Retirement of professional soccer players - A systematic review from social sciences perspectives

Soccer above all? Analysis of academic and vocational education among female soccer players in the German women's Bundesliga and 2nd women's Bundesliga

Introduction

Career-related (financial) reasons as well as advantages in terms of expanding social support systems, promoting a balanced lifestyle and personal development suggest that female soccer players should pursue academic or vocational education in parallel to elite sport. However, dual careers are fraught with challenges, mainly due to simultaneity in time and the associated conflicting goals. The aim of this article is to analyze the vocational or academic educational careers of professional female soccer players.

Methods

To generate the data, an online survey was conducted among soccer players in the German Women's Bundesliga and 2nd Women's Bundesliga. A total of n = 200 questionnaires (German: n = 191; English: n = 9) were included in the analysis, which corresponds to approx. 29.6% of the population addressed.

Results

90.6% of the players are pursuing or have already completed academic or vocational education. The majority (71.2%) of female soccer players choose to study. 81.8% of players report no impact or even a positive impact of soccer on their performance in academic or vocational education. Willingness to pursue and complete academic or vocational education is influenced by membership of the A-National Team, time spent playing soccer, form of school-leaving qualification, nationality and age.

Discussion

This study increases the visibility of professional women's soccer as an object of analysis in sports science research, follows up on demands for a more athlete-centered approach and generates further insights for research and practice with regard to the success of dual careers in elite sport.

Adaptation to life after sport for retired athletes: A scoping review of existing reviews and programs

Retirement from sport is a life transition that has significant implications for athletes' physical and mental health, as well as their social and professional development. Although extensive work has been done to review the retirement experiences of athletes, relatively less work has been done to examine and reflect on this expansive body of literature with a pragmatic aim of deciding what needs to happen to better support retiring athletes. This study used scoping review methodology to review current academic reviews, gray literature articles, and support programs on athletic retirement. This review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute reviewer's manual guide on scoping reviews and adhered to the PRISMA-ScR checklist. Academic articles were identified from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Scopus. Gray literature articles and support programs were identified using advanced Google searches. This study identified 23 academic reviews, 44 gray literature articles, and 15 support programs. Generally, the results suggest that athletic retirement encompasses a drastic shift in identity, a loss of social networks, a lack of career ambitions, and potential risks to physical and mental health. While there was a gap in the academic literature regarding practical strategies to support retiring athletes, the gray literature suggests many creative ideas. Stepwise programming may be beneficial to help athletes: (a) make sense of their athletic experience and see retirement as an ongoing process; (b) develop a well-rounded sense of self identity and understand how to apply their unique skills and strengths in new ways; (3) gain control over their retirement transition by establishing a clear plan and adjusting to new routines and opportunities; and (4) normalize the transition experience by "living in the next" and building confidence in new life directions. Future research may benefit from developing and evaluating more programming to support athletes through the retirement transition.

Retirement from elite sport and self-esteem: a longitudinal study over 12 years

This study examined the complex associations between athletic retirement and self-esteem among former elite athletes. With reference to theoretical and empirical work on the quality of the transition out of sport, information was collected from 290 (junior) elite athletes in a retrospective-prospective design: at the first measurement, active athletes assessed satisfaction with their sporting career, athletic identity, and self-esteem. At the second measurement (12  years later), the now former athletes rated transition characteristics of their career ending, sporting career success, emotional reactions to career termination, extent of necessary adjustment required following athletic retirement, duration and quality of adjustment, and self-esteem. Structural equation modelling revealed that neither sporting career success nor sporting career satisfaction had a direct effect on adjustment. However, athletic identity and retirement planning predicted the extent of adjustment, which in turn predicted the duration and quality of adjustment, and ultimately self-esteem. Voluntariness, timeliness, and perceptions of gain predicted emotional reactions towards career termination, which also predicted the duration of adjustment. Extent of adjustment and emotional reactions mediated between preconditions of career termination and transition characteristics and self-esteem. While self-esteem after career termination was predominantly predicted by self-esteem 12  years earlier, perceived quality of adjustment to career termination had a significant effect on self-esteem in the post-athletic career. These results complement existing literature illustrating that athletic retirement is a complex and dynamic process and the quality of this transition has a small, but still noteworthy effect on self-esteem, a central construct for well-being.

“After the Dust Settles”: Foucauldian Narratives of Retired Athletes' “Re-orientation” to Exercise

One aspect of sports retirement that has been overlooked until recently is the manner in which retired athletes relate to, and seek to redefine, the meaning of exercise in their post-sport lives. In this article, three Foucauldian scholars present and analyze a series of vignettes concerning their own sense-making and meaning-making about exercise following their long-term involvement in high-performance soccer (authors one and two) and distance running (author three). In doing so, this paper aims to underline the problematic legacy of high-performance sport for retiring athletes' relationship to movement and exercise, and to highlight how social theory, and Foucauldian theorization in particular, can serve to open new spaces and possibilities for thinking about sports retirement.