Sport is no longer just sport: the sector attracts all kinds of professional profiles

Professional sport is no longer just matches and championships.

It is legal advice.

It is medicine and health.

It is technological development.

It is innovation.

It's statistics.

It is organization and management.

It's marketing.

For many years the sports industry, which in Spain contributes 3.3% of GDP and generates 400,000 jobs, has become a huge world in which all kinds of professional profiles have a place.

Among them, legal experts, psychologists, engineers and mathematicians, publicists, data scientists, sports directors, physiotherapists, or nutritionists.

In addition to being huge, it is a changing world.

To gain a foothold in it, professionals agree, you must never stop studying or learning.

Pablo García, 48, comes from a family in which sport runs through his veins.

His grandfather, Santiago García, was head of sports for

for four decades.

And his father, Santi García, was the Reus Deportiu roller hockey goalkeeper when the team won six consecutive European Cups.

Garcia, in his case, played basketball until he was 21, when he realized he couldn't make it professional.

"But the sports bug has always been there," he acknowledges.

And his career proves it.

Specialized in Corporate and Commercial Law and in Sports Law, in 2007 he completed a master's degree in Management of Sports Entities.

He has been practicing for more than 25 years and has managed to merge his passion for sports with the law.

More information

These are the professional opportunities that sport offers you

“I have held CEO roles at sports technology and

companies such as Sports Revolution and MBUZZ Technologies, helping them transact sports properties in Europe,” Garcia explains.

He now has a consulting firm, Sportthink, which is dedicated to advising companies in the sports and entertainment industry in search of assets, as well as capital partners who want to invest.

“Getting here is a long road.

It is chopping a lot of stone.

In a very competitive world.

It takes patience, dedication, passion, optimism, and stamina.

And a lot of resilience.

You have to work and study a lot, because the legislation is very changing and each process is a world to which you have to adapt.

Above all, you have to like the sport and understand it”, he concludes.

Pablo Peña, from the company StatsBomb, in BilbaoFernando Domingo-Aldama

Pablo Peña, 28, has been dedicated to football all his life.

He left everything, including the degree in Sports Sciences, for football.

“I started working professionally in this sport, full-time and with a salary that gave me a living, in 2013. At the Arenas de Getxo, a club in Vizcaya.

I was responsible for recruitment, that is, I was in charge of the signings and coordinated the scouts.

Then I worked for a year and a half at Barnsley Football Club in England as a scout."

It was there that Peña met StatsBomb, the leading company in advanced data and soccer analysis in which he now works, for just over three years.

Before being appointed the company's director of tactical analysis, innovation and business development, he worked as a consultant with clubs in Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic.

Now Peña continues to dedicate himself to football, but in a different way: “Basically, at StatsBomb we collect what happens in the matches, and then sell that data to teams, which use it to analyze their rivals, look for new players or prepare reports. of return, as well as mutual funds, which want to know where to invest their money”.

StatsBomb, which has become a reference in the field of

football

Here we go.https://t.co/0nuJi5uWWP#UCL |

#RMACHE pic.twitter.com/1Pfg1H6Ov3

— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) April 12, 2022

Peña has not done badly.

However, he does not recommend following in his footsteps: “I would advise not to focus solely on football.

That closes a lot of doors for you.”

In this sense, he assures that the most sought after profiles in a company like StatsBomb are engineers, mathematicians, programmers and data scientists, that is, professionals with an

important technical

"Let them know about data science and artificial intelligence, about metrics, about creating applications and web platforms," ​​he details.

Teresa Álvarez, sports psychologist, in the Carmen Tagle park in Madrid.

Teresa Álvarez, like García y Peña, is passionate about sports.

She was a volleyball player in the division of honor and in the national team, coach of base teams and now an

athlete .

She is currently 56 years old and helps athletes improve her mental preparation.

“As an athlete I found myself blocked and, despite having the best trainers, I always missed mental training.

That's why I studied Sports Psychology.

And it is in the practice of

, together with my training in psychology and education, where I have found a way to prepare the mind in sport”, explains Álvarez.

“The blocks that I found myself and those that I work with now are 'I'm not focused and nobody has prepared me to know how to recover that concentration', or 'I'm afraid of failing and nobody has trained me to know how to do that. fear, which is normal, does not influence my performance', among many others”, he specifies.

For Álvarez, if you want to be a sports psychologist, it is important to know the world of sports from within, as an athlete.

And he concludes: “What is the difference between two athletes whose level of physical, technical and tactical preparation is similar?

Your mental preparation.

Enrique García-Torralba, 49, is also a born athlete.

He likes, above all, running, boxing and doing

.

In addition, he works as a physical therapist in the center he directs, specializing in recovery and injury prevention.

She studied Physiotherapy, and as soon as she finished her degree she started working.

On the one hand, in a private consultation.

On the other, with the National Triathlon team at the High Performance Center in Madrid.

In addition, she has collaborated with countless athletes and clubs, dance, rhythmic gymnastics, athletics, martial arts and soccer.

“Then I left everything to focus on my own clinic.

And piecework.

Patient after patient.

Not only athletes come, grandmothers and grandfathers also come, and people who have never played sports.

They think that a physical therapist specialized in sports will be more effective”.

Like the rest of the professionals consulted, García-Torralba recommends never stopping studying, investigating.

You can follow EL PAÍS EDUCACIÓN on

.

50% off

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber