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“It might sound silly to you and I but actually, but if that’s the difference of making a good first impression or not, then it’s important.”
The industry of player care within sport has long been a neglected one, often overlooked and understated in its value. In the past and in more testosterone fuelled environments, where you were expected to look after you and only you, understanding the impact it can have in relation to sporting performance was still in its infancy. However, times are changing and the role of a player liaison officer is growing in stature.
Hugo Scheckter, Southampton’s former player liaison officer and one of the first to be given an official title at a football club, knows better than anyone the benefits of proper player care. Scheckter now wants to continue changing perceptions.
“If a request is important to a player, it should be important to me,” says Scheckter speaking to Prost International. “Just because it might sound silly to me, it may be the difference of them feeling settled and comfortable. I’ve been asked for advice and requested to help when some have met their mother in laws for the first time and they need this very specific thing.
“There have been requests where I have thought ‘that’s a bit odd’ but it’s not about judgement it’s about support. But if it is really genuinely stupid, I will probably tell them that!”
Having now spent over a decade in the industry, Scheckter has had to contend with burglaries, family health issues and player’s setting off their fire alarms. For a new signing joining from a different country, understanding the finer details of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, or paying council tax, can sometimes be tricky. All of which means Scheckter is on call 24 hours a day and never off duty.
Photo: Southampton FC
The actual job of a player care department or a player liaison officer can be difficult to work out for your typical football supporter. Many, even, might not be aware that they exist. Yet, away from the glitz and the glamour of high end professional football and the rollercoaster of a Premier League weekend, they are arguably one of the key, most integral, figures at a club.
The role of a player liaison officer is still somewhat nebulous. It is an all-encompassing job but one that doesn’t actually have a distinct set of tasks to carry out each day. Perhaps that goes a fair way in explaining why the role had been around for decades, but only in an unofficial capacity. At Aston Villa in 2002, Lorna McLellan was the first individual to be given the official title of a player liaison, rather than be merely viewed as a staff member that just helped out.
19 years on, football clubs are taking the role more seriously than ever before. Player care departments are being created, welfare and wellbeing officers are being established and students are now going to university wanting to be player liaisons.
So, it leads us all to the most glaring question; what exactly is a player liaison officer?
“It’s quite wide-ranging and there’s a lot of different clubs who have different structures and responsibilities,” says Scheckter. “I pretty much see it as covering anything that isn’t football or medical around the first team. It could be player relocation, getting them to do their commercial, marketing, foundation appearances, helping out with first team travel, team communications.
“It’s also about helping players to make sure they are in the right place at the right time. Ensuring their wellbeing is looked after, whether that is family support or other things that are similarly intertwined. Some clubs now have travel departments who do all the away games and then player care who don’t travel. Some have player liaisons, who organise it all and travel with the team. That is similar to what I followed.”
Scheckter first joined Southampton as an intern, while at university. His role involved working with the club’s under-18 squad, before finishing his degree in America. “I then went to work for a club in the States. I was speaking to Les Reed about my career and he said ‘well, we potentially have this job as a player liaison. Would you like to give it a go?’”
In 2014 and at the age of 23, Scheckter returned to Southampton and happened to coincide with the club’s whirlwind rise up the Premier League table. Given the relatively young age of Scheckter and the highly-talented, highly-experienced players he would have to work with, forging a mutual respect with those in the dressing room may have been expected to cause tension in years gone by.
“When I first started at Saints I was younger than most of the players so then that was interesting as well, because I was working with the players potentially ten years older than me. Gaining their respect and making sure they treated me equally, which they did.”
To make things potentially more daunting for Scheckter, the manager would be one of the most illustrious players of his generation.
Photo: Southampton FC/Training Ground Guru
“Ronald (Koeman) was my first manager and that was quite a shock because I came from the American second division to the Premier league and managed by one of the greatest players. I was pretty green and his presence was just fantastic. You could be a non-football person and walk into a room and just know he was in charge because of his aura and the way he carried himself around. I learned a hell of a lot from him and remain extremely grateful.
“He wanted that support (from me) and he, along with Les (Reed) identified that need of something to help with the support of players. Ronald was a really big driving force and I became part of his inner circle which I was really grateful for. Being this young kid out of uni and a year later I was part of that inner circle.
“At the time I didn’t realise take into account how impressive it was for Southampton to be fifth, sixth, seventh every year. I was just like ‘yeah, of course we will be there.’ Now you’re looking and seeing those days feel quite a long time away.”
The role of a player liaison officer has long been given vague descriptions from those looking in. One of the main reasons as to why, Scheckter concurs, is the ever increasing scope of the job. Every day is different and that alone comes with its challenges.
“There wasn’t really a normal day,” laughs Scheckter. “I’d arrive a couple of hours before the players, just to get my day organised. I would then be at breakfast with the team, checking in and saying hello to everyone every morning and then seeing what’s going on with them all individually.
“I got on with the work when they used to go out to train. That was a quiet time as the players couldn’t be on their phones because they were out training. It was the one time in a day where they can’t actually contact you. Then at lunch, I would give some an update, perhaps take someone to their player appearance if that’s what they are scheduled for.
“At Southampton I used to travel with the team so I would do every home and away game. This usually meant I would be sorting out tickets for games for player’s friends and families and making sure we had everything arranged for the weekend.”
The omnipresent nature of the role meant Scheckter would have to deal with a large number of people and players, all with different personalities and varying character traits.
“Some players want to have a laugh and a joke. Some want the talk to be very direct. Naturally, you can recognise who wants you to be forceful with them. Others, you can let them lead it. I always say you need to have an approach for every single player and knowing what’s important to them.
“It might be a chat about their family or the new baby, if that’s what they want to talk about. Even conversations about their dog or their car. For some, it could be that they even want to talk about politics. So trying to find that niche for every person helps when deciding on your mannerisms for each player.”
Photo: Southampton FC
Scheckter worked closely with not just the players or the coaching staff but families, too. After leaving Southampton to join West Ham in 2018, Scheckter created a 30 page welcome pack for prospective signings. This would include individual photos of each member of staff, a list of approved suppliers such as food caterers for children’s birthday parties. Notes from local school’s headteachers, language lessons and places to park were also comprised.
“I always tried to identify who that number one person is in each player’s life,” says Scheckter. “It’s often their partners but it could be their mum, dad, brother or friend. I tried to make sure whoever it was, they were part of the journey as well.
“At Saints we had a partners’ box, where mostly wives and girlfriends could go and watch the game. We tried to make a little community with them. We had a WhatsApp group for them, to be able to talk to each other, we had family events we put on.
“Events could be something to do with the player’s kids or just the partners themselves. I remember we used to do a drinks night or have some little fun competitions. We would try and mix it up because some players were single. Some players had girlfriends with no kids and others had a couple of them. So it was all about trying to make sure we organised different events for everyone to enjoy.
“At West Ham before COVID, we got pretty close to organising a trip to the zoo, which we were going to put on and take everyone out there on a day off. We were going to let the kids play and get to know each other.”
When asked what his biggest learning curve had been, particularly in a job that had so few senior figures above him of whom he could heed advice, Scheckter says the value of ensuring the happiness of a player’s family is essential.
“There were times where I probably got that wrong, especially at the beginning of my career where it was more about taking care of the players. But if that number one person is not happy, not settled or not enjoying it, it’s unlikely it is going to work for that player long term at Southampton.”
Last year, Scheckter spoke about one particular learning curve. “I had a player at Southampton that I think I got wrong — I’ve said that to the player. He was a foreign player, his English wasn’t very good but he was quite young, happy-go-lucky, wasn’t really playing but every time I spoke to him he was, ‘Yeah, good, good, good’. He was hanging out at the training ground, spending time there, and I never thought about his wife.
“His wife didn’t drive, she was stuck in the apartment, she didn’t understand English, we didn’t have Spanish TV sorted for her, she had no friends, no one to speak to in a small south-coast city.
“She got so unhappy that she’s refused to stay there. That’s why the player was staying late at the training ground because he’d get home and she would be so wound up by just being locked in all day effectively that she’d explode at him. The club lost out probably on a decent transfer fee because the player was so insistent on leaving.”
Spending most hours of the day with a group of footballers and learning about the more intimate details of their own life can lend itself to builiding close relationships. For Scheckter, one relationship that supporters may be aware of is his with Maya Yoshida. The former Southampton defender was often pictured with Scheckter on the club’s various social media platforms.
“The one with Maya is a funny one,” smiles Scheckter over Zoom. “Maya is such a warm and lovely person. I was stood by the tunnel once before one game and he asked me for a photo as if he was a fan. He then scored and we won the game so it then became a lucky tradition. Before every game Maya had to have a photo with me so there was just a plethora of Maya and Hugo photos.
“We never really spoke about the tradition but it was just like before every game he said ‘we need to get a photo Hugo’ and that’s why there are so many photos of us together because it happened before every game for a year and a half!”
As performances on the pitch continued to go from strength to strength, change was always afoot at Staplewood. The team’s best players would begin to be circled and approached by the league’s bigger clubs. It led to Scheckter having to deal with players who were looking for a way out.
“I think when you are on the inside of it you see it differently to when you are looking from the outside. It was a bit of a blow to lose your best players every year but we seem to replace them so it worked itself out.
“At the end of the day, you are all there to win and most of them are friendly with each other, but most players are not friends. You do get some who have really good relationships but it’s not a blood brothers for life kind of thing.
“Football is such a small world that I know a lot of people from a lot of different clubs and you see them in the changing rooms or in the tunnel before a game with all the ‘hello, mate how you doing? How’s the family? See you next year’ and that is essentially the stent of their relationship.
“Footballers often know and respect each other but it’s not about ‘you’re a piece of shit for moving’, they are all there to win games and I don’t think I’ve seen any player sack it off completely or cause arguments. A lot of what happened at Southampton swirls around outside and often inside there is a lot of focus. No one inside the club begrudged a player going from a team like Southampton to a Champions League now winning team (Liverpool) because a lot of them would quite like the same move as well.”
After leaving West Ham in December last year, Scheckter decided to set-up a business called the Player Care group, a consulting and education platform for clubs wanting to improve their player welfare or for those aiming to get into the industry.
“A lot of other player liaisons were asking me for advice and it got to the point where I just felt there was a business in this somewhere. I left in December just before West Ham-Saints, which is a fixture I always loved.
“Coincidentally, West Ham won every single one. I spoke to one of the Saints players and he said ‘the Scheckter derby is one we always dislike’ because Saints would always be coming into the game in great form and West Ham were bumbling along and always West Ham would win!
“It was always friendly banter but it was nice to get one over Saints although I obviously left with a lot of good memories and absolutely love the club. But it was nice to see some of the Southampton players like “oh my god, why am I seeing you everywhere?’”
Scheckter says more needs to be done to evolve the industry but hopes the Player Care group can accelerate the rate of progression. “Football has medical consultants, scouting consultants and every area of the game covered so why not player care now?”
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