Good Argumentative Essay On The Challenges Of Building A Career As A Professional Soccer Player

Soccer is positioned as one of the most lucrative sports in the world. Soccer is the most popular team-sport in the world. Soccer players are amongst the best paid professionals in the world due to the high numbers of people who are willing to part with money to watch games in various ways and forms. In spite of this, building a career as a soccer player is not the easiest thing to do. The purpose of this paper is to argue that building a career as a professional soccer player is problematic and people must be prepared to look out for other career paths other than becoming soccer players
The fundamental premise for the thesis above is that it is not easy to build a career as a soccer player. This is because millions of people have taught of becoming professional soccer player. Due to the financial incentives of being a soccer player, there have been many people who have tried in one way or the other, to build a career in the field of playing soccer. However, their dreams were not realized. Basically, due to the financial incentives that come with being a professional soccer player, only the best and the most talented and the most committed individuals ever end up playing in professional soccer leagues around the world. This is mainly because the administrators and managers of every soccer team tend to have high and rigid targets. And due to the fact that other teams also want to achieve high results and gain the best of everything, there is a general trend towards competition and all teams work hard and fight to achieve the best of results. Thus, the recruitment situation is very competitive and only a few players ever get to the top. Many footballers drop out from becoming top professionals. This is because the demands are high and the expectations are always high. Hence, there is a lot of stress in the entire process. Statistics has also shown that footballers who fail to build other careers who fall out of the normal progression tend to have a miserable life since most of them do not build alternative careers they can fall on.
Secondly, there is a risk that anyone who chooses soccer as his primary career could suffer an injury that could destroy his or her career progression. This is because soccer exposes people to a lot of physical activities and there could be injuries on or off the field that could ruin anyone’s chance of playing soccer. Thus, it is not guaranteed that anyone who sets on the path of becoming a soccer player will ever achieve his professional status without issues. The risk is far higher than another individual who chooses to become a manager or medical doctor or lawyer. This is because such careers do not rely on physical robustness and as such, individuals have a better guarantee than those who go into soccer.
Finally, soccer comes with many management challenges. The fundamental premise for this is the fact that footballers have an age restriction due to the fact that an individual who grows to a certain age cannot play football. Thus, most people play active professional soccer from the ages of 20 and 35. Playing soccer outside those ages is often judged as unsuccessful and most players tend to face challenges. Therefore, in effect, an individual has 10-15 years of his life to play active football and gain his life’s savings. Thus, an individual soccer player will have to learn how to manage his funds and ensure that it is put into ventures that will give him regular income for the rest of his life. There have been numerous stories of soccer players who mismanaged their funds due to youthful exuberance and lived a lonely and terrible life in their adult ages due to the mistakes of their youth. The question is what will profit a man if he misuse his income and has nothing to fall upon in his old age? Thus, the career path of being a professional soccer player comes with major challenges and issues that goes beyond becoming successful. It comes with the inherent risk of losing one’s savings due to the challenges of the professional career of the sport.

Conclusion

This paper identifies that it is not worthwhile for an individual to consider a career of becoming a professional soccer player. This is because the soccer industry is extremely competitive and until a person is sure that he is gifted, talented and motivated enough, it might not be wise to consider a career as a soccer player. Even when a person has all the necessary attributes of being a great soccer professional, there is the risk of getting a serious injury that would make a person lose his competency and career progression. Hence, there is the need for individuals to weigh the risks and consider other careers. And in any case where a person transcends all these limits and becomes a successful soccer player, there are risks that could cause an individual to mismanage his earnings and end up having a miserable life in his senior years. Due to these challenges, it is not worthwhile to consider a career of becoming a soccer professional.

Works Cited

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Kuhn, Gabriel. Soccer Vs. the State: Tackling Football and Radical Politics. London: PM Press, 2011.
Light, Andrew and Smith Jonathan. The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. New York: Colombia University Press, 2013.
Steen, Rob, Jed Novick and Huw Richards. The Cambridge Companion to Football. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.