Modern football demands excellence from everyone. Players, coaches, scouts, analysts and recruitment departments are all expected to operate at increasingly high standards.
Qualifications, experience, networks, safeguarding, leadership, tactical understanding, talent identification, technology and data have all become part of the job.
But there is a contradiction in our industry that I think we need to talk about more openly. The expectations are becoming elite, while the compensation often is not.
At some point football has to ask a simple question: if we expect people to operate at the highest level, how are they supposed to build a normal life and support a family while doing it?
The expectations are becoming elite, while the compensation often is not.
The Cost of Becoming a Coach
Becoming a highly qualified football coach does not happen overnight. The UEFA pathway is progressive, and reaching the Pro Licence can take many years depending on the federation, course availability, entry requirements and the opportunities a coach has along the way.
The course fee itself is only part of the investment. There are previous licences, travel, accommodation, time away from work, continued professional development, workshops, technology and countless hours spent studying the game.
The biggest investment is time.
A coach can spend a significant part of his professional life becoming qualified enough to meet football’s standards. Yet there are still positions asking for extremely advanced qualifications, sometimes even a UEFA Pro Licence, while offering less than $50,000 gross per year.
That does not make sense to me.
We ask someone to spend years educating himself, earn one of the highest coaching qualifications in football, build experience, understand tactics, psychology, leadership and player development, take responsibility for players and results, and represent an organisation professionally.
Then we offer a salary that may not allow that person to comfortably support a family.
For Scouts, It Can Be Even Harder
For scouts, the situation can sometimes be even more difficult.
Look at what is expected in many scouting roles today. Clubs may want football or coaching qualifications, Talent ID education, years of experience, an established network, safeguarding knowledge, video and data awareness, detailed reporting skills and deep knowledge of a particular region.
They want someone who understands football like a coach, evaluates potential like an experienced scout, communicates clearly and has spent years building contacts.
Then you see compensation around £12 or £13 an hour.
There is nothing wrong with starting at the bottom of an industry. We all have to start somewhere. But there is a problem when the bottom of the industry requires qualifications, experience and knowledge that take years to build.
How Are These People Supposed to Live?
This is the question I keep coming back to.
If expectations are this high, how are these people supposed to support their families without doing other jobs? How do they pay rent, raise children, keep studying, travel to matches and give evenings and weekends to football?
We often call this dedication. Sometimes it is simply financial sacrifice.
And there is a limit to how long people can make that sacrifice.
I Watched a Very Good Scout Leave the Profession
A young scout worked alongside me for around three years. I should say that he had a very good eye for a player. In my opinion, that is one of the hardest qualities to teach.
He learned the job, watched a lot of football and became good at what he did. Some of the players he identified were players we later helped move into MLS and MLS NEXT environments.
He was doing what we want a young scout to do. He was learning, improving, building his network, identifying players and producing results.
But he could not build a life from the profession.
He eventually started university and is now preparing for another career.
Football did not lose him because he lacked talent or because he did not love the game. It may lose him because being talented at scouting was not enough to make scouting financially sustainable.
I often wonder how many good football people we lose in exactly the same way.
A Pro Licence Coach Driving Uber
I also know the other side of the story.
Think about a coach with a UEFA Pro Licence and around ten years of experience who still has to drive Uber quietly to supplement his income.
There is absolutely no shame in driving Uber. That is not the point.
The point is the contradiction. How can somebody be considered qualified enough to coach or manage professional footballers, but not earn enough from that profession to comfortably support his life?
Something is wrong with that picture.
Not Everyone Will Reach the Top
Of course, not every coach will manage in the Premier League. Not every scout will become a Head of Recruitment. Not every analyst will become a Sporting Director, just as not every player will reach the Champions League.
That is football. It is competitive and there is limited space at the top.
But the people who never reach the very top still keep the football ecosystem alive.
They coach academy players. They scout local matches. They analyse opponents. They develop young players. They travel to tournaments. They write reports late at night. They identify the 14-year-old player nobody else has noticed.
Many of them continue because they love the game. They know they may never become famous or wealthy through football, but they do not want to leave it.
That love for the game should never become an excuse for the industry to undervalue them.
That love for the game should never become an excuse for the industry to undervalue them.
Imagine If They All Stopped Tomorrow
Imagine every person in football today who cannot comfortably live from their football income deciding to stop on the same day.
The grassroots coaches, academy coaches, part-time scouts, regional scouts, analysts, development coaches, recruiters and all the other people who need another job to finance their football career.
What would happen?
The industry would struggle to function.
Professional football is not sustained only by the people we see on television. There is a huge workforce underneath the elite game.
Without them, there are fewer players to discover, fewer players to develop, fewer coaches to teach them and fewer scouts to identify them.
The top of the pyramid exists because thousands of people underneath it keep holding it up.
Income Inequality Is Also a Football Development Problem
For me, this is not only an employment issue. It is a football development issue.
If a talented young coach cannot afford to remain a coach, we may lose a future elite coach. If a talented young scout cannot afford to remain a scout, we may lose a future elite talent identifier.
And if only people who have enough financial security outside football can afford to spend years developing in these careers, then football is not necessarily keeping the most talented people. It is keeping the people who can afford to stay.
Those are not the same thing.
If we reduce this income inequality, I believe we will produce more qualified football people.
Coaches could spend more time coaching and studying. Scouts could watch more football, travel more, develop their methodology and remain in the profession long enough to become exceptional.
Experience takes time. You cannot ask people to accumulate years of experience if the profession does not give them a realistic way to survive those years.
Develop the People Who Develop and Discover Players
Football spends enormous amounts of money looking for the next generation of players. But we sometimes forget something very basic.
If we want better players, we need to develop the coaches who will develop them. And we need to develop the eyes that will see them.
A great scout is not created by completing a Talent ID course. A great coach is not created the day he receives a licence.
Both are developed through thousands of hours of watching, working, making mistakes, learning and gaining experience.
Just like players.
So if clubs want better players, they cannot invest only in players. They also have to invest in the football people around them.
What Is Expertise Worth?
I am not suggesting that every coach or scout should earn Premier League money. That would not be realistic.
But there has to be some reasonable relationship between what we demand from people and what we are prepared to pay them.
If you want UEFA qualifications, Talent ID education, years of experience, established networks, detailed reports, evenings, weekends, travel and constant professional development, then the compensation should reflect at least some of that commitment and responsibility.
We cannot keep asking for elite qualifications, elite knowledge, elite commitment and elite performance while offering survival-level compensation.
We cannot keep asking for elite qualifications, elite knowledge, elite commitment and elite performance while offering survival-level compensation.
Football needs great players. But great players do not appear from nowhere.
Someone has to teach them.
Someone has to develop them.
And someone has to see them before everybody else does.
If we want to find better players, we need to develop the coaches who will develop them and the eyes that will discover them.
Those people are not on the sidelines of the football industry.
They are part of what makes the entire game possible.