Your Career Isn’t Always a Beautiful Game...

When I started my career, as I’m sure many people do, I imagined a straightforward path in front of me. A clear step-by-step road, to becoming successful, whilst I continued climbing the rungs of the ladder. The process seemed simple. Work hard, and get promoted. Eat, sleep and repeat.

What has transpired instead of a ladder, is more of a game of the proverbial snakes and ladders board game. Or something akin to a Lewis Carroll story, when Alice is faced and chooses a door to go through to face whatever is the unknown on the other side. It may take her back; it may progress her forward. Two things remain a constant though, choosing with your gut is a given, and there’s no point going backward.

The more people I speak to day to day, the more I realize how little that straightforward trajectory exists. Doors led to all kinds of places. Toxic work environments, bad leaders, and false promises for example. Sometimes you just make a mistake and fail at that opportunity, you can overreach, or take a job not “ready” for at that point in your career. Lightening-paced career trajectories can fall off a cliff in just as rapid time as the rise, on the flip side, reinvigorated redundant, or laid-off workers can rise from the ashes and rebuild their careers, or take a new promising direction.

A fascinating example of this happening in real-time is in the world of football.

Now, a disclaimer. Before anyone starts throwing toilet rolls, setting off flares, or start catcalling or booing my name, this blog is completely neutral with regards to supporting any bias to any team. Anything said from here on in, is based on a quick google search and my own observations. Not that the entire city of Liverpool will read this blog, but I feel like I need to say it anyway.

Two recent major events in world football sparked this thought wave, and at opposite ends of the spectrum. Karim Benzema won the greatest individual award in football, the Ballon d’Or, and in that same week, Steven Gerrard was sacked as Aston Villa manager. These might be just words on a page to some, and to understand the whole picture we need to travel back in time to 2005, to illustrate the context.

Steven Gerrard – The Fall from Grace.

Liverpool was in the Champions League final against AC Milan with Gerrard leading the team as captain. He had picked up the armband at the tender age of 23 two years previously, and already had several trophies and winners’ medals under his belt back in the UK. This was different though, the Champions League being the pinnacle of European football excellence and the winning team able to argue their case as the best club team in the world.

Things didn’t start well, and they found themselves trailing 3-0 at halftime. A death sentence delivered in forty-five minutes to most teams at this juncture in a game. It was all but over. However, what followed is widely regarded as the greatest final in football history and Liverpool scored three goals in six minutes. In the second half to draw level and they eventually win on penalties in extra time. Gerrard received the Man of the Match and the UEFA Club Footballer of the Year. As a player he made 863 appearances for his club and country, scoring 211 goals along the way, arguably becoming one of the greatest midfielders to play the modern game.

After their playing career ends, footballers have several choices. Most have enough money to retire at age forty, but there are further options for those that choose to keep working and continue to influence the beautiful game they love. They can travel turn to the managerial route, ideally starting with a smaller club before proving themselves, and making it to the big leagues again with a recognized club team. Or they can become a pundit and be forever doomed to argue with Roy Keane on a sofa for the next part of their lives. Or they can use their fortune to invest in the business, take over the city of Manchester and provide extraneous punditry on the world of politics, (here’s looking at you, Gary Neville!).

Gerrard chose the former and had some good success at Rangers Football Club, leading them to League victory without losing a single league match in the 2020/21 season and resulting in every gift shop in Glasgow stocking “Saint in Liverpool, God in Glasgow” t-shirts, (unless it was situated near postcode of G40).

The next logical step for a successful Scottish Premier League Manager is the English Premier League. Bigger teams, more money, and a chance at the holy grail. To win the Champions League as a player and manager, or the Premier League itself, one thing missing off Gerrard’s player resume. To win the Champions League as a Player/Manager has only been achieved by seven people in history. Gerrard took over Aston Villa in November 2021, but after finishing 14th?in his first season and then two wins from twelve at the start of the 2022/23 season, he was promptly dismissed from his role.

And that was that. After a twenty-year career at the top of his game it all comes crashing down thanks to the relentless pace and the brutal expectations of the football managerial world, and the expectations of supporters, those really invested in the club, a lot from birth.

Karim Benzema – The Phoenix from the Ashes.

Let’s now switch your attention to Karim Benzema, who last month picked up the coveted Ballon D’Or trophy, awarded to the best professional footballer of that year. Forget the holy grail, this is the football equivalent of an Oscar, knighthood and your own national holiday rolled into one. Evidence of legend status in the history books. With Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi winding down their superhuman careers, ‘everyone else’ gets a chance at the award. The bigger boys have left the playground, and everyone else can have a go on the merry-go-round

This rise to legend status has been slow and frustrating for Benzema. Arriving at Lyon as a youngster in 2004, he only managed 12 goals in his first three years and spent most of his time on the bench. He turned up the heat in his final two seasons and earned a move to the prestigious Real Madrid in 2009. A goal drought followed before the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo who completely stole the limelight and the star striker position for nine years. The now famous photo of Ronaldo holding his 5th?Ballon D’Or is circling social media with a blurry Benzema clapping his teammate in the background. A fitting metaphor for his time thus far at the club.

Despite having a run of team success at the club level he was scalded by the French press on a national scale as he struggled on the international stage. After a dreadful Euro 2008 campaign, he was dropped from the world cup squad in 2010 and despite making the team in 2014, was dropped again by the National side in 2016 and 2018 amidst scandal and controversies surrounding his private life. He was all but written off by the media.

Fast forward to 2022. After some redemption in Euro 2020 and the Nations League in 2021, winning the bronze boot for most goals scored he carried that momentum into the season at Real Madrid scoring 44 goals in 46 appearances and driving his team to win La Liga and the Champions League leaving him the favorite to lift the Ballon D’Or. At 34 years of age, it’s statistically one of his last chances at the trophy.

To contextualize my earlier point, different people have different careers, that can take different paths at different points. Your career is like your life, a journey, and a journey is filled sometimes with detracting excursions, and also sometimes potholes till you get to the end.

Some people accumulate success until eventually find themselves redundant, sacked, or forced to retire. Others have a slow burn to victory standing in the shadows of others until they can eventually have their time in the limelight to shine. Alternatively, you might be a Lionel Messi. Operate at peak performance for 20-plus years, scoring an unprecedented 784 goals (a stat that will already be out of date by the time this blog is posted) and bagging 7 Ballon D’Ors. A feat that may never be repeated in many lifetimes to come. We all know Lionel Messi. A CEO, a managing director, or a business owner. Someone who has hit nothing but the net their entire career and has risen to global cult infamy.

It’s important to note that it doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter which one of these examples your own story has some parallels with. The important thing is that you recognize where you are and if your career comes to a crashing halt, it is important to still get back on the saddle, dust yourself off, and carry on. If you have been stuck in the shadows and are still to find your recognition, then just keep doing what you’re good at. It will come. If you have been smashing it out of the park your whole life, then… just enjoy it, I guess.

One of the most rewarding things about working for Global Talent 2020 is the chance to understand what stage people are in their careers and then help them with that next step. Post-pandemic there have been many redundancies, lay-offs, and people switching careers. Many people who had a five-year or ten-year plan have had to completely scrap that and change direction, or track.

One of our core values is that we are human, and that means being empathetic and understanding toward our candidates and clientele. Life might not be as straightforward as we’d all like in terms of our careers, but whether you are a Steven Gerrard and find yourself redundant, a Karim Benzema working in someone’s shadow waiting for your moment, or a Lionel Messi smashing it out the park year after year, there’s always help and support for you to take the next step.