football is my life

‘Football is My Life’: Theorizing SocialPractice in the Scottish ProfessionalFootball FieldDavid McGillivray & Aaron McIntosh

There exists an apparent paradox between the continuing significance and growingglamorization of the professional game on a global scale and the increasingly unstablelabour 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’sformula of habitus, capital and field to frame professional footballers’ social practices –

with specific emphasis on their engagement (or lack of engagement) with educationaldiscourses. 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 ofthe 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 andoutcome-based one.

It’s all you’ve known since you were 16, it’s a way of life. It’s like a drug, going inevery day around the boys and the banter and training hard – all geared towardsSaturday 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] andthe ongoing rationalization of labour affecting the industry in Scotland. [3] The mostnotable outcome of these changes is the annual round of redundancies which has

become an unwelcome feature of the Scottish professional game. For example, the

ISSN 1743-0437 (print)/ISSN 1743-0445 (online)/06/030371-17 q 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/17430430600673381

David McGillivray and Aaron McIntosh, Cultural Business Group, Caledonian Business School, Glasgow

Caledonian University, Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow, G4 OBA. Correspondence to: [email protected]

Sport in Society

Vol. 9, No. 3, July 2006, pp. 371–387

number of players freed from their clubs at the end of each season has risen from 186in 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 surveywork 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 lessthan 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 inrecent years as many clubs have shifted to part-time status. [8] Current figures statethat 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 thetransferable skills and qualifications necessary to secure employment in alternative

labour markets. The response of the key stakeholders in the game has been tointroduce new learning strategies built more concretely into the fabric of players’

contracts, but this has yet to be accompanied by an analogous culture change withinthe labour force itself.

Despite the precarious economic conditions affecting Scottish professional football,

a large number of youngsters continue to make significant sacrifices to pursue theirdream of a career within the game. Yet there exists an apparent paradox between the

continuing significance and growing glamorization of the professional game on aglobal scale [12] and the increasingly unstable labour market conditions affecting

professional football players at the national level – in this case, the Scottishprofessional football field. In this paper, we address this paradoxical set of

circumstances through the lens of the professional footballer. In so doing, we utilizePierre Bourdieu’s [13] formula of habitus, capital and field to frame professional

footballers’ social practices – with specific emphasis on their engagement (or lack ofengagement) with educational discourses. We also employ Bourdieu’s concept ofstrategy to consider the ways in which footballers’ identities might be reformulated

within rather than outside the boundaries of professional football. Empirically, datagenerated 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 previouswork [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 theScottish 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,

372 D. McGillivray & A. McIntosh

committing their whole selves to an occupation that, at best, provided them with onlyshort-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 embeddedmore 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 particularinvestigation. His academic enquiries into the fields of education, social inequality and

sport [17] each sought to problematize the dynamic, interactive relationship betweenobjective social structures and everyday practices. Throughout his distinguishedacademic 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 theanalysis 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 demonstratehow the identities of young professional footballers are formulated and reformulated

in a dynamic relationship with a range of familial, occupational and institutionalarrangements.

While others have cautioned against reading Bourdieu’s conceptual tools in

isolation, [19] we believe it is worthwhile to outline their individual merits beforedeveloping a coherent theory of social practice for professional footballers. Bourdieu’s

exposition of the habitus is undoubtedly one of his most influential legacies. ForBourdieu, 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 thehabitus 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 whatwe 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 beassimilated 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 destinationsand 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. Whilenever denying that the habitus produces a certain consistency or logic to social

practice, Bourdieu does stress the ongoing oscillation between these structuringregularities and individual modes of cultural consumption. For example, he arguesthat actors [24] work with and against the sociocultural contexts within which they

find themselves embroiled. This reflexive reading of social circumstance is a centralfeature of Bourdieu’s theorizing and will, in due course, be discussed in relation to

professional footballers.

Sport in Society 373

The second component of Bourdieu’s formula – capital – helps us understand howcultural advantage, distinction and, ultimately, domination is reproduced in and

through social fields. Capital is best understood as the currency tradable within aspecific 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 thisinvestigation of the social positions occupied by professional footballers, two forms of

capital – cultural and physical – are particularly important. Possessing the desiredcultural 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 distributedequally within each field. For example, the legitimated and valued ways of knowing in

the professional football field are invariably associated with physical performance andexpressions of (hyper) masculinized identities [27] rather than with academic

achievement. Possession of embodied competence (e.g. speed, skill, strength) orpractical labour [28] is accorded greater value in the football world than the cultural

capital associated with formal educational discourses. This is, of course, under-standable 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. InBourdieu’s terms, physical (or embodied) capital is the dominant currency tradablewithin 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 isunderstandable that football ability takes precedence over academic aptitude, this is an

increasingly unsustainable set of affairs as an increasing number of young men face thedaunting 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 returnto this issue again in due course.

The field is the third element of Bourdieu’s formula for social practice. The field hasan active relationship with habitus and capital, and can play a crucial role in definingsocial practice and the relative value of capital therein. Others have argued that the

professional football field itself constructs, promotes and reinforces a particularcultural habitus [30] within which certain forms of capital are valued more highly.

As McRobbie argues, ‘the field constrains, manages and orchestrates the kinds ofpractices which can take place within its frame’. [31] The professional football field

emphasizes the importance of physical capital (e.g. bodily care and maintenance) overits 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 tobe 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 andpressures exerted by other (sometime competing) fields. They are therefore contested

spaces, always in the making rather than possessing fixed coordinates. This is certainly


true of the Scottish professional football field which, over the last decade, has been afertile 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 ever-depreciating bank of physical capital, professional footballers are particularly

vulnerable to occupational obsolescence should their bodily assets or utility to theirclub 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 professionalfootballers 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 symbolicviolence. 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 mobilityand 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 pickingshave been exhausted. However, this argument permits minimal space for adaptationand 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 thekey problematics of the habitus, capital and field relationship. If we accept

Bourdieu’s definition of habitus as a set of durable and largely unreflexivedispositions, 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 arevalued. Bourdieu consistently emphasized the improvisations and strategic decisions

that actors are forced to make in their practice. What people do in their everydaylives (their practice) is the outcome of an interaction with habitus as opposed to adirect 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 avisible 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 thearena 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 alternativecultural 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


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 ultra-subjectivism of existentialist phenomenology and the objective determinism of

structuralism. [36] In this respect, his work directs us towards a multi-dimensionalmethodology; one that utilizes a series of quantitative and qualitative research

methods. To date, our research enquiries into the intricacies of the lives of professionalfootballers [37] have utilized a quantitative research strategy designed to provide an

‘objective’ account of the social conditions from which young Scottish footballersemerge. However, this reliance on an instrumental positivist approach [38] left thesubjective 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 foundationalobjective 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 mappingout 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 experiencesinclude their formal schooling, their early football careers and the time since they

secured a professional contract. To enable an in-depth account of these subjectiveexperiences, two case study football clubs were selected for investigation. Both clubs

ply their trade in Scottish League Division One, the second tier of Scotland’sprofessional league structure. These clubs were selected for a number of reasons.

First, both clubs subscribe to a Modern Apprenticeship scheme in which their youngrecruits (16- to 18-year-old players) undertake a prescribed education curriculum

which includes a series of footballing and lifestyle interventions. Second, both clubshave invested in their youth programmes as a means to develop their own first-teamplayers 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 Ahas 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. Incontrast, Club B has a much more prescribed educational pathway in place; one

which focuses on vocational qualifications, primarily in the sport and recreationfield.

Our interest in players’ education extends beyond young apprentices (16–18 yearsold) to incorporate the opinions of established and senior professionals. These playerswere 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 financialconditions. Moreover, they will have started out in the game at a time when

opportunities for educational development were extremely limited. Players are


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 fourplayers 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. Interviewswere recorded and transcribed. In the presentation of research findings, players’ nameshave 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 playersthemselves, we also felt that it was important to access the views of other club

employees and from individuals representing the interests of professional footballersin the wider footballing community. To that end, a series of interviews were conducted

with administrative and managerial personnel from within both case study clubs andfrom the wider stakeholder community with an interest and influence over players’

education (see Table 1). Responses from these personnel are included in theforthcoming presentation of results and discussion.

Results and Discussion

This presentation of results and discussion is divided into two interdependentsections. 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 onearly 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 repositionthemselves 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

Table 1 Scottish Football Governance Agencies

Organization

Scottish Professional Footballers AssociationScottish Football AssociationScottish Football LeagueScottish Premier LeagueScottish Executive, Enterprise and Lifelong Learning


Bourdieu’s theory of social practice in enhancing understandings of the professionalfootball 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 witha professional football club places a significant restriction on levels of educational

attainment. [39] We know that a range of objective and subjective factors influenceyoung 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 intowhy 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 earlycommitment to a professional club varies according to the level of dedication, familial

circumstances and experience of schooling, it is clear that levels of educationalattainment are unduly affected. The available evidence suggests that a large proportion

of Scottish professional players under-achieve academically when compared with othersof their age group. [40] The present research findings corroborate this picture of under-achievement linked to footballing commitments. The findings suggest incommensur-

ability 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, establishedprofessional)

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 donebetter 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 itsyoung recruits and the subsequent downgrading of educational qualifications

thereafter. Despite significant age differences between these respondents, the youngapprentices use the same language to describe their feelings about education as their

more senior colleagues. Compared with other occupational sectors, members of theScottish professional football labour force leave school earlier and with fewer

educational qualifications than the Scottish average. [41] This is not because theseplayers 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


their academic studies. The football club continues to occupy a powerful andinfluential 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 devalueseducational 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 defendingtheir 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 workand he never got a [pro] contract’ (Club B, young apprentice). Within the professionalfootball 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 veryfabric of the professional football industry, from recruitment practices to contract

negotiations. While not always explicit (i.e. you must not pursue educationalqualifications) our study findings suggest that players are left in little doubt about their

priorities. For example, one established professional articulates the impact of hischoice 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 oftaken-for-granted statements and contractual agreement, the professional football

field ‘constrains, manages and coordinates’ [43] valued practices. Invariably, thesepractices 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 developmentfor young Irish players, Bourke [44] describes how football academies attached to

English clubs enlist children for a significant number of hours a week, increasing asthey get older. Although the Scottish professional game only has two football

academies, clubs continue to negotiate formal and informal ties with the mosttalented young players from an early age. As one respondent states, ‘I wasn’t at schoolas 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 ofprofessional football continues to be an integral part of these players’ social identity.

As Jenkins stresses, within a set of circumstances related to practical or physicalaccomplishment ‘they have grown up, learning and acquiring a set of practical

cultural competencies, including a social identity . . . necessary to their own existenceas 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 ofprofessional football:

To find yourself out of work and really struggling to get a club for a while wasdifficult. That’s the first time I’ve sat down and thought what have I got to fall backon? At that time I was asking myself what else I could actually do – and there’s not agreat deal (Club B, senior professional).


For many of our interviewees ‘who’ they were was clearly inseparable from their statusas 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 nowemploy a designated educational and welfare officer to advise players on the

availability of educational opportunities and future career prospects. Club B employsits 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 insome 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 seniorprofessionals who, in his words, ‘deliberately’ avoid thinking about the future as adefence 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’sjust train, play or recuperate.’ This apparently unconscious and unthinking

routinization alludes to the determining strictures of habitus. Coming into contactwith 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 apprenticeswere 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 wellaware of the expectations placed upon them:

It’s [a contract] there if you want it. If I started now thinking about my educationthen that’s me saying to myself that I’m not going to get a contract. I’m no going tofocus pure hard on it [education] because I’m here to be a footballer at the end of theday (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 ofthings. This is not necessarily a conscious and deliberate strategy. For most of theseyoung men football is all they have known. Footballers are subjected to symbolic

violence as they have been denied resources (lack of educational schemes rum byclubs) and their aspirations have been restricted (the club comes before anything else).

The garden was rosy when the professional football field promised untold riches andan 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 internalcommunication. One of the young apprentices articulates these everyday experienceswell, 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 mainstreamemployment: ‘football is all about living in a bubble’ (Scottish Professional Footballers

Association educational co-ordinator). However, this bubble creates a powerful forcereacting against the external influences of other fields (i.e. education). Evidence of


anti-intellectual discourses are apparent at each and every level of the professionalgame, 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 experiencesexternal to the football club further reinforce negative educational connotations. For

example, one of the conditions placed upon the contract of a young apprentice iscompulsory registration on a Sport and Recreation vocational qualification. Clubs areremunerated for this arrangement, but the following comment suggests that neither

player nor tutor derives much benefit from this experience: ‘It was too easy. Theperson 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 self-improvement, encounters of this sort simply act to reinforce the value of physical

prowess over academic attainment. In these circumstances educational discoursesremain worthless – are irrelevant – to the everyday lives of those pursuing the dreamof being a professional footballer.

Thus far we have presented a picture of the Scottish professional football field asself-serving and isolated from other occupational fields. However, utilizing Bourdieu’s

conceptualization of strategies, we believe that any analysis of the professional footballfield must consider the possibility of change and transformation brought about by

the confluence of interdependent fields. For this reason, the discussion now turns tothe 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, televisionand sport) was the relationship between structuring processes, represented in the

durable dispositions of habitus, and the ability of actors to exercise strategies thatcould alter their cultural trajectories. In essence, Bourdieu ‘replaced the notion of ruleswhich 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 organizingframework of cultural dispositions’. [48]

The shift from rules to strategies is crucial for our discussion of identity formationand 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 thechanging economic and social landscape provides opportunities for meaningful social

action through which some players might be able to pursue strategies, albeit within


a narrowly defined ‘organizing framework’. This position is consistent with Bourdieu’sbelief that adaptation and change are always possible, especially when relatively

autonomous fields overlap and create new configurations. In the new fields, it ispossible for different forms of capital to attract greater value than was the case

previously. Take the Scottish professional football field as an example. As externaleconomic 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 foralternative careers has emerged. Our study findings indicate that, as a result of these

negative environmental variables, many players are now demonstrating some degree ofimprovisation and exercising individual strategies to prepare themselves for a lifeoutside the game. The following comments from players and other stakeholders alike

illustrate the heightened sense of insecurity produced as a result of the increasinginfluence of commerce on the professional football field:

The boys now are becoming aware of the fact that the most you’re getting is a yearcontract . . . 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 careerdoesn’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, establishedprofessional).

There is a swing in attitude now, where players are becoming more aware of thefragility 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 thepitfalls 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 playersare 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 tosituations. 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 professionalfootballers.


While it looks as if a mixture of financial insecurity and increased activity on thepart of the football authorities is encouraging players to engage with educational

discourses, the extent of this engagement requires further problematization. Ourstudy findings suggest that we are seeing a possible movement towards a forced – or

instrumental – engagement with education. The culture of fear currently pervadingthe professional football field (e.g. short contracts, smaller squads, little loyalty or

security) appears to have invaded the dressing room and players are now discussingtheir 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 asudden when they were out of a club for three, four, five weeks they start to thinkabout their education’ (Scottish Professional Footballers Association educational co-

ordinator).When the Scottish game appeared financially secure, talk of education was

extinguished as quickly as it was raised, exemplified by the comment of an establishedprofessional: ‘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 full-time 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 eliminatedfrom the professional game, this tells us little about whether the possibility exists for

players to transcend their cultural habitus and maximize the liberating andtransformative 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 isonly useful as a means to an identified end – what is can do for them. Moreover, theclubs themselves adopt an approach towards educational delivery that reinforces a

instrumental, means-end, outcome-based strategy on behalf of players. They promotemainly sports-oriented vocational qualifications with little emphasis on individual

transformation. The problem here is that, for some, this form of delivery isunchallenging: ‘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 dosomething 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 arerestricted to vocational qualifications in the sports field, narrowing their horizons andmaintaining 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 ourview that, within the Scottish professional football context, the quest for educational

self-improvement remains primarily a pragmatic and superficial one.


Conclusions

Elsewhere, commentators have argued that professional football represents adisempowering 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 smallnarratives of a selection of footballers plying their trade in the Scottish professional

leagues. While football undoubtedly retains a pivotal place in constructing their senseof identity, there is evidence to suggest that incremental change is occurring in theScottish professional game. For example, an expanding portfolio of educational

opportunities for professional footballers now exists. Increased activity on the supplyside is supported by the currency of political agendas around lifelong learning and

employability. Moreover, on the demand side, there is a growing awareness amongplayers – especially those in the established and senior professional stages – that

continuing professional development does not simply refer to extra training. Thesedevelopments 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 alsointroduce a note of caution as to the extent and success of the strategies that have beenpursued. 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 tocontinue 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 areevident. 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 anyattempt to introduce educational opportunities for professional football players needsto 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 oftheir 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 theprofessional game represents a further barrier to those trying to embed meaningful

education programmes into the social practice of vulnerable young men. Despite, or infact 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 whichwill 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 researchenquiries 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


studies have focused on the supply side, documenting the range of alternativeapproaches 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.


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

[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.

References

Alvesson, M. and S. Deetz. Doing Critical Management Research. London: Sage, 2000.Armour, K. “We’re All Middle Class Now: Sport and Social Class in Contemporary Britain.”

In Sociology of Sport: Theory and practice, edited by R. Jones and K. Armour. Harlow, Essex:Pearson Education, 2000.

Bourdieu, P. “Sport and Social Class.” Social Science Information 17 (1978): 819–40.———. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,

1984.———. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education,

edited by J. G. Richardson. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.———. “For Heterodoxy in Social Science.” Theory and Society 17, no. 5 (1988): 782.———. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.———. State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, Translated by L. C. Clough. Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1996.Bourdieu, P. and J. C. Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, edited by R. Nice.

London: Sage, 1977.Bourdieu, P. and L. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.Bourke, A. “The Dream of Being a Professional Soccer Player: Insights on Career Development

Options of Young Irish Players’.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 27, no. 4 (2003): 399–419.Burdsley, D. “‘One of the Lads’? Dual Ethnicity and Assimilated Ethnicities in the Careers of British

Asian Professional Footballers.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, no. 5 (2004): 757–79.Crossley, N. “From Reproduction to Transformation: Social Movement Fields and the Radical

Habitus.” Theory, Culture and Society 20, no. 6 (2003): 43–68.Deloitte and Touche. Annual Review of Football Finance. London: 2004.Fowler, B. Reading Bourdieu on Society and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.Gearing, B. “Narratives of Identity among Former Professional Footballers in the United Kingdom.”

Journal of Aging Studies 13, no. 1 (1999): 43–58.Giulianotti, R. “Human Rights, Globalization and Sentimental Education: The Case of Sport.” Sport

in Society 7, no. 3 (2005): 355–69.Harris, J. Key Concepts in Leisure Studies. London: Sage, 2005.Jenkins, R. Pierre Bourdieu. Revised ed. London: Routledge, 2002.McGillivray, D., R. Fearn, and A. McIntosh. “Caught up in and by the Beautiful Game: A Case Study

of Scottish Professional Footballers.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 29, no. 1 (2005):102–23.

McNay, L. “Gender, Habitus and the Field: Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity.” Theory,Culture & Society 16, no. 1 (1999): 106.


McRobbie, A. The Uses of Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2005.Monk, D. “Modern Apprenticeships in Football: Success or Failure?” Industrial and Commercial

Training 32, no. 2 (2000): 52–60.Parker, A. “‘Training for Glory, Schooling for Failure’: English Professional Football, Traineeship and

Educational Provision.” Journal of Education and Work 13, no. 1 (2000): 61–76.Parrish, R. and D. McArdle. “Beyond Bosman: The European Union’s Influence upon Professional

Athletes’ Freedom of Movement.” Sport in Society 7, no. 3 (2004): 403–21.Scottish Professional Footballers Association. Survey of Scottish Football. Glasgow, 2005.Wacquant, L. “Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers.” Body &

Society 1, no. 1 (1995): 65–93.Webb, J., T. Schirato, and G. Danaher. Understanding Bourdieu. London: Sage, 2002.Whannel, G. Media Sport Stars: Masculinities and Moralities. London: Routledge, 2002.


football is my life

Documents