Youth players at the crossroads: Coping with the insecurity of the junior-to-senior transition in football

The junior-to-senior transition is regarded as the most challenging stage in footballers’ careers. Yet, little is known how players cope with the insecurity during and just before this transition stage. This paper aims to (1) examine the coping strategies implemented by youth players to deal with the difficulties of this point and (2) the role of perceived opportunity structures provided by football academies in shaping these strategies. This study is based on 21 semi-structured individual interviews with youth players from the U-19 and U-21 categories representing academies and reserve teams of Polish football clubs. Our study shows that youth players are often reluctant to relinquish their dreams of becoming professional football players. This point results in three types of coping strategies: an all-in strategy , a dual career in football , and a dual career outside of football . These strategies are informed by three types of opportunity structures provided by academies: indicating the importance of formal education , show potential or perish and social capital . In general, the academy system is perceived to operate according to a show potential or perish logic, where support is directed to most talented players. Based on our findings, we recommend that football academies should use their existing resources and create systematic sporting education to equip youth players with practical understanding of sport institutions and transferable skills. Sharing sport-related knowledge, networks and sporting social capital in a more systematic way may enhance deselected youth players’ future labour-market opportunities in football and sport in general.