Navigating Your Career Path as a Physical Performance Coach in Football
Every career path is different. The way to the top can be a hard slog for most, for others the pathway is laid out perfectly for a linear career progression.
In order to reach the pinnacle as a football fitness coach, you need a combination of three things:
1) Hard work
2) Good understanding of football politics
3) Some luck along the way
Since I started working as a mentor to football fitness coaches, I’m yet to meet anyone who doesn’t score highly in the hard-working category.
However, it’s the other areas that often dictate whether a fitness coach stagnates in their career or progresses to reach their career goals.
Whether that be internal promotions within the same club, moving abroad to try out a new culture, or moving clubs every season to progress up the ladder, everyone’s pathway looks different.
Let’s take a look at some example pathways from experienced football fitness practitioners:
David Flower – Everton FC
Dave is a highly experienced football fitness practitioner, who has been working in football for around 15 years.
His pathway started fairly typical for most practitioners – an internship. They can be a great way to learn the ropes and get used to a football environment.
As you can see from Dave’s profile, he actually had 3 separate internships at 3 clubs before landing his first major role in football.
He then worked at Everton Ladies team as Head of Sports Science for a season, before taking on a role with Everton mens academy as U23s fitness coach.
Essentially, it took Dave 5 years to cement his place in football, a duration in which many would give up and try other career paths.
Dave has been at Everton in total for 12 years but across 5 different roles. He is now a highly valued senior member of the academy sports science staff.
His career pathway is a lesson about perseverance, determination and hard work. It also shows you don’t always have to move clubs to progress in your career.
Jack Naylor – Everton FC
Let’s look at the career pathway for another current Everton FC practitioner, Jack Naylor.
Jack has had an unusual career pathway, one which has led him to work with the best players in the world.
He started his journey, again like most, at Chelsea FC through an internship. This was then converted into a full-time role a year later which kick started his career in football.
Jack was part of a highly successful sport science performance team at Chelsea, notably working with the great late Nick Broad.
Nick then took Jack over to PSG, working with Carlo Ancelotti for a season, when sadly Nick passed away.
This led to Jack filling in for Nick’s duties, working with the manager closely which then led to moving over with him to Real Madrid.
In 2016, he took a role at Celtic working under Brendan Rodgers and also had a year’s experience working for RB Leipzig.
More recently, Jack took a role as Head of Sports Science for Everton, initially working under Frank Lampard, a former Chelsea player whom Jack worked with previously.
Overall, Jack has had a very unique career pathway, in which he was exposed to high level clubs at a very early stage of his career. This has obviously provided an excellent base from which he has continued to grow into leadership roles.
You could say there was an element of luck with his career path, meeting someone like Nick Broad and then working with a top manager like Carlo Ancelotti. However, luck often comes hand-in-hand with hard work and competence in the job.
Ian Coll – Football Performance Consultant
The last practitioner we will look at is Ian Coll, another highly experienced football fitness coach.
Ian started his career at Airdrie United, before landing a job at Celtic as an academy sport scientist.
Over a 7-year period, Ian worked his way from this position all the way up to Head of Sports Science with the 1st team.
Following his spell at Celtic, Ian has worked across Europe as a Head of Performance for a number of clubs.
This has taken him to Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria. In addition, Ian has transitioned from a fitness coach to the role of assistant coach in a technical capacity through completion of his A license.
The interesting aspect of Ian’s career pathway is that he’s worked his way up within a club (Celtic) over a long period, before then embarking on a journey to experience different countries and cultures.
Each of these roles would have required a high knowledge of ‘football politics’, particularly when it comes to areas such as contract negotiation and securing top roles at multiple clubs in various countries.
Conclusion and Take Away Points
As you can see from the above three examples, everyone’s career pathway is different.
Whilst the starting point is fairly consistent for most (i.e. internship), where you go from there will be dictated by a number of factors.
With Dave’s example, hard work and perseverance has paid off over time. For Jack, hard work coupled with an element of luck has spring boarded his career to great heights. As for Ian, his knowledge of football politics and upskilling towards new roles has helped him travel and work in multiple countries.
Here is my key take away points for football fitness coaches to reflect upon:
- Think about what stage you are currently at in your career. Whether that be as a student, early career or more experience practitioner.
- What do you want to get to? Do you want to work at the 1st team level or academy? Do you want to work abroad?
- You need a combination of the 3 main key career factors (hard work, luck and knowledge of football politics) to reach your ambitions.
- You don’t have to move clubs every season to progress. However, if you feel your pathway is blocked at your current club then it might be time to consider moving on to keep progressing.
If you want further advice around navigating your career pathway, check out my Football Physical Performance Community. You will have access to a private community of experienced practitioners and mentor who are able to advise on key career decisions to accelerate your progress.
That’s all for this week. See you next time!