complete focus on football: ‘They start to believe the dream a little bit.’
An example of this was further highlighted by Aaron, who showed an interest in music around age 14. His dad quickly shut down his effort to explore something new:
Aaron, if you want to take football seriously, you can’t be learning guitar.
Over time, the restrictions became suffocating, as he later reflected:
I can never actually be free here, unless I'm outside of those shackles of football.
Characters on a stage
Participants also discussed how their identity was shaped by the culture within professional football clubs.
Some felt they had adapted so much to their environment – conforming to group norms and meeting their club’s demands – that they began to compromise who they were.
You definitely had to be a certain way, didn’t you? I feel it took your personality away. So, you’d be this, like, robot.
To survive in the football system, they had learnt to suppress their own personalities, emotions, and interests. Instead they followed the crowd, putting on a shared ‘footballer’ persona, and became ‘robots.’ All to fit in and demonstrate their commitment to their coaches and teammates.
Off the pitch, they spoke of putting a lot of effort into editing themselves, to live up to the ‘footballer’ identity society expected. Ranging from how they behaved to even how they dressed. Even buying clothes and cars they couldn’t afford.
I always knew through all my football career professionally, [that] this isn’t me.
Back at the training ground, participants also highlighted how they ‘put on a front at all times’ to cope with an intense competitive environment, abuse from coaches, and ‘cut-throat’ teammates.
I found it quite difficult to be who I was at football. There was so many egos.
Even players who were initially devastated after release felt a sense of relief at no longer having to put on an act each day.
As one participant admitted that he was never his ‘natural self’ and would ‘act like that sort of big character’ just to fit in. Another described how he had to ‘put on a character who might not be yourself, to make sure you don’t look weak.’
There was relief all round at no longer having to perform this role. To no longer have to put on the mask.
Personal reflections
A major part of any research is to reflect on the findings.
At first I was surprised when a participant said he felt relief. Then another mentioned it. Then another. Even some of the participants that felt devastated admitted that part of them felt relieved too.
It made me look back on my own experiences.
When Wolves released me, I felt frustrated. But also relief. At the time I naively thought I’d find a new club quickly and needed a fresh start. I believed I had a good CV, but in reality I was largely untested in the Football League – and for managers with tight budgets, that’s a risk.
After a number of trials, I signed for League One Leyton Orient. I loved it in London. But as the season went on, I was limited to mostly cup appearances. The team was chasing automatic promotion. Barry Hearn backed Russell Slade by adding more experienced players. And I was pushed out to the periphery.
My motivation dipped, and I became disillusioned with the whole idea of being a footballer. Sitting on a bench will do that to you. And by the time my release came, I wasn’t devastated. I’d seen it coming. I was relieved. Relieved to head home, regroup and try and find a new club up north.
Looking back on our participants' experiences – and my own – it feels like relief was more common than I’d first thought.
And it reveals a far more complex relationship between young footballers and the system they grew up in – one that possibly differs from public perception.
The system
These findings raise uncomfortable questions about the system:
Are young players leaving the system better off than when they entered?
If players feel burnt out, and relieved to leave, what does that say about the environment fostered by clubs?
If they must put on personas and act like robots, is the system failing to nurture them as individuals?
Right now it remains a system that leaves a lot of young men emotionally, mentally, and physically drained. So much so that they feel relieved to leave what was once their childhood dream.
And not because they are moving on to something better. But because it ends the uncertainty, the pressure, the mask-wearing. The disillusionment.
Release literally felt like a psychological weight had been lifted for some of our participants. And it's the system – the clubs and their academies – that add to that weight. Sometimes intentionally. Often unknowingly. But participants found the pressure, control, conformity, and fostering of poor environments meant they were relieved to leave: ‘Like, thank God that’s over.’
Following release, it’s a system that brings devastation for some. For others it brings relief. For some, both.
So, we must ask ourselves: what kind of system are we putting young boys through?
What happens next?
For some, release felt liberating. It was the first time their club didn’t have such a hold over their lives: ‘The shackles were off.’
But even for those who initially felt relieved, reality soon hit. There was a realisation that all they had ever done was play football.
An important takeaway from our study is that whether players were devastated or relieved, they shared one thing in common: their identity had still been dominated by football. This is the painful reality of athletic identity foreclosure, covered in the first post.
Once football is over, the questions become – who are you without football? And what comes next? In the next post, we’ll explore the challenges our participants faced in the years following release.
Future posts will also examine the environments inside clubs that contribute to these feelings. And ask what, if anything, can be done differently.
Have you, or someone you know, experienced something similar? I’d love to hear from you. Email me at: contact@johnnygorman.com
Please note: Participants' names have been changed to pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.