IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jjrfmx/v15y2022i12p609-d1004322.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Professional Soccer a Risk for Their “Lives Afterwards”? A Social-Sciences-Based Examination of Retired Professional Soccer Players from a Long-Term Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Barth

    (Department of Sport Science, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria)

  • Torsten Schlesinger

    (Institute of Human Movement Science, Social Science Perspectives on Sport, Exercise and Health Promotion, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany)

  • Werner Pitsch

    (Department of Sports Science, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbruecken, Germany)

Abstract

Most professional soccer players’ careers end before their forties. Consequently, many of them face a relatively early retirement from their profession, thus facing multifaceted changes and potential issues of adjustments in different areas of their lives. Public discussion and therein expressed concerns have led to increased attention on the topic, notably among practitioners and researchers. This study described and analyzed central retirement transition and adjustment outcomes of ex-professional soccer players from a social sciences and long-term perspective. A total of 78 ex-professionals completed the online questionnaire, most of them having played in the highest German soccer division for several years and having retired from professional soccer 10 years or more ago. Overall, 8.9% (95% CI 2.5 to 21.2; n = 45) showed signs of mental health problems. Compared to the results of a gender- and age-matched sample from the German population, retired ex-professionals were significantly more satisfied with their life and their personal income, and assessed themselves as having a higher subjective social status. Although further evidence is necessary to draw any final conclusion, our results do not point to those publicly discussed concerning central retirement transition and adjustment outcomes of (average) former professional soccer players in the long run.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Barth & Torsten Schlesinger & Werner Pitsch, 2022. "Is Professional Soccer a Risk for Their “Lives Afterwards”? A Social-Sciences-Based Examination of Retired Professional Soccer Players from a Long-Term Perspective," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(12), pages 1-12, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:15:y:2022:i:12:p:609-:d:1004322
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/12/609/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/12/609/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Barth & Martin Schnitzer & Hannes Winner, 2022. "Editorial: Special Issue “Risk in Sports and Challenges for Sports Organizations”," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-3, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:15:y:2022:i:12:p:609-:d:1004322. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.