“When You Understand the Environment, You Can Navigate the Transition Better”: Supporting Professional Football Players in Transitions to Clubs Abroad

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to share the outcome of a series of professional conversations among three scientist practitioners on how the new concept of transition environment (TE) and two related models may inform a sport psychology practitioner’s (SPP) work with football players in their cultural transitions to foreign football clubs. The center of the discussion was the applied work of one of the authors who is in a position to help Danish professional footballers with transitions abroad. After outlining his professional philosophy, developed for working within the context of professional football, we explore the tasks and challenges for practitioners working with footballers in a cultural transition. We explain how the context of professional football constrains the services. Ideally, the SPP would like to optimize the players’ environments during transition but ends up using specific strategies to compensate for a lack of access to this level of work. Finally, we promote the importance of SPPs possessing contextual intelligence in order to help players understand and navigate their TE.

Keywords:

• Context-driven sport psychology
• cultural transition
• holistic ecological approach
• transition environment

Today, I have a session with a footballer who has not yet started for his new team, even though he moved over six months ago. He transitioned from a Danish to a professional football club in a foreign country. He is struggling to adapt to the demands and cultural practices of his new club, this could be a reason why his development has stagnated. I have seen it before and if he does not start to accept the cultural practices of the new environment, this may easily end up being the first in a long line of moves trying to find the right club.

This is how Carsten opened a series of professional conversations about his sport psychology services to professional footballers in transition. Professional conversation can be defined as a collegial dialogue through which academics investigate their own thinking and practice in an informed and supportive environment (Jarrett et al., 2021). Engagement in professional conversations enables a collaborative and future-oriented focus on peer discussions among sport psychology researchers and practitioners from which their professional development may benefit. As scientist practitioners (Schinke et al., 2024), we meet regularly to discuss our research, our applied work, and particularly how the two relate. On this day, Carsten had summoned the group. The occasion was a newly published conceptual paper that described the ecology of athlete transitions and introduced the concept of a transition environment (TE; Henriksen et al., 2023). Even though he has worked from a holistic ecological approach (HEA) most of his career, Carsten believed that this new concept warranted discussion and needed translation to become truly applicable in his work. The aim of the present paper is to share the outcome of a series of professional conversations among three scientist practitioners on how the new concept of TE and two related models may inform a sport psychology practitioner’s (SPP) work with football players in their cultural transitions to foreign football clubs.

We are all part of a research unit that specializes in researching athlete development and performance as social processes that are highly contingent upon the environment in which the athletes are embedded. Louise has worked with sport organizations to develop philosophies and strategies for youth sport and talent development. Kristoffer works in Team Denmark (the Danish Elite Sports Institute) and has supported numerous national teams at major international events, including several Olympic Games. Carsten has many years of experience working in professional football. His current position as a sport psychologist with the Danish Football Association allows him to support athletes in their transitions from one club to another. His professional philosophy which is grounded in the Team Denmark’s applied framework (Diment et al., 2020) has evolved over the years and is uniquely suited to the football context (Larsen, 2017). Today, he mainly draws on existential psychology (anxiety is an inevitable part of life and athletes should strive for an authentic life in which they take responsibility for their decisions; Nesti, 2004), Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) (we should teach athletes to accept rather than control their thoughts and emotions under pressure and to live a life in pursuit of their core values; Henriksen et al., 2019), and HEA (we cannot understand athletes’ development and performance without understanding their environment, and improving the sport environment is a core mission of modern sport psychology; Henriksen & Stambulova, 2023).

As illustrated by the quote that opens this paper, professional football is all about transitions. Developing and selling players is the only viable business model for most clubs in smaller countries such as Denmark. Clubs understand that they need to develop players who are equipped to handle a transition to a bigger club abroad. In our professional conversations, Carsten shared his insights into the transition of the footballers who typically have no or very little time to prepare for their transition, and into the service he provides as an SPP. He always works from the idea that successfully supporting footballers in transition requires a focus on the environment and not only on the individual athlete. He acknowledges that this is a very difficult part of his work, because football clubs more readily focus on optimizing the individual players’ skills than on their environment during transitions. Carsten’s descriptions and the professional conversations centered on identifying personal and environmental resources, barriers, and coping strategies related to the three different phases of the transition (i.e., planning, orientation, acclimation) and on how Carsten could improve his work to create a TE that facilitates footballers’ cultural transitions. Below, we present the theoretical foundation of our reflective paper; we proceed to describe the outcome of a series of professional conversations as a collective case example; and finally, we share our personal reflections and recommendations.

Theoretical underpinnings: Toward an ecology of athlete transitions

Traditional theoretical underpinnings of working with clients in cultural transitions include the cultural transition model, the holistic developmental approach, and context-driven practice. The cultural transition model (Ryba et al., 2016) describes a cultural transition as “a process of negotiation between maintaining a psychological homeostasis, predicated on need satisfaction, and engagement in sociocultural practices of the host site” (Ryba et al., 2012, p. 84). Cultural transitions take place over three distinct phases: the pre-transition phase, the acute cultural adaptation phase, and the sociocultural adaptation phase, each with their own psychosocial developmental tasks or challenges. This is complemented by the holistic developmental approach which takes a whole-person and whole-life perspective on athletes’ careers, describing them as a series of stages linked by transition periods in which the athletes are extra vulnerable (Stambulova et al., 2021). Both of these approaches have their main applied focus on the individual and encourage practitioners to help athletes develop the competencies, coping skills, and strategies required in the transition and at the next level of their career. This has been further supplemented by the concept of context-driven sport psychology in which practice is “informed by reciprocal interactions between consultants, clients, and the cultural/sub-cultural contexts they are parts of” (Stambulova & Schinke, 2017, p. 131). This viewpoint is widened beyond the athlete, which aligns with the idea of HEA (Henriksen & Stambulova, 2023) that people influence and are influenced by their environment. More specifically, applied sport psychology should be based on a thorough understanding of the clients’ contexts; be conducted mainly on the clients’ sites; be carefully planned to fit and use language that is accepted in the context; and involve good cooperation with staff (Schinke & Stambulova, 2017; Stambulova & Schinke, 2017). Working from this approach in a professional football context involves acknowledging key elements of the contexts, such as the “short-termism” of professional football clubs and constrained agency as a collective phenomenon (i.e., a need to win, avoid relegation and survive at all costs) (Darpatova-Hruzewicz & Book, 2021; Larsen, 2017; Storm et al., 2022).

The transition environment

Whereas research on athletes’ careers has focused mainly on the individual athlete, a recent conceptual paper describes athlete development as a journey through different athletic and non-athletic environments that support the athlete’s pursuit of career excellence (Henriksen et al., 2023). On this journey, an athlete not only experiences a variety of environments, but also transitions from one environment to another. The paper introduces the concept of a TE defined as a dynamic and temporary system comprising a donor setting and a receiving setting with micro and macro levels complemented by the links and overlaps in cultural practices that bridge the two settings. It argues that some TEs are more effective than others in supporting athletes in transition and that SPPs are expected to help develop resources not only of the individual athlete but also of the environment.

The concept of the TE is complemented by two models. In the first of these, the TE working model, the environment is divided into two levels (micro and macro), two domains (athletic and non-athletic), and two settings (a donor setting and a receiving setting). For example, the donor setting might be a Danish football academy that the athlete is leaving behind, and the receiving setting might be an Italian football club that the athlete is transitioning to. At the core of the environment are the athlete and their coaches, managers, experts, and other athletes. The athletic domain refers to the parts of the environment that are directly related to sport (the club, academy, national team etc.) and the non-athletic domain to parts outside of sport (school, friends). The macro level refers to social settings which affect the athletes indirectly, such as the sport system and the broader societal system (e.g., educational system and rules for citizenship) as well as the broader cultural contexts (e.g., national culture, the culture of the specific sport and youth culture), which may differ for the two settings. The transition timing is described using the conventional transition phases of preparation, orientation, and acclimation. While the two settings are clearly two independent environments, they are also two settings that together form a TE for the athlete undergoing the transition.

The second model, the TE-success factor (TE-SF) model, suggests that preconditions for a successful TE include financial and human resources in the donor and receiving settings designated to support the transition process and all existing links between components of the TE that allow communication and coordination. Transition effectiveness is the degree to which athletes successfully adapt to the receiving setting (a two-way process between person and environment) as evidenced by the athlete’s optimal functioning and performance, social belonging, and well-being (Henriksen et al., 2023). The success of a TE is facilitated not only by the preconditions and support processes but also by a whole-person philosophy, by overlaps in cultural practices in the donor and receiving settings, and by openness and curiosity in each setting toward where the athletes are moving to and where they are coming from.

Henriksen et al. (2023) suggest that this understanding may benefit applied work with athletes in transition, but we have yet to see the concept and models applied to real-life cases. Below we present a collective case example that fuses Carsten’s applied work with multiple clients into a story that represents key learnings. The case example is derived from two focused professional conversations (Jarrett et al., 2021) on the TE framework and on applied work with footballers in transition. The second conversation was recorded, transcribed, and condensed into the case example story which is written from a first-person perspective.

Case example: Working with footballers in their transition to clubs abroad

Today, in the context of international professional football, high quality talent development has become a financial requisite for clubs, and players are supposed to be sold abroad. My (Carsten’s) daily work with professional footballers naturally targets the mental strength of the individual player, helping them perform under pressure, develop good habits around goal setting and evaluation, etc. However, I experience that the players approach me more readily when they face a potential cultural transition. Naturally, the prospect of such a move creates uncertainty, and players have doubts about whether it is the right decision and whether they have what it takes to succeed in the big pond. During such a period, my role becomes even more important. Traditionally, I have been focused on helping the players understand the unique characteristics of their environment, particularly similarities and differences between the settings they transition from and to. I have always believed that my work to help athletes develop the competences needed to thrive and survive in the tough environments of professional football should be supplemented by a focus on improving those environments. But now, reading the conceptual paper on TEs has stimulated my curiosity and has made me wonder whether I could do more to create better TEs in football.

Professional football players in a transition from one club to another are embedded in a complex, and temporary, environment. This environment comprises their Danish club or academy (donor setting) from which they are sold and a club in a new country to which they are moving (receiving setting). These types of transitions can be lonely for the players because there is no connection between the football clubs they are transitioning from and to, and because all their teammates and the entire coaching staff are new to them.

Transitioning to an international football club has typically been a dream of the players for years, and although they are not without sadness about leaving a well-known club and everyday life, they are excited to move on. Since the player relocates, the cultural practice in the new club is typically different from what they know. In football, players are sold during a ‘transfer window’, which is a rather short period. They do not always know where to continue their career trajectory when their contracts expire or even when the transfer window opens.

Pre-transition: Preparing footballers for a transition

Preparing for a cultural transition in professional football is typically a very short phase and it is therefore predominantly focused on practical issues, such as finding a place to live, getting a car, and getting other things in the player’s private life in place. There is no overlap, no communication, and no coordination between the management and coaches in the donor setting and the new coach and new management in the receiving setting. Direct contact between the two settings does not occur except as high-level managerial contract negotiations. The agent, who has obvious financial interests, and the family are the main sources of social support. The main task for the transitioning player is to prepare practically for new daily routines and to find out where to go for help and support. The support that I can provide at this stage is mainly about helping them focus on and solve the practical issues so that they will be ready to focus on football performance when they move (the sport psychology services that I provide are paid individually). Players who are in effective TEs get support from a Players’ Care Unit in the receiving setting. This is a dedicated team responsible for caring for newcomers and supporting them with practical matters related to getting settled in the new setting. I mention this unit here, because in the successful cases, the unit will reach out to the player and start preparing practical matters already before the actual relocation.

In an ideal world, inspired by the concept of a TE, I would establish contact between the donor club and the receiving club, involve the Player’s Care Unit, and facilitate a discussion not only about practical matters but also about who the player is, their dreams and previous experiences, their network, and their struggles. Unfortunately, the short time span and the fact that the donor club is focused on integrating their new players most often render this impossible. I often find that this phase, as predicted by existential psychology, inspires a player to ask themself the big questions regarding identity and life dreams. However, the time pressure and enthusiasm to go abroad often quickly silence that voice, and the player is content to talk about mainly practical matters.

Helping footballers in the acute cultural adaptation

In football, the players often don’t know when and to where they will relocate. If they know where, they can start preparing for the transition by for example getting to know about the new city, starting to learn the language, and preparing the practicalities of the move with their family and/or partner, but most football players do not have time for such preparations. When practical issues in the non-athletic domain are secured (living, car, family), the tough and very demanding part of the transition starts, which comprises positioning and adjusting in a highly competitive setting. They fly in, put their boots on and are expected to show that they were a good buy. It is all about performance. In this acute phase, I support the players in analyzing the new setting primarily with a focus on football playing style, coaches’ communication style, and the management’s basic assumptions. I often do so remotely via digital means of communication. Inspired by ACT (Henriksen et al., 2019; Nesti, 2004), I help the players accept the many forms of uncertainty and doubt that they experience and help them understand that these experiences are only natural as responses to such fundamental changes in life. I help them clarify their values and direct their focus onto their main task (i.e., analyze and adapt to the new setting).

One typical barrier to acclimation (acute and sociocultural adaptation; Ryba et al., 2016) and a successful transition outcome is that the players experience very few overlaps in practices and cannot accept the cultural practices of their new setting (e.g., new playing style, coach communication style). It is challenging to let go of their past experiences and adapt to a different way of playing, communicating, and relating to each other. Particularly because success often comes very slowly, it is easy for the players to think that everything was better before. During this phase of the transition, I help by providing a dual focus on the settings they are transitioning from and to. I help them identify if they are stuck on practices and values from the donor setting (e.g., playing style, or way of communicating), and I help them decipher the new cultural practices of the receiving setting. The task for the player is to accept and embrace the new setting and to find out how they can adapt to this setting as well as contribute to its development. This is a process that requires time and patience.

I purposefully educate players to be able to recognize both settings. Together we discuss and analyze the overlaps and differences between the cultural practices of the two distinct settings to support them in letting go of the past habits and practices and in being openminded toward the new setting. For example, some of the football players from Danish academies are reflective and analytical and come from a flat hierarchy led by calm coaches in harmonious environments. When such a player encounters a team on which better players have privileges, and a foreign coach shouts to instill work ethics during training sessions, I provide support to reframe their perception of what a well-functioning environment is and can be in order to help them be able to accept such new cultural practices.

I encourage the players to be openminded toward the new setting (i.e., coaches, teammates) and to accept and commit to practices that are different from the club they came from. Adapting to a new setting requires a certain level of flexibility and adaptability. By accepting new ideas and practices, the footballers can better integrate themselves into the team, commit to new cultural practices, and perform at their best. Sometimes I ask them to attend games, talk to teammates and staff members, and immerse themselves in the local football culture.

Sociocultural adaptation phase: Helping footballers adapt in a new club

My professional practice is centered around understanding and analyzing, together with the player, both their personal background, the setting they are coming from and the new setting they are entering. When the footballers are open in their communication and start building relationships with their new teammates and coaching staff, they establish a sense of trust and camaraderie which can greatly facilitate their adaptation. By guiding the players through this process and providing support, I see them successfully navigating a new environment with cultural practices that are different from what they know. In addition, to acclimatize to the new football club, players must deal with other aspects of their integration such as language, lifestyle, and personal relationships.

In the months following the players’ relocation, their thoughts often wander back to their old club, sometimes missing old teammates, often thinking about the playing style. In my experience, the move requires development at an existential level, and I am supporting them in letting go of old habits and ideas, and accepting and committing to the values and ideas of the new club. For the players it sometimes seems as if everything is new. Helping them identify overlaps in cultural practices, such as training routines and social events, can facilitate and enhance their well-being. Notwithstanding, some practices are in fact different, and if players do not accept and commit to the new practices, there is a risk that their career trajectory may stagnate (i.e., they enter a crisis transition) or decay (i.e., failed transition outcome) and they will soon start a new relocation, because their contract will not be extended. I have seen that happen several times. In my experience, the period of acclimation typically lasts between six months and one year. It takes time to settle and to start feeling at home in the new setting. Players who are in effective TEs experience a whole-person philosophy from both the donor and receiving settings. The concept of the TE has stimulated me to reflect and discuss with good colleagues: In a way, it creates small cracks in my professional pride. I work from HEA, and I know that I should ideally work with the coaches in both the donor and receiving settings to develop such a philosophy and to get them to work together; but in my experience, in professional football an SPP does not have such influence. Therefore, my work focuses on helping the players develop awareness and compensate for a lack of integration. To sum up, this case example is about how I educate players in understanding their TE and help them accept and commit to new cultural practices.

Reflections, recommendations, and conclusion

Below we reflect on the collective case example to highlight key learnings and present concluding recommendations for how SPPs can work to optimize athletes’ TEs.

Personal reflections

Louise: The collective case story in this paper is a ‘test’ of a newly coined conceptual framework and it seems to hold merit in terms of grasping new perspectives of an experienced practitioner’s work with footballers. In my own consultancy work and applied research, I have seen that a holistic ecological approach to talent development or dual career can transform stakeholders’ view of their tasks and responsibilities within an environment. In the professional conversations related to this paper, I was surprised how little opportunity there is for Carsten to optimize the environment (e.g., develop integrated efforts and overlapping practices) when he works with footballers in transition. It became clear to me that the lack of this opportunity was fully accepted by Carsten and that he committed to teaching footballers to navigate their own TE.

Kristoffer: The only thing I appreciate more about Carsten than his curiosity is his directness. When the TE paper was published, he knocked on our doors the very next day. His first remark was: “Well done, nice idea, but I don’t see how your applied suggestions are possible in my work in football. Do you have time to discuss?” Kurt Lewin is credited with saying that nothing is as practical as a good theory. I am sure Carsten would add that a theory is no good if the practical applications are not obvious. As a scientist practitioner, I find that adapting theoretical ideas and research to my contextualized practice is an interesting challenge, and implementing the idea of a TE is certainly not easy. Even though I have witnessed several successful and less successful TEs (before I realized they were TEs), truly working to optimize TEs is a challenge yet to be tackled. It must be tackled differently in different contexts because the opportunity to influence different levels of the environment and to create links between donor and receiving settings varies significantly. Carsten’s experiences in professional football speak to the unique challenges of highly professional environments in which dialogue is most often reduced to contractual negotiations. I hope the future will provide more contextual examples, and hopefully these will include examples in which the practitioner has more options to choose from.

Carsten: The described peer-reflections on my practice with professional footballers have been helpful and have made me aware of the need to support players in a context-driven manner and to help players become more sensitive to contexts. For a long time, SPPs have focused on supporting players with mental skills training (MST) for performance (e.g., Sly et al., 2020). I have learned from working with players in transitions and from our recent discussions based on the TE concept that I (need to) do much more. The holistic ecological approach to transitions taken in this paper presents a clear plea to not only work with individual athletes and the team but also to understand—and if necessary and possible, also to optimize—the TE around the player and the team. Therefore, the task for an SPP is also to provide the player (and other agents in the environment) with tools that enable them to be sensitive to and analyze the weaknesses and strengths of the environment. I find MST too simple for supporting footballers in transition, and I support Kellmann and Beckmann (2003) in their viewpoint that to create solutions to a complex problem, practitioners need methods and instruments that grasp the complexity of the real-life experiences of the players in the environment. It is pivotal that sport psychology services acknowledge the complexity of the different levels of the TEs, which range from national football culture to team culture.

Recommendations and conclusion

Whether you are an SPP, a coach, an agent, or a family member, we recommend that you consider your role from the holistic developmental and ecological perspectives. This means, first and foremost, that concern for the individual athlete should be complemented by an understanding of the TE in which they are navigating, and that everyone in an athlete’s TE should take an interest in the athlete as a whole person and take some responsibility for the environment. Transition demands and support processes include, in the best circumstances, initiatives and activities through which the donor and receiving settings integrate their efforts and provide support to facilitate the transition. Support processes can take place in the donor setting before leaving or in the receiving setting after arrival, or in a best-case scenario as a structured process of moving back and forth between the two settings. The latter was not the case in the example presented here based on Carsten’s work with professional footballers. In such a case, the sport psychology service should compensate for the lack of integrated efforts by educating the athletes to understand the cultural practices of the environment they come from and the new one they are transitioning to. Carsten’s professional philosophy prompts him to always consider the role of the environment in athletes’ development, performance, and transitions. At the same time, his contextual awareness (Larsen, 2017; Stambulova & Schinke, 2017) means that he understands the nature of professional football and the demands this entails (Darpatova-Hruzewicz & Book, 2021; Storm et al., 2022). Carsten’s work with footballers in transition crystalizes how the work—in that context—is about helping footballers understand their own surroundings, identify differences and similarities in the old and the new setting, and accept and commit to the new setting at an existential level (Nesti, 2004).

Ideally, the task of creating supportive TEs rests on the shoulders of staff of both transition settings involved. However, this staff has many tasks, and we suggest that SPPs adopt an ecological perspective and make it their ambition to help coaches understand transitions from this perspective and help them strive to engender a good TE for their athletes. One possible way of doing this is to stimulate dialogue between people (experts, teachers, families, and coaches) in the athletes’ donor and receiving settings with the aim of ensuring that everybody is on the same page and that activities are coordinated. While this may seem an obvious idea, it is difficult, and we have yet to see it fully operationalized. Another way of doing it is to stimulate potential transition resources (e.g., players’ care unit) to be just as focused on helping their current athletes’ successful transition to a new team as they are on helping new players settle in. A third possibility is, when possible, to ensure some overlap in cultural practices from one club to another because the athlete may experience the practices of the new setting as strange and unfamiliar. If that is not possible, the SPP should support athletes in accepting and committing to the new practices. Finally, the SPP could help arrange opportunities for athletes to visit the new setting before relocation and for them to visit their donor setting for a reunion with their old friends after settling in to ease the transition.

These specific ideas may not all be possible in every sport context. Nevertheless, by inviting practitioners to look beyond the individual athlete, ecological perspectives constitute an important supplement to the contemporary literature on athlete career development. Combining the whole-person, whole-career, and whole-environment perspectives allows us to unearth the complexity of the athlete career as a journey through environments. It is our hope that future work will illustrate different ways in which practitioners may work from an ecological perspective to support athletes in transitions within different contexts.

Disclosure statement

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