The FBA - The Football Career Blueprint: Recruitment, Pathways & Emerging Roles

The football industry offers a changing landscape of career opportunities. In addition to traditional off-the-pitch roles, new areas have emerged that are reshaping the game. The Football Business Academy (The FBA) hosted a panel of experts who discussed the diverse career paths available, shared recruitment insights and provided valuable lessons from industry leaders who have successfully navigated their own career journeys

Moderated by Kristian Dobrev, Co-Founder & Deputy CEO of The FBA, the panel included Arianna Criscione, FBA Alumna (2nd Edition), Co-Founder of Valeur Sports and Mercury/13, Eymeric Moura, Partner at Nolan Partners and Zayd Shehadeh, FBA Alumnus (10th Edition), Partnerships Director at World Football Summit (WFS).

Whilst in the past, the focus has been rightly on serving the sporting side of the game, there is now a need for greater professionalism in many of the back-office roles, which has led to an exponential increase in available opportunities. Football offers one of the most challenging yet rewarding career paths. It’s a multifaceted industry that requires a range of skill sets to operate effectively and efficiently.

In recent years, there has been a growth in the professionalisation of many business roles within the game. But how do you get into a football industry role, and what is the football career blueprint? These are the questions that The FBA helps many graduates answer each year through their industry-specific programmes.

“Everyone on this panel and most of the people in the audience know that this is an oxymoron,” said Kristian Dobrev, as he introduced the panel discussion at WFS held in Sevilla in September.

“There is no clear blueprint of how to get a career in football. There are all kinds of pathways that people have taken.”

The panel hoped to demystify those pathways. Zayd Shehadeh is a 10th edition FBA alumnus and now working for WFS. He started out in a consultancy role before deciding to switch careers.

Taking this bold step, he embarked upon study with The FBA which provided him with the necessary knowledge needed as well as guaranteed internship within the programme which gave him the opportunity to work with WFS.

He said: “I think a lot of people don’t realise there’s an opportunity in sport on the business side of things.”

The sentiment was echoed by Arianna Criscione, a 2nd edition FBA alumna, and a former professional footballer who shared her experience of transitioning to the business side of the game.

“There are so many roles that it was complicated for me to find where I fit in the industry,” she explained. “It took me a little while to understand that and get my bearings.

“For my generation, a lot of players went to university or had to stay in college and so a lot now have careers, but not necessarily in sport.

“A lot of what we learnt, we weren’t shown that you could put that into the sports industry – the soft skills and hard skills that we were learning would correlate.

“I think women still don’t understand the roles that there can be for them and The FBA has a huge opportunity to help them get into the industry.”

Eymeric Moura, Partner at recruitment specialists Nolan Partners, highlighted the changing dynamics of the football industry. He suggested that football is now seeking executives with more expertise in new technologies and is recruiting from top-level companies such as Google, Spotify and Amazon to solidify this.

However, he recommended that those looking to establish themselves in the industry should be ready to conduct thorough research and strive to gain a comprehensive understanding of the global industry.

“What we tend to do is give them a vision of the market they don’t necessarily have,” he said.

While it was agreed that there is no linear way into football, The FBA is equipping its students with the tools and knowledge they need to be successful in this ever-growing industry.

Through industry-specific course content and close partnerships with some of the world’s leading football clubs and organisations, The FBA is placing its students at the heart of the game.

Why The FBA?

We are convinced that higher education is key to promoting positive industry development. As such, we have teamed up with industry experts to create our flagship Professional Master in Football Business, along with other programmes, aimed at training the talented leaders of tomorrow while challenging the status quo. Find out more at www.the-fba.com

Image: WFS