Behind the 2025-2026 English Football League: UCFB graduates powering the game on and off the pitch

With the English Football League (EFL) now back for 2025-26, we are taking a look at some of the UCFB graduates working across the three divisions.

When UCFB was founded less than 15 years ago, a main priority was to grow the quality and quantity of professionalism within the industry, and the past decade and a half have shown how much our alum have thrived across football.

Students come to UCFB, boldly taking the first steps towards their dream career in the football and wider sports industry, and few leagues highlight better the quality of our graduates than the EFL.

UCFB has had graduates working at each of the 72 Football League clubs competing in the 2025-26 season, with graduates currently working at no fewer than 68 of the current 72 across the Championship, League One and League Two.

This is added on to the fact that we have graduates at all 20 current Premier League clubs, too, meaning overall, UCFB has had graduates at all 92 of this year’s professional clubs in England.

UCFB chief executive and founder, Brendan Flood, spoke at the launch of UCFB’s Manchester Campus, about how students and graduates are at the core of everything UCFB does and how far both the organisation and students have come in that time.

Many of these clubs which employ UCFB graduates are home to multiple across a range of departments, such as Championship club Watford FC.

Commercial director at the Hornets, Paul O’Brien, said on one of our industry insight days to Vicarage Road how valuable a UCFB degree is to employers across the Football League.

“When we are interviewing people,” he said, “if someone has got UCFB on their CV, we take that more seriously because we know what grounding you give them.

“We know everyone who has come from UCFB has learned the basic principles. They’re all willing to work hard and they’ve all got a good understanding for what they’ve come in for.”

These graduates from UCFB are working in a wide range of roles at their respective Football League clubs, from media at Wrexham to partnerships at Southampton and performance analysis at Charlton Athletic.

This is due to the wide array of undergraduate degree courses on offer at UCFB, covering all areas of the industry, such as sports media, sports coaching and sports business.

Furthermore, our postgraduate offerings allow students to progress their sports industry education and further enhance their skills, knowledge and experience within their chosen field.

See below only a handful of our graduates who are thriving in careers across the Football League this year…

It’s not too late to start your own UCFB journey as you progress towards your dream career in football. Apply now through Clearing and begin as early as this September!

You can also view a prospectus to learn more about our unique degree courses, campuses and everything about student life at UCFB.