Programme Leader for UCFB’s BSc (Hons) Sports Psychology programme Andrea Firth-Clarke has created a PFA Performance & Wellbeing online course to help players transition into professional football, and conducted a study surrounding this to assess its impact. The research was completed alongside Liverpool FC sport psychologist, Lee Richardson, whom she supervised through his BPS stage 2; this article is a result of that supervision!
The aim of the study was to examine how effective the course was in promoting psychological development in young players. Andrea Firth-Clarke summarised: “We investigated how an online course might assist in the process of professional and psychosocial development by providing contextually relevant and evidence-based sport psychological concepts and principles that are relevant for maintaining a career in elite sport (football) and transitioning into the professional game.”
The study, which deployed psychology's Four Pillar Model, found that the course had an overwhelmingly positive response, with players finding it incredibly valuable, encouraging them to reflect on aspects of their game they hadn’t previously. The transition was, in general, made easier as a result of this increased self-awareness.
A further finding from the study was the importance of raising awareness of the demands that elite professional football can place upon mental health, and providing the potential to develop psychological literacy around relevant coping mechanisms that may help improve performance. This ties into the broader movement promoting discussions around mental health in sport, and encouraging players themselves to actively participate in, if not lead, these conversations.
The Professional Football Association greatly value the course, and are discussing potentially introducing a second, to continue the process of building a strategy with players to help prepare them for life as a footballer off the pitch and analyse the long-term impacts of the course.
