Dr Alan Tonge is quick to admit that football forgets players quickly. He has, by now, made peace with the fact that it can be a harsh environment where even though the successful players keep rising up the ladder, many get chewed up, spat out, and are never to be seen again. After all, he has experienced all of it first hand from his time at Manchester United, Exeter City, and his 20 years in teaching.
By Kaustubh Pandey
With football quickly becoming an all-encompassing industry which is driven towards earning as much revenue as possible, a conversation needs to be carried out about whether the game is capable of meeting the increasing demands. With the European competitions set to have additional games from next season onwards, a question about whether players’ health is being sacrificed amidst the thirst for increased revenue can surely be asked.
In a detailed chat with FotMob, Tonge says that in an era where football has more games than ever, the sport has this responsibility to make sure that players find safe spaces to talk about their struggles and anxieties.
“Football is a tough world and often the culture in there is all about being tough and resilient and showing that mental fortitude and beyond that, everyone struggles. We are all humans at the end of the day and have downtimes and tough times. I think having that space in football clubs and having someone to go to who is appropriately qualified and can understand what you’re going through and remedy that like a counsellor, that is really important. That is something we will see grow in the modern game.”
Tonge’s experiences in football and beyond make him a rather perfect person to talk about the help players need to cope up with the game’s increasing demands. Tonge played for Manchester United’s first-team in friendlies after coming through the club’s academy in the late 1980s but after being moved on by the club and a spell at Exeter, he was forced to retire from the game aged 24 due to a back injury.
His journey after a heartbreaking retirement took him from feeling lost in life post-early retirement to now being a doctor in football research at UCFB. Tonge’s latest book ‘From Red to Read: The Story of Fergie’s First Fledgling’ sheds light on his career, struggle and journey to where he is now.
He tells FotMob that times after his retirement were incredibly hard and he goes on to emphasise on how football forgets quickly and that everyone is replaceable.
“I felt a lot of stress and anxiety, a lot of uncertainty about where I was going to go next. Unfortunately, football forgets you very quickly. I think for a time while coming away from Man United, I’ll probably say I found it really really tough.
“I just didn’t know what to do and where to go next. There were no agents back then to support you, so everything had to be done through myself and I had to contact football managers at different league level clubs to try and get trials sorted out and things like that. So the emotions I went through were quite turbulent.”
Heartbreakingly enough, no one at United got in touch with him after his career came to a stuttering halt. Tonge doesn’t attempt to repaint history through his perception, but simply suggests that things aren’t always bright and rosy in the game. No one apart from former Exeter teammate Eamonn Dolan reached out to Tonge during those difficult days.
“Eric Harrison used to have a phrase that you don’t have anything such as ‘’friends’ in football, there are only contemporaries. People are busy getting on with their lives and making their careers. Unfortunately, if you’re leaving a football club, you’re quickly forgotten. Sometimes, it can be a case of out of sight, out of mind.
“Not really a lot of people got in touch with me to know about how I was doing, had an ex-professional player at Exeter called Eamonn Dolan, who sadly is no longer with us, gave us coaching hours and was one of the very few people who supported me when I was came away from football and I’ll never forget that. Eamonn will always hold a small part of my heart for giving me that opportunity.”
Tonge mentions that he felt a lack of purpose once he was forced to give up on the game and the lack of a structure to help players like himself meant that he often worked at a warehouse and even drove a delivery van.
For him, it was the loss of an identity that he had built for himself since he was quite young. And almost overnight, that identity broke. Tonge lost so much of his life in a blink of an eye and recovering from it and making peace with what had happened took a long time.
“It was a lack of purpose. It had been a big thing in my life for a long time. Playing football, training, being around people, playing in the first team at Exeter City and all of a sudden, almost overnight, it was gone and lost. I had nowhere to go in the morning, nowhere to go training. Nobody to be around. So that sense of loss is exacerbated in relation to that.”
It took a while for Tonge to make peace with a new life but he has now. Growing up, he admits that he was a competent cricketer and good at athletics and while his family were die hard Man United fans, Tonge also had a keen sense for education and all of it helped him on the way, despite the darkness.
In a way, he was probably destined to follow the sports education path as it is a culmination of his own life.
“Coming away from football and getting a full time role somewhere proved to be troublesome. To put it frankly, I was a fairly bright lad and I did well at my GCSEs when I was at school and it took me a good few years to think about what I wanted to do. Eventually, I decided to re-engage with my education and pick up a degree and then I did a teacher training qualification and picked up a masters’ degree which ultimately led to me getting a PhD a little bit later down the line.”
Tonge’s learnings from his own career have played a role in shaping his profession now. His research interests range from players’ care, aftercare, support, the challenges they face when transitioning away from their careers, loan deals and dealing with managers and coaches.
“All that can provide challenges to your mental health, that’s what I was interested in. I wrote a couple of book chapters around that, obviously I’ve penned my book now From Red to Read, which hopefully shapes and gives some knowledge about the challenges that footballers go through in their journey and especially when they have to come away from the game and in relation to that, education pathways.”
More than anything, Tonge’s background and current expertise makes him a perfect person to speak about the growing demands on players in the sport and how identities are formed for players from a very young age.
He believes that some of the treatment meted out to the likes Marcus Rashford recently and Harry Maguire in the past was unfair and sadly enough, it is something which reflects the state of the modern-day footballing culture. It is, he believes, a snowballing effect.
“I think sometimes some of the treatment by different media streams and especially pundits is unfair. Rashford has been vilified over the last period. Harry Maguire, there was a period when, many people in the media were quick to jump on his back and that leads to a pile on. Supporters and fans get involved. The media treats players in not the best way and that can definitely impact and affect your confidence. What is quite interesting is that you can have 99 people saying you’ve done really well but the one person who criticises you is the one that bothers you the most.”
That isn’t the only thing that Tonge isn’t a fan of in the game. Not all academy players make it to the top of the professional game and Tonge believes that signing days in the English game tend to enforce an identity onto players. That happens even when there is limited chance of them turning into professionals later in their lives.
“I’m not a big fan of these signing days where you get players of nine or ten with a club tracksuit on sit at the table with their parents signing contracts with the academy managers and they have the club shirts behind them. I’m not a great fan of that.”
“We have to be careful about not giving wrong messages to players here. I don’t want to take anyone’s dream away from them but nine or ten-year-olds to get to the first team is a hell of a long journey and the data is quite damning. The data tells us that not a lot of the players are going to make that journey.”
Tonge states that signing days should be done at the age of 16, when players are offered professional contracts and that there is a greater chance of them playing professionally and staying in it throughout their careers.
“Anything from nine to 16 should be kept really quiet and private and confidential. If you join a club at 16 full time, then have a signing day with the shirt on and stuff like that. That would be more beneficial for player’s identities and for the challenges about identity and strong athletic identity can bring.”
So much of Tonge’s thought processes tell you that he isn’t just someone who has made peace with the pain of losing a young career, but he has embraced the new life he is living now. More than that, he doesn’t want any other young player to face the same fate that he did and he is putting his everything in that. That separates him from the rest and is a lesson that even though football can be equally dark as it is enthralling, there is always a way around disappointment.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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