Football is my life

Sport in Society Vol. 9, No. 3, July 2006, pp. 371–387

‘Football is My Life’: Theorizing Social Practice in the Scottish Professional Football Field David McGillivray & Aaron McIntosh

There exists an apparent paradox between the continuing significance and growing glamorization of the professional game on a global scale and the increasingly unstable labour market conditions affecting professional football players at the national level – in this case, the Scottish professional football field. In this paper, we utilize Pierre Bourdieu’s formula of habitus, capital and field to frame professional footballers’ social practices – with specific emphasis on their engagement (or lack of engagement) with educational discourses. We also employ Bourdieu’s concept of strategy to consider the ways in which footballers’ identities might be reformulated within rather than outside the boundaries of the professional football field. Empirically, data generated from an in-depth qualitative study of two Scottish professional football clubs are presented. The paper concludes that, despite the increased awareness and availability of educational opportunities, players’ engagement with educational discourses is, at best, an instrumental, means-end and outcome-based one.

It’s all you’ve known since you were 16, it’s a way of life. It’s like a drug, going in every day around the boys and the banter and training hard – all geared towards Saturday and you don’t want to give that up. (Club A, established professional)

Over the last decade a number of significant changes have affected the political, social and economic environment within which Scottish professional football operates.

These changes include the continuing influence of the Bosman I and II rulings, which enable the free movement of players, [1] a downturn in broadcasting revenues [2] and the ongoing rationalization of labour affecting the industry in Scotland. [3] The most notable outcome of these changes is the annual round of redundancies which has become an unwelcome feature of the Scottish professional game. For example, the

David McGillivray and Aaron McIntosh, Cultural Business Group, Caledonian Business School, Glasgow Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 OBA. Correspondence to: dmcg@gcal.ac.uk ISSN 1743-0437 (print)/ISSN 1743-0445 (online)/06/030371-17 q 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/17430430600673381

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number of players freed from their clubs at the end of each season has risen from 186 in 2003 to 307 in 2005. [4] Given that there are just over 1200 professionals in the whole of the Scottish game, [5] these figures represent significant levels of attrition.

These redundancies have also affected young players (in the 18– 22 bracket) most acutely. [6] The general picture of insecurity is further emphasized in recent survey work carried out on behalf of the Scottish Professional Footballers Association. [7] Results from this survey showed that almost 50 per cent of existing players had less than a year remaining on their contracts and another 40 per cent had less than two years. In fact, the number of full-time players in Scotland has decreased by a third in recent years as many clubs have shifted to part-time status. [8] Current figures state that only one out of 160 players will never need a job outside of football [9] and contract periods are shortening year on year. [10] Despite the fragile labour market conditions, recent literature [11] suggests that few players are prepared for a forced career change, particularly those who are bereft of the transferable skills and qualifications necessary to secure employment in alternative labour markets. The response of the key stakeholders in the game has been to introduce new learning strategies built more concretely into the fabric of players’ contracts, but this has yet to be accompanied by an analogous culture change within the labour force itself.

Despite the precarious economic conditions affecting Scottish professional football, a large number of youngsters continue to make significant sacrifices to pursue their dream of a career within the game. Yet there exists an apparent paradox between the continuing significance and growing glamorization of the professional game on a global scale [12] and the increasingly unstable labour market conditions affecting professional football players at the national level – in this case, the Scottish professional football field. In this paper, we address this paradoxical set of circumstances through the lens of the professional footballer. In so doing, we utilize Pierre Bourdieu’s [13] formula of habitus, capital and field to frame professional footballers’ social practices – with specific emphasis on their engagement (or lack of engagement) with educational discourses. We also employ Bourdieu’s concept of strategy to consider the ways in which footballers’ identities might be reformulated within rather than outside the boundaries of professional football. Empirically, data generated from an in-depth qualitative study of two Scottish professional football clubs are presented. This is a response to the largely quantitative focus of our previous work [14] and represents an acknowledgement that the research process must accommodate the voices of professional footballers themselves.

Conceptual Coupling: Bourdieu and Sport Why Bourdieu? Well, elsewhere [15] we have argued that his work is relevant for understanding the dynamic social practices [16] found within the confines of the Scottish professional football field. Specifically, our earlier work explored how and why young footballers came to perceive the professional game as the fulcrum of their lives,

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committing their whole selves to an occupation that, at best, provided them with only short-term occupational and financial security. In this paper, our aim is to provide a more in-depth, qualitative examination of the subject matter, one that is embedded more concretely in the small narratives of those social agents trading their wares within the professional football field.

Before we present the small narrative of footballers, it is first necessary to elaborate on the appropriateness of Bourdieu’s theory of social practice for this particular investigation. His academic enquiries into the fields of education, social inequality and sport [17] each sought to problematize the dynamic, interactive relationship between objective social structures and everyday practices. Throughout his distinguished academic career he sought to bridge what he saw as the unwelcome structure –agency dichotomy by integrating the ‘analysis of the experience of social agents and the analysis of the objective structures that make this experience possible’. [18] In theorizing the social practices of young footballers, Bourdieu’s formula of (habitus) (capital) þ field ¼ social practice provides a useful theoretical construct – or way of thinking – about the subject. These interrelated concepts will help to demonstrate how the identities of young professional footballers are formulated and reformulated in a dynamic relationship with a range of familial, occupational and institutional arrangements.

While others have cautioned against reading Bourdieu’s conceptual tools in isolation, [19] we believe it is worthwhile to outline their individual merits before developing a coherent theory of social practice for professional footballers. Bourdieu’s exposition of the habitus is undoubtedly one of his most influential legacies. For Bourdieu, the habitus is a set of durable dispositions that are carried with, and which work to shape, ‘attitudes, behaviours and responses to given situations’. [20] For the habitus is ‘not something one has, like knowledge that can be brandished, but something one is’. [21] In this respect, it is unconscious and unthinking, based on what we might call an unreflective routinization. The habitus acts in such a way as to embed certain cultural trajectories in individuals, although the resulting tastes are likely to be assimilated unconsciously: ‘Children . . . will simply grow up knowing what is best, without ever bringing those choices and judgments to consciousness. It will seem simply “natural” to like particular kinds of novels, films, meals, holiday destinations and sports.’ [22] Bourdieu’s critics [23] argue that his use of phrases such as ‘unconscious’, ‘natural’ and ‘unthinking’ give the impression that the habitus is an inflexible, structuralist concept. We think this is a partial reading of Bourdieu’s writing on the subject. While never denying that the habitus produces a certain consistency or logic to social practice, Bourdieu does stress the ongoing oscillation between these structuring regularities and individual modes of cultural consumption. For example, he argues that actors [24] work with and against the sociocultural contexts within which they find themselves embroiled. This reflexive reading of social circumstance is a central feature of Bourdieu’s theorizing and will, in due course, be discussed in relation to professional footballers.

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The second component of Bourdieu’s formula – capital – helps us understand how cultural advantage, distinction and, ultimately, domination is reproduced in and through social fields. Capital is best understood as the currency tradable within a specific field (e.g. professional football). In a field, the dominant form of capital in circulation governs what is of value and can therefore be exchanged. For this investigation of the social positions occupied by professional footballers, two forms of capital – cultural and physical – are particularly important. Possessing the desired cultural capital, [25] conferred by the educational field, normally enhances individuals’ opportunities for distinction (e.g. in academia or the law). However, ‘the different goods, resources and values’ [26] that denote capital are not distributed equally within each field. For example, the legitimated and valued ways of knowing in the professional football field are invariably associated with physical performance and expressions of (hyper) masculinized identities [27] rather than with academic achievement. Possession of embodied competence (e.g. speed, skill, strength) or practical labour [28] is accorded greater value in the football world than the cultural capital associated with formal educational discourses. This is, of course, understandable given that professional football clubs exist to be successful and they invest in a skilled labour force in order to secure the rewards accruable from being victorious. In Bourdieu’s terms, physical (or embodied) capital is the dominant currency tradable within the professional football field, ‘downgrading the value of formal educational “theory” as a marker of success in the game’. [29] While in the short term it is understandable that football ability takes precedence over academic aptitude, this is an increasingly unsustainable set of affairs as an increasing number of young men face the daunting prospect of redundancy at the end of each season. It is unsustainable because, in alternative employment fields, their practical labour is often of little value.

It is, however, less clear to what extent clubs should continue to take on responsibility for their players beyond retirement or on termination of their contract. We will return to this issue again in due course.

The field is the third element of Bourdieu’s formula for social practice. The field has an active relationship with habitus and capital, and can play a crucial role in defining social practice and the relative value of capital therein. Others have argued that the professional football field itself constructs, promotes and reinforces a particular cultural habitus [30] within which certain forms of capital are valued more highly.

As McRobbie argues, ‘the field constrains, manages and orchestrates the kinds of practices which can take place within its frame’. [31] The professional football field emphasizes the importance of physical capital (e.g. bodily care and maintenance) over its cultural (educational) counterpart. Social positions within the professional football field are invariably distributed on the basis of access to a particular, embodied capital.

This is not, in itself, problematic given the reliance on this form of capital for actors to be successful in this field, but it does presuppose the continuation of the field in its current form. However, as Bourdieu stresses, fields are open to external influence and pressures exerted by other (sometime competing) fields. They are therefore contested spaces, always in the making rather than possessing fixed coordinates. This is certainly

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true of the Scottish professional football field which, over the last decade, has been a fertile laboratory in which the vagaries of economic and cultural globalization have been played out. [32] Given the precarious financial position currently facing Scottish professional football, we are proposing that, as a result of their over-reliance on an everdepreciating bank of physical capital, professional footballers are particularly vulnerable to occupational obsolescence should their bodily assets or utility to their club erode more quickly than envisaged (e.g. serious injury). We are not arguing that the field imposes those conditions upon helpless players, but rather that professional footballers are, to an extent, complicit in their own oppression and disempowerment.

In their acceptance of the established social order, they essentially internalize the rules of the game and are subjected to what Bourdieu and Wacquant [33] call symbolic violence. This is not a physical form of violence but rather ‘Agents are subjected to forms of violence (treated as inferior, denied resources, limited in their social mobility and aspirations), but they do not perceive it that way: rather their situation seems to them to be “the natural way of things”.’ [34] Professional footballers appear to accept their position as mere embodied assets, as pawns in a game that cares little for their long-term future once the rich pickings have been exhausted. However, this argument permits minimal space for adaptation and change in Bourdieu’s formula of social practice. This is certainly Jenkins’s [35] concern. He suggests that the lack of apparent possibilities for change is one of the key problematics of the habitus, capital and field relationship. If we accept Bourdieu’s definition of habitus as a set of durable and largely unreflexive dispositions, then questions remain as to where (and in what form) this theory of social practice might enable actors to enact strategies to alter their social positions.

The proposition we wish to explore is that the habitus must meet with an external world of fields, producing new configurations in which different forms of capital are valued. Bourdieu consistently emphasized the improvisations and strategic decisions that actors are forced to make in their practice. What people do in their everyday lives (their practice) is the outcome of an interaction with habitus as opposed to a direct product of it. In this respect, social practice has to be understood both temporally and spatially and not taken outside the social context in which it is a visible outcome. In this respect, Bourdieu’s writings are valuable in exploring the processes of change and transformation taking place in a field and, ultimately, in the arena of social practice. We will now explore, empirically, the ways in which changes to the formula of social practice might lead to the construction of an alternative cultural trajectory for footballers plying their trade in the Scottish professional football field.

Methodology In order to locate this research investigation more concretely it is now necessary to outline the relationship between Bourdieu’s epistemological position and the

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methodological commitments which flow from it. In his research endeavours, Bourdieu espoused a middle-ground approach between the polar positions of objectivity and subjectivity. In doing so, he continually challenged the ultrasubjectivism of existentialist phenomenology and the objective determinism of structuralism. [36] In this respect, his work directs us towards a multi-dimensional methodology; one that utilizes a series of quantitative and qualitative research methods. To date, our research enquiries into the intricacies of the lives of professional footballers [37] have utilized a quantitative research strategy designed to provide an ‘objective’ account of the social conditions from which young Scottish footballers emerge. However, this reliance on an instrumental positivist approach [38] left the subjective component of social practice outside our grasp. This is unsatisfactory given that it is the subjective domain that provides an avenue to actors’ sense of meaning.

Moreover, a qualitative research strategy is a more appropriate means of understanding how individuals use, inhabit, negotiate or elude their foundational objective conditions. The present set of research investigations provides space for the voice of the actors themselves (i.e. footballers) to be heard rather than merely mapping out a series of objective regularities with their apparent ‘determining lock’ over the lives of young professional footballers.

The research study was designed in such a way as to enable a sample of Scottish professional footballers to construct their own ‘small narratives’ detailing the range of formative experiences which shaped their choice of career. These experiences include their formal schooling, their early football careers and the time since they secured a professional contract. To enable an in-depth account of these subjective experiences, two case study football clubs were selected for investigation. Both clubs ply their trade in Scottish League Division One, the second tier of Scotland’s professional league structure. These clubs were selected for a number of reasons.

First, both clubs subscribe to a Modern Apprenticeship scheme in which their young recruits (16- to 18-year-old players) undertake a prescribed education curriculum which includes a series of footballing and lifestyle interventions. Second, both clubs have invested in their youth programmes as a means to develop their own first-team players in the years to come. Finally, comparative work is possible due to the different way in which each club has structured its educational offerings. Club A has signed up to a flexible approach to learning which gives its players choice in selecting the type and level of educational opportunity they wish to access. In contrast, Club B has a much more prescribed educational pathway in place; one which focuses on vocational qualifications, primarily in the sport and recreation field.

Our interest in players’ education extends beyond young apprentices (16– 18 years old) to incorporate the opinions of established and senior professionals. These players were included in the scope of the study because they will have entered the Scottish professional football industry prior to the onset of acute economic and financial conditions. Moreover, they will have started out in the game at a time when opportunities for educational development were extremely limited. Players are

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Table 1 Scottish Football Governance Agencies Organization Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish Scottish

Professional Footballers Association Football Association Football League Premier League Executive, Enterprise and Lifelong Learning

segmented into the following categories to ensure greater clarity in the reporting of findings: Young apprentices (16–18 years old) Established professionals (19–25 years old) Senior professionals (26 þ ) In both case study clubs, short interviews were conducted with approximately four players drawn from each career stage. In total, ten interviews were secured with players from Club A and a further 16 interviews with playing staff from Club B. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. In the presentation of research findings, players’ names have been removed and they are identified by their club affiliation (e.g. Club A or B) and career stage (e.g. senior professional). Having accessed the views of the players themselves, we also felt that it was important to access the views of other club employees and from individuals representing the interests of professional footballers in the wider footballing community. To that end, a series of interviews were conducted with administrative and managerial personnel from within both case study clubs and from the wider stakeholder community with an interest and influence over players’ education (see Table 1). Responses from these personnel are included in the forthcoming presentation of results and discussion.

Results and Discussion This presentation of results and discussion is divided into two interdependent sections. First, consideration is given to the (apparently) decisive influence of the formative cultural habitus on the career choices of young professional football players.

Here, evidence is presented of contestation over the relative value of physical and cultural capital within the professional football field and its deleterious impact on early educational experiences. We expose the prevailing anti-intellectualism found within the professional football industry, focusing on the consequences for players’ current and future career opportunities. Second, we consider whether Bourdieu’s exposition of ‘strategies’ might assist young footballers to reformulate and reposition themselves in relation to discourses of education as a means of facilitating future career transitions. Finally, we draw the paper to a close by focusing on the appropriateness of

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Bourdieu’s theory of social practice in enhancing understandings of the professional football labour market. In doing so, we identify other useful applications of Bourdieu’s ideas to a variety of sporting practices.

Valuing the Physical Over the Cultural: A Clash of Capitals Several recent research enquiries have corroborated the view that involvement with a professional football club places a significant restriction on levels of educational attainment. [39] We know that a range of objective and subjective factors influence young people at this formative life stage but, until now, the voices of footballers have been conspicuous by their absence. This study is timely in that it provides an insight into why young players continue to find the allure of being a professional footballer so difficult to resist. Our study findings indicate that, although the outcome of early commitment to a professional club varies according to the level of dedication, familial circumstances and experience of schooling, it is clear that levels of educational attainment are unduly affected. The available evidence suggests that a large proportion of Scottish professional players under-achieve academically when compared with others of their age group. [40] The present research findings corroborate this picture of underachievement linked to footballing commitments. The findings suggest incommensurability between educational attainment and success in professional sport: I was doing a business studies NC and had done about half of it, but I knew I had been offered this (a full time contract), so I didn’t even finish it. (Club A, established professional) I was mair [more] interested in football than school (Club B, young apprentice) Any time I had to think, I was just thinking about football really. I should have done better at school. I could have done, I just never. (Club B, young apprentice) When you’re sitting in a class or a lecture, you know there are people there who know they’re going to do it [be a professional] and so they think ‘What’s the point?’

(Club B, established professional) These comments illustrate the ongoing attraction of professional football for its young recruits and the subsequent downgrading of educational qualifications thereafter. Despite significant age differences between these respondents, the young apprentices use the same language to describe their feelings about education as their more senior colleagues. Compared with other occupational sectors, members of the Scottish professional football labour force leave school earlier and with fewer educational qualifications than the Scottish average. [41] This is not because these players are (or were) incapable of exceptional academic performance. Instead, it is a reflection of the pressures they face to commit to their football clubs instead of to

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their academic studies. The football club continues to occupy a powerful and influential position in the lives of young men from an early age (possibly as young as ten or 11 years old). Recruited at a vulnerable age into a sport that devalues educational cultural capital [42], it is little wonder that these young men dissociate themselves from formal education long before they are able to leave school.

While our research findings did elicit some evidence of regret over missed educational opportunities, there were numerous other examples of players defending their choices in relation to their less fortunate friends and fellow aspiring footballers.

As one young apprentice put it, ‘my best friend was too interested in his school work and he never got a [pro] contract’ (Club B, young apprentice). Within the professional football field, a dichotomy is set up between physical and cultural capital in which the former is encouraged at the expense of the latter. This dichotomy is built into the very fabric of the professional football industry, from recruitment practices to contract negotiations. While not always explicit (i.e. you must not pursue educational qualifications) our study findings suggest that players are left in little doubt about their priorities. For example, one established professional articulates the impact of his choice on one Scottish club: ‘I said I want to stick in at school . . . **** [name of club] freed me about three weeks after I told them I wasn’t going to sign for them’ (Club A, established professional). Through historical practices, the repetitive articulation of taken-for-granted statements and contractual agreement, the professional football field ‘constrains, manages and coordinates’ [43] valued practices. Invariably, these practices support the accumulation and maintenance of physical capital over its cultural counterpart.

There are numerous examples of how clubs and other stakeholders reinforce the accrual of physical capital and practical labour. In her study of career development for young Irish players, Bourke [44] describes how football academies attached to English clubs enlist children for a significant number of hours a week, increasing as they get older. Although the Scottish professional game only has two football academies, clubs continue to negotiate formal and informal ties with the most talented young players from an early age. As one respondent states, ‘I wasn’t at school as much as I should have been, going down to London [to Chelsea] every so often for a few weeks at a time’ (Club B, young apprentice). The practical labour of professional football continues to be an integral part of these players’ social identity.

As Jenkins stresses, within a set of circumstances related to practical or physical accomplishment ‘they have grown up, learning and acquiring a set of practical cultural competencies, including a social identity . . . necessary to their own existence as who they are’. [45] In reflecting on his brief spell out of the game, one player articulates the fragility of a social identity based wholly on the practical labour of professional football: To find yourself out of work and really struggling to get a club for a while was difficult. That’s the first time I’ve sat down and thought what have I got to fall back on? At that time I was asking myself what else I could actually do – and there’s not a great deal (Club B, senior professional).

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For many of our interviewees ‘who’ they were was clearly inseparable from their status as professional footballers, even to the extent that they were often unwilling to accept that their playing careers were likely to come to an end. Several Scottish clubs now employ a designated educational and welfare officer to advise players on the availability of educational opportunities and future career prospects. Club B employs its own officer and he expressed concern over the psychological block experienced by some of those players he speaks to: ‘It’s going to take a major change in attitude in some players . . . to admit that there’s going to be an end to their career’ (Club B, education and welfare officer). He was particularly concerned about the senior professionals who, in his words, ‘deliberately’ avoid thinking about the future as a defence mechanism against the harsh realities of a post-football identity: ‘They have no time to focus on anything else – or at least that’s how they’ve been brought up – it’s just train, play or recuperate.’ This apparently unconscious and unthinking routinization alludes to the determining strictures of habitus. Coming into contact with a field that further reinforces practical labour to the detriment of cultural capital, we can see why a particular form of social practice is produced. The young apprentices were fighting for a very limited number of full-time contracts in both case study clubs.

Because of the intense competition for these contracts, these young men were well aware of the expectations placed upon them: It’s [a contract] there if you want it. If I started now thinking about my education then that’s me saying to myself that I’m not going to get a contract. I’m no going to focus pure hard on it [education] because I’m here to be a footballer at the end of the day (Club B, young apprentice).

As professional footballers internalize the rules of the game, [46] they are essentially complicit in their own oppression, accepting their position as the natural way of things. This is not necessarily a conscious and deliberate strategy. For most of these young men football is all they have known. Footballers are subjected to symbolic violence as they have been denied resources (lack of educational schemes rum by clubs) and their aspirations have been restricted (the club comes before anything else).

The garden was rosy when the professional football field promised untold riches and an avenue to lasting social mobility. However, recent evidence suggests that, for most, this is a misguided assumption.

Gearing [47] has suggested that football clubs are sites of anti-intellectualism, reinforced in the everyday working practices of training, travelling and internal communication. One of the young apprentices articulates these everyday experiences well, arguing that ‘we dinna [don’t] really speak about it [education] much in the dressing room . . . they only speak about football, or girls or something like that’ (Club A, young apprentice). The professional football industry is, in some respects, an autonomous field detached from the so-called ‘real world’ of mainstream employment: ‘football is all about living in a bubble’ (Scottish Professional Footballers Association educational co-ordinator). However, this bubble creates a powerful force reacting against the external influences of other fields (i.e. education). Evidence of

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anti-intellectual discourses are apparent at each and every level of the professional game, from senior club officials to young recruits: ‘The coaches didn’t really want us to go (to classes). They said they’d rather focus on football’ (Club B, young apprentice); ‘I don’t think anyone’s particularly interested in going to college . . . they just had a laugh and that’ (Club B, young apprentice).

This prevailing anti-intellectualism is not restricted solely to the internal workings of the institution of the football club. Our study findings indicate that experiences external to the football club further reinforce negative educational connotations. For example, one of the conditions placed upon the contract of a young apprentice is compulsory registration on a Sport and Recreation vocational qualification. Clubs are remunerated for this arrangement, but the following comment suggests that neither player nor tutor derives much benefit from this experience: ‘It was too easy. The person who was there doing it, it was hard for him. There was a lot of carry on. He wanted to get through it so he would tell us what to do, just to keep it going’ (Club B, young apprentice). Instead of using educational opportunities to engage sceptical young men in the benefits of educational cultural capital as a source of selfimprovement, encounters of this sort simply act to reinforce the value of physical prowess over academic attainment. In these circumstances educational discourses remain worthless – are irrelevant – to the everyday lives of those pursuing the dream of being a professional footballer.

Thus far we have presented a picture of the Scottish professional football field as self-serving and isolated from other occupational fields. However, utilizing Bourdieu’s conceptualization of strategies, we believe that any analysis of the professional football field must consider the possibility of change and transformation brought about by the confluence of interdependent fields. For this reason, the discussion now turns to the potential for change in the lives of young professional footballers.

Shifting Sands: Exercising Strategies At the heart of Bourdieu’s investigations into various cultural fields (e.g. art, television and sport) was the relationship between structuring processes, represented in the durable dispositions of habitus, and the ability of actors to exercise strategies that could alter their cultural trajectories. In essence, Bourdieu ‘replaced the notion of rules which govern or produce conduct with a model of social practice in which what people do is bound up with the generation and pursuit of strategies within an organizing framework of cultural dispositions’. [48] The shift from rules to strategies is crucial for our discussion of identity formation and the potential for re-formation in the lives of young professional footballers. We do not wish to argue that young players – emerging from a particular cultural habitus – can completely transcend their formative circumstances. We do, however, want to emphasize that within the relatively autonomous field of professional football the changing economic and social landscape provides opportunities for meaningful social action through which some players might be able to pursue strategies, albeit within

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a narrowly defined ‘organizing framework’. This position is consistent with Bourdieu’s belief that adaptation and change are always possible, especially when relatively autonomous fields overlap and create new configurations. In the new fields, it is possible for different forms of capital to attract greater value than was the case previously. Take the Scottish professional football field as an example. As external economic pressures (e.g. Bosman I and II and reductions in broadcasting revenue) exert greater influence on this field, so a renewed concern for players’ preparedness for alternative careers has emerged. Our study findings indicate that, as a result of these negative environmental variables, many players are now demonstrating some degree of improvisation and exercising individual strategies to prepare themselves for a life outside the game. The following comments from players and other stakeholders alike illustrate the heightened sense of insecurity produced as a result of the increasing influence of commerce on the professional football field: The boys now are becoming aware of the fact that the most you’re getting is a year contract . . . so players now realize that they’ve got to be going and getting other qualifications – they would be mad not to (Club A, senior professional).

This year there will probably be 300 boys getting freed from clubs with nothing . . . so the attitude here is changing (Club A, senior professional).

The message is definitely getting across. It’s in the back of your mind that the career doesn’t last forever (Club B, established professional).

These days, money is so short in football. The young ones know that if you don’t get on the football ladder then you’ve got to have something else (Club B, established professional).

There is a swing in attitude now, where players are becoming more aware of the fragility of being a sportsman – and in this particular case, a footballer. They know how fragile or insecure their job is and they are looking more towards the future – what do we do and when? (Club B, education and welfare officer).

The preceding quotations suggest that players are noticeably more aware of the pitfalls of abstaining from educational programmes alongside their footballing career.

The unassailability of professional footballers’ status has been eroded as players face the uncertainties of short-term contracts and the fear of redundancy. Some players are making tentative steps to re-formulate their identities away from a reliance on practical labour towards the much more tradable currency of cultural capital.

However, as discussed previously, it is not possible to simply opt in or out of the generative and durable dispositions that govern attitudes, behaviour and responses to situations. In this respect, it is worth looking more closely at the extent of, and form of, strategizing actually taking place in the case of the selected professional footballers.

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While it looks as if a mixture of financial insecurity and increased activity on the part of the football authorities is encouraging players to engage with educational discourses, the extent of this engagement requires further problematization. Our study findings suggest that we are seeing a possible movement towards a forced – or instrumental – engagement with education. The culture of fear currently pervading the professional football field (e.g. short contracts, smaller squads, little loyalty or security) appears to have invaded the dressing room and players are now discussing their futures in a way previously unheard of: ‘Players are all scared, they are looking for the next contract and they might have had a wee scare this summer. All of a sudden when they were out of a club for three, four, five weeks they start to think about their education’ (Scottish Professional Footballers Association educational coordinator).

When the Scottish game appeared financially secure, talk of education was extinguished as quickly as it was raised, exemplified by the comment of an established professional: ‘If someone said education was important, quite a few people say that’s a long way off and they’re probably not interested’ (Club B, established professional).

The favourable economic climate in the 1990s relegated educational programmes further down the list of priorities for the professional football players of the time.

Reflecting on this era, one player confirms this feeling: ‘Most of the teams were fulltime in the first and in the premier [divisions] . . . there were fewer money troubles so education probably wasn’t a concern for many players’ (Club A, senior professional).

While this ‘burying the head in the sand’ (Scottish Professional Footballers Association educational co-ordinator) attitude has, for the most part, been eliminated from the professional game, this tells us little about whether the possibility exists for players to transcend their cultural habitus and maximize the liberating and transformative potential of education. Our study findings indicate that the renewed interest in educational discourses is, at best, a pragmatic response. In Bourdieu’s terms, footballers are scholars and not gentlemen in their failure to recognize and invest in educational discourses for their own sake. Taking the role of the scholar, education is only useful as a means to an identified end – what is can do for them. Moreover, the clubs themselves adopt an approach towards educational delivery that reinforces a instrumental, means-end, outcome-based strategy on behalf of players. They promote mainly sports-oriented vocational qualifications with little emphasis on individual transformation. The problem here is that, for some, this form of delivery is unchallenging: ‘It’s not as much [education] as they focus on your football . . . the course is a bit easy, that’s what I think. Everyone is at the same level but I could do something a bit more challenging’ (Club B, young apprentice). In a sense, the style of delivery reinforces the symbolic violence to which players are subjected. They are restricted to vocational qualifications in the sports field, narrowing their horizons and maintaining the dominant position of the club in the process. In this respect, while the prospect of strategizing in the convergence of habitus, capital and field exists, it is our view that, within the Scottish professional football context, the quest for educational self-improvement remains primarily a pragmatic and superficial one.

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Conclusions Elsewhere, commentators have argued that professional football represents a disempowering environment in which a footballers’ lifeworld is colonized by his sport. This paper has sought to elucidate these issues further in its focus on the small narratives of a selection of footballers plying their trade in the Scottish professional leagues. While football undoubtedly retains a pivotal place in constructing their sense of identity, there is evidence to suggest that incremental change is occurring in the Scottish professional game. For example, an expanding portfolio of educational opportunities for professional footballers now exists. Increased activity on the supply side is supported by the currency of political agendas around lifelong learning and employability. Moreover, on the demand side, there is a growing awareness among players – especially those in the established and senior professional stages – that continuing professional development does not simply refer to extra training. These developments hint at a gradual shift towards a more empowering culture in the game in relation to educational engagement.

However, while we have argued that the dynamic, changing formula of habitus, capital and field has prepared the ground for such changes to proceed, we must also introduce a note of caution as to the extent and success of the strategies that have been pursued. For example, our investigations suggest that players’ engagement with educational discourses is, at best, an instrumental, means-end and outcome based one.

Using the language of Bourdieu, they occupy the position of the scholar as opposed to the gentleman. While players in both case study clubs were more aware of the need to continue with their ‘education’, few were able to articulate exactly ‘why’ this might be of benefit to them. This is where the durable dispositions of their cultural habitus are evident. They have not been able to fully transcend the objective conditions from which they arrived in the professional football field. It is for this reason that any attempt to introduce educational opportunities for professional football players needs to start at the recruitment stage; at a time when young men can still accrue educational cultural capital.

Players remain largely devoid of realistic alternatives and continue to exhibit quite extraordinary (and unwarranted) faith in the extended corporate responsibility of their employers to take care of them in the event of serious injury. The culture of dependency created in and reinforced by the institutional structures of the professional game represents a further barrier to those trying to embed meaningful education programmes into the social practice of vulnerable young men. Despite, or in fact because of, the changing professional football field, clubs continue to recruit, groom, exploit and then discard their principal assets bereft of the sort of capital which will see them flourish in alternative occupational fields.

While we have provided a flavour of the social practices of professional footballers in Scotland, in many ways this study has identified the need for further research enquiries into the ways in which educational discourses might be more meaningfully embedded into the fabric of the professional footballer’s life. While a number of recent

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studies have focused on the supply side, documenting the range of alternative approaches which the football authorities could (and do) utilize to attract players into educational programmes, there are few studies addressing attitudes to ‘education’ among players themselves. This imbalance is in need of redress.

Notes [1] Parrish and McArdle, ‘Beyond Bosman’.

[2] Deloitte and Touche, Annual Review.

[3] J. McBeth, ‘Plan to help footballers work after the beautiful game is over’, The Scotsman, 4 May 2005.

[4] Scottish Professional Footballers Association, Survey of Scottish Football.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Scottish Professional Footballers Association, Extra Time Newsletter, 2 (August 2004), 2.

[9] Ibid., 8.

[10] Scottish Professional Footballers Association, Extra Time Newsletter, 5 (August 2005).

[11] For example, Monk, ‘Modern Apprenticeships in Football’; Parker, ‘“Training for glory”’.

[12] Whannel, Media Sport Stars.

[13] Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice.

[14] McGillivray et al., ‘Caught up in and by the Beautiful Game’.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Crossley, ‘From Reproduction to Transformation’.

[17] See Bourdieu, ‘Sport and Social Class’; Bourdieu, Distinction; and Bourdieu, State Nobility.

[18] Bourdieu, ‘For Heterodoxy in Social Science’.

[19] Fowler, Reading Bourdieu.

[20] Webb et al., Understanding Bourdieu, 114.

[21] Webb et al., Understanding Bourdieu.

[22] Harris, Key Concepts in Leisure Studies, 38.

[23] Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu.

[24] Bourdieu, State Nobility.

[25] Bourdieu, Distinction.

[26] McNay, ‘Gender, Habitus and the Field’, 106.

[27] D. Burdsley, ‘“One of the lads”?’

[28] Wacquant, ‘Pugs at Work’.

[29] McGillivray et al., ‘Caught up in and by the Beautiful Game’, 105.

[30] Burdsley, ‘“One of the lads”?’

[31] McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies, 130.

[32] Giulianotti, ‘Human Rights, Globalization and Sentimental Education’.

[33] Bourdieu and Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.

[34] Webb et al., Understanding Bourdieu.

[35] Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu.

[36] Bourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’; Bourdieu and Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.

[37] McGillivray et al., ‘Caught up in and by the Beautiful Game’.

[38] Alvesson and Deetz, Doing Critical Management Research.

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[39] See Bourke, ‘The Dream of Being a Professional Soccer Player’; and Gearing, ‘Narratives of Identity’.

[40] McGillivray et al., ‘Caught up in and by the Beautiful Game’.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Armour, ‘We’re All Middle Class Now’.

[43] McRobbie, The Uses of Cultural Studies, 130.

[44] Bourke, ‘The Dream of Being a Professional Soccer Player’.

[45] Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu, 69.

[46] Wacquant, ‘Pugs at Work’.

[47] Gearing, Narratives of Identity’.

[48] Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu, 39.

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