Its a bit unfair for professional football to be portrayed as an unreasonable aspiration pursued by naive working class kids.
In actual fact the UK currently has around 4000 professional footballers, many of whom will play for a couple of years before moving on, and some of whom will play for a couple of decades.
The UK currently has 14,000 professors the vast majority of whom will fight tooth and claw to hang on to those positions for a lifetime.
So there are more professors than footballers at any one time, but due to football's higher turnover, and shorter tenure, many more people will be a footballer than a professor over the course of their career.
The bottom line is that professional football is actually a relatively attainable goal for young British men, and should probably be more encouraged as a realistic career option.
...and when you do put in your application to Oxford, Cambridge, Google, or Facebook, your long-gone 3 year stint as a utility midfielder at Dundee United is only going to make it more interesting.
In actual fact the UK currently has around 4000 professional footballers, many of whom will play for a couple of years before moving on, and some of whom will play for a couple of decades.
The UK currently has 14,000 professors the vast majority of whom will fight tooth and claw to hang on to those positions for a lifetime.
So there are more professors than footballers at any one time, but due to football's higher turnover, and shorter tenure, many more people will be a footballer than a professor over the course of their career.
The bottom line is that professional football is actually a relatively attainable goal for young British men, and should probably be more encouraged as a realistic career option.
...and when you do put in your application to Oxford, Cambridge, Google, or Facebook, your long-gone 3 year stint as a utility midfielder at Dundee United is only going to make it more interesting.