We miss football for the thrills.. and the jobs it creates

IT’S only been a week – but already it is hitting home how much we miss football. Not just players, coaching staff and managers – the cast of thousands whose livelihoods depend on income from the game. Think about your matchday experience and the people from all walks of life who fuel the economy runs into a cast of hundreds. Think about how many jobs are created on the back of football. Can you list all the professions working to make the game happen? There must be at least 1,000 people employed beyond players and coaches for each Premier League game. Groundsmen, match officials, caterers, car park attendants, police, medics, first aiders, stewards, commentators, pundits, print media, cleaners, TV production crews, electricians, ticket office staff, programme sellers and food stall holders.

Many of us come into contact with these people every Saturday and it shows why football has become a huge industry in Britain – much bigger than the game itself.

Further afield, think of the trade that pubs, cafes, hotels, train and coach companies generate. And whether your ‘fix’ is in the Premier League, the EFL or further down the pyramid, football contributes massively to the mental health of the nation. When your team wins, it puts a spring in your step for the whole weekend – studies back that up.

In 2010, the Mental Health Foundation said of people suffering from depression: “Comparative studies have shown that exercise can be as effective as medication or psychotherapy.”

Going to a match releases natural chemicals into the body like adrenaline, which relieves stress. Everyone involved in the game benefits and the sooner we are all back out on the parks, school pitches and the stadiums of dreams, the better it will be for our health. And with the NHS stretched to the limit by a pandemic, anything that reduces the demands on our medical profession has to be a positive. The FA believes 11 million people play football in the UK in one form or another and as many again watch it live or on TV. Around 2.1m of us play at least twice a month, with 44.7 per cent of 11 to 15-year-olds playing on a monthly basis. Globally, four per cent of the world’s entire population play football. In 2017, the average attendance at Premier League games was 35,800 and one study in 2016-17 showed the Premier League was worth £3.3billion to the economy in tax alone, supporting 100,000 jobs. And the game creates work in construction. When Liverpool and Crystal Palace build new stands, Everton create a new stadium and Luton begin work on a new ground, it will bring employment to an army of workers in hard hats. So we miss football, big time. Why? As a wise man once said: You can see football from the foot of a mountain or from the top looking down.