Kickstart Your Football Career Without Quitting Your Day Job

In today's issue of Football Progression Path, I'll show you how to build a football career while working your current day job.

Many people mistakenly believe they need to quit their day job in order to start a career football - this isn't true.

Most people break into the industry through part-time or freelance work initially. You don't have to go all in straight away.

You don’t need to be an expert. Learn daily, share it, be consistent.

There are simple steps you can take in your evenings and weekends to push towards a football career, the hardest part is taking the first step:

• Utilise Free Education
• Work In Public
• Learn From Peers
• Getting Experience

Utilise Free Education

You do not have to take any paid courses, or formal education to get going.

In fact, all the resources you could need to start your journey are free. Regardless if you’re an aspiring analyst or scout, there are many different resources. My recommendations to get going are The FA’s Introduction to Talent Identification, PFSA introduction into football scouting, McKay Johns’ YouTube For Python, Rob Carroll’s Tableau for sport YouTube, Friends of Tracking YouTube.

Whether you’re needing to learn about scouting, python, or tableau these resources are a great starting point to develop your knowledge.

Work In Public

Sharing your work online through a portfolio enables you to get feedback, learn and grow a network.

Your work doesn’t have to be perfect for you to share it. Putting it out online is the best way for you to connect with new people. It also acts as a hub for your work over time, showing your development.

People can begin to create a connection with you through your work - this is vital when it comes to landing opportunities in football.

“If your work isn’t online it doesn’t exist” - Austin Kleon

Learn From Peers

Your peers are people who are going through a similar journey to you right now - so think about aspiring analysts and scouts.

Making connections with these people allows you to learn from their journey and mistakes. They’ll be able to share their learnings on tools, platforms, education and general advice to save you the hours of learning for yourself. The best place for connecting with these people is on social platforms like X, LinkedIn and Threads.

Start connections with peers by following people who share analysis and scouting work. Do it through comments, sharing and engage with their work. Also remember take inspiration from their work.

A friend once said "the best analysts are magpies” - because they take the good ideas from others and put their own spin on them.

Getting Experience

This can be the hardest part, but getting experience in some form will help you massively.

You’ll get to see what it’s like working inside a team, this will open your eyes to budgets, processes and tools. This will help you learn, fast and on the job, which is great for your development. However, the catch is a lot of people’s first opportunities come as unpaid work.

If you are able to do it, be clear in what you want to get from the experience and how many hours work you’re going to have to put in.

Getting experience can be hard, but through learning daily, sharing your skills and growing a network you will be more likely to open doors.

So there you go, take these simple steps, be consistent and get started. The hardest part is taking the first step.

Have a fantastic week, and go well.

Liam