The Player Care Group provides support for football players, focusing on personal development, welfare, and off-field organisation. How does this work relate to goalkeepers?
When Sean Dyche discussed the five-substitute proposal in the Premier League back in 2021, the focus was solely on how it affected the squad on the pitch. “I was thinking of people like Frank Lampard, season after season knocking out 60-odd games with England games on top. I don’t remember too much about player welfare being spoken then,” said the ex-Burnley manager. To some, it felt like an old school take in a Millennium world.
Hugo Scheckter knows this kind of angle very well. Scheckter runs The Player Care Group, a leading consultancy in player care away from the spotlight of the green grass. He has been in the business for over a decade, having previously been Player Liaison Officer at Southampton, Head of Player Care at West Ham and Interim Head of Player Welfare at Brentford.
“There do tend to be older school coaches who are coming from the prism of ‘in my day we didn’t have this kind of thing’. And I’m going, well, look, you have spent so much time scouting this goalkeeper, convincing them to come to the club, making sure they want to sign, which are all crucial of course. But imagine if the reason it all goes wrong is something external like a partner who is not happy with living arrangements. It’s a waste.” Mismanagement off the pitch can cost millions.
So what exactly is The Player Care Group providing ? The founder and Managing Director reels off several specifics: “It’s not about football, or medical, or performance, but it is about anything around relocations, personal stuff, families, language lessons, player appearances, fan mail, team travel, team operations, and team communication.
"We divide player care into 24 different categories, and we set standards in all of those.” Scheckter doesn’t work directly with the players now, but there are approximately 300 graduates who have come through his courses fully trained. About a third of those are now working full-time at professional clubs.
“Our role is to assist the staff at the club. Whether it is helping the director of football, general manager or owner, the target is to ensure the happiness of its most valuable assets - the players.”
The approach to the job of player care may be based on a methodology, but human beings do not come in uniform packages and not all organisations are on the same page or at the same stage in the process .“Some clubs have a very advanced player care department. Some are looking to start from scratch. Others don’t care about it. It’s my job to work out how to coach an approach so that they do care.”
Scheckter has found goalkeepers, by and large, to be more introspective and calm than most. “I can’t think of a time that a goalkeeper has ever called me in a panic. Now that might just be either my lack of memory, or the fact there are less of them normally in the squad, but they tend to be pretty relaxed, calm, and self-sufficient people. To give an example of some I worked with, Maarten Stekelenburg and Alex McCarthy are very chilled people who are almost so unflappable that you can see it on the pitch where they don’t get wound up.”
With the proliferation of overseas goalkeepers now in the Premier League (only five of the current 20 number ones in the top flight are English by birth), The Player Care Group has a strong ethic to ensure English language is a top priority when moving to English clubs. Many professional footballers now are living outside of their comfort zone by moving to a new city or country where feelings of alienation can grow.
Goalkeepers need rich communication on and off the pitch. “Having a player that speaks really good English, or at least is comfortable conversing, you know, off the top of the head, means that they will settle in quicker because they can live life more easily”.
One of the core issues is to get the right balance between the care of the player and what’s right for the club. “I think the club and player balance is key. If you roll over for the player, you are seen as a doormat whereas if you are too much on the club side, you are seen as unapproachable and possibly untrustworthy.”
Scheckter also knows where not to tread. There is a white line that delineates all things football, but there is no crossing of borders when the manager or head coach is dishing out harsh home truths to the squad. “If I am intervening in a football context, I’m not going to last the rest of the day,” he said.
“I don’t have an issue with coaches or managers using whatever tools to critique the player, as long as it’s done from a position of respect. That is ultimately part of being an elite level footballer.” As Scheckter says, football is a highly pressurised business and there has to be a driven standard in such a dog-eat-dog environment.
However, those standards and how they are seen by the bigger world can often be an issue to work on - especially for goalkeepers, where a mistake can be vilified. “I think a lot of footballers are quite isolated and quite insular. They might have thousands of followers on Instagram, but they will choose to stay home after losing a game. It’s the least aggravation, the least kind of confrontation to just cancel dinner plans or game online rather than be out and about in town,” he says.
Scheckter experienced close up the uncomfortable journey of a goalkeeper he worked with at one of his clubs via the trial of social media. “I remember being struck by the fact that he had his notifications on. I was sitting next to him on the bus after one of the away games which hadn’t gone well, and this really brutal stuff pops up on his phone. I asked him why he didn’t delete the app and he replied that it was his job as a footballer to be in the public eye. I replied that it shouldn’t be like this.”
However, player care professionals are not social workers or psychologists. “Often the goalkeeper coaches know their goalkeepers so well that they will instantly understand what they need. They have an existing advocate, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have an input if the player wants to get away or talk about their family. I think we can be one of the few people inside the club that don’t have to talk to them about the game.”
The difference with the women’s game is eye-watering given that the WSL only became professional in 2018. “The first obvious difference is the finances. Many at the top level are still looking at a flat share for between three or four of them. On the other hand, I have observed women’s sports at times to be more supportive of each other, and more of a sort of team unit from my experience.” The England collective gathering around a tearful Mary Earps after the 3-2 defeat against the Netherlands and the World Cup final immediately springs to mind.
Of course, where there is a risk of negativity, there can also be a risk of big egos at the highest level. Scheckter has been around the block with enough top-level professionals to know what to expect: “I don’t mind people with egos, as long as they are respectful. If you do not believe you’re better than the other goalkeepers, then what are you doing there? You need to have an ego to say that when you go out onto the pitch that you will stop the other team.”
So what is Scheckter’s prescription to assist the man or woman between the sticks, especially when they are expected to hit the ground running? “I think the message to agents and clubs staff I’d say is let the internal player care staff work with your new goalkeeper when he signs. We can make sure we remove all the outside stresses so that every bit of time that the coach spends with the player is about technical stuff or improving their form.” Everyone who has a bad day at the office deserves a life worth living outside of the bubble.
