Why Generalists Thrive in Football: The Key to Early Success

In today’s issue of Football Progression Path I’m going to share why being a generalist is much better than being a specialist, especially for aspiring and new football professionals.

When you’re starting your career you’re not going to be working at Manchester United. You’re likely going to be working at a club lower down the football pyramid, and with a smaller budget and team. You have to be able to wear different hats, the broader your skillset the better.

Most people seem to think you need to be an expert and a real specialist at analysis or scouting. This isn’t the case.

Having a broader skill set will increase your chances of securing early opportunities in football.

You develop a broader skillset by:

• Learning skills that are transferrable
• Developing knowledge to the required level
• Learning on the job

Transferrable Skills

In football you need to think on your feet, and solve issues for yourself and other staff members - Especially if you’re working with data!

Acquiring skills for similar roles ahead of time puts you in a strong position from the start. You will have more adaptability which will help you deal with issues which arise. This can be pivotal when working in smaller teams of people.

Put this into practice by looking at the job descriptions for performance analyst, recruitment analyst, data scientist and data engineer. What are the common skills needed? This is what you should be learning and sharing on your online portfolio.

If you’re into scouting do the same exercise for academy scout, senior scout, technical scout and video scout.

Developing Knowledge

If you already have a deep understanding of a skills such as coding, telestration or report writing, that is a big advantage.

But if you don’t already have the desired skills, you’re better off getting your knowledge to a reasonable level first. Then move on to learning something new. This will add more strings to your bow to broaden your skillset.

Reference job adverts, and reach out to people in similar roles to learn what level of knowledge is required for specific skills.

Learning on the Job

You will not be expected to know everything, especially when starting out in your career.

In early roles, where you’re likely working in smaller teams there will be times where you need to do something that’s new. If you don’t know how to do something, be open about it. Commit to learning it, but give realistic expectations about your knowledge level and time needed to learn.

You learn a lot more by practicing something new, especially within the context of a project or longer form piece of work. So learn as you go!

Thanks for joining me for this week’s newsletter.

All the best.

Liam.