Exploring how education and sport are brought together in two different dual career programs for Danish soccer players: effects for the player’s current and future life

ABSTRACT

The article investigates dual-career (DC) programmes for young soccer players in Denmark. In these programmes, students pursue interests in both education and elite sport with the goal of becoming a better-rounded or ‘whole sports person’. Rather than critique this approach as incoherent, we employ Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage to explore how sport and education are brought together and the resulting ecologies for young people’s lives, present and future. We base our analysis on ethnographic studies of two DC programmes. We find that student-athletes enact the idea of the whole (sports)person in two quite different ways that either enhance or disrupt their agency to enact potential futures. We recommend greater awareness of how specific DC programmes create and deprive student-athletes of life opportunities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Ministry of Culture.

2. Legal Information.

3. Stambulova and Wylleman, ‘Athletes’ career development and transitions.’; Ryba et al., ‘Dual career pathways of transnational athletes.’

4. Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus.

5. Stambulova and Wylleman, ‘Dual career development and transitions.’; Wylleman et al., ‘Career transitions in sport.’

6. Wylleman et al., ‘Career transitions in sport.’; Wylleman and Lavallee, ‘A Developmental Perspective on Transitions Faced by Athletes.’

7. Stambulova and Wylleman, ‘Dual career development and transitions.’

8. Wylleman et al., ‘Career transitions in sport.’; Wylleman and Lavallee, ‘A Developmental Perspective on Transitions Faced by Athletes.’; Wylleman and Reints, ‘A lifespan perspective on the career of talented and elite athletes.’

9. Debois et al., ‘A lifespan perspective on the dual career of elite male athletes.’

10. Ryan, ‘Factors impacting carded athlete’s readiness for dual careers.’

11. Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus.

12. Deleuze and Parnet, Dialogues, 69.

13. Nail, ‘What is an assemblage?’.

14. Ibid., 27.

15. Müller, ‘Assemblages and Actor‐networks.’

16. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus.

17. Aitken, ‘Desarrollo Integral y Fronteras/Integral.’

18. Nielsen and Olesen, Talentudvikling og elitesport i skolen.

19. Ibid.

20. Nielsen and Olesen, Plads til idrætstalenter i den danske folkeskole.

21. Ibid.

22. Skrubbeltrang et al., ‘How to stay becoming.’

23. Nielsen and Olesen, Talentudvikling og elitesport i skolen.

24. Ibid.

25. The upper secondary educations in the Danish education system are academic educations, where the teaching is theoretically based. These educations provide a broad knowledge that prepares students to study further in a higher education.

26. Stilling Olesen & Treumer Gregersen, Shared parenthood in Danish youth’s elite football clubs.