The glory days of a professional soccer player’s career don’t last very long, but their lives continue.

Most professional soccer players spend their teen years practicing soccer, and only soccer. That is why it is extremely hard for them to find jobs in other fields of work. With no other choice, they get part-time jobs that have no connections to soccer. Losing their goal in life, many have no choice other than to live unstable lives.

The Challenge:

Find a way to make ex-soccer players a new asset, and create a system that will make the best use of them in society.

The Solution:

In Japan, bullying, suicide, school avoidance and other problems are an issue among kids today. Most of them are a result of weakening of the mentality. Professional ex-soccer players, who have lived through many adverse circumstances will become teachers, and teach kids how to build strong mentalities. These classes are not charity work but actual classes introduced to elementary school curriculums across Japan.

The Result:

As of today, 464 ex-soccer players have found new careers as teachers. They have taught over 120,000 school kids. The numbers of schools introducing these classes are growing throughout Japan. This system has also spread among other professional sports.

This project solved the problem in a new way by discovering a new value of professional ex-soccer players giving them a chance to start a new career with full time jobs.

February, 2006. We started a working group to develop the curriculum.

April, 2007. We launched the first class in an elementary school in Tokyo.

It was featured on TV, newspapers and other media, becoming a bigger topic than expected.

Then we spread this project to all parts of Japan through local club teams around the nation. Because soccer is a community-based sport, we signed a mutual agreement with the local communities. Many local communities supported this project financially, and this is what made it possible to spread it nationwide.

We created a package where all of the following was includes: looking for elementary schools that will participate, conducting preliminary inspections and meetings, facilitating the classes and collecting feedback surveys. The content and the curriculum of the lessons were revised based on feedback from the kids, schools, and teachers. This led to higher quality classes and an increase in efficiency.

In the first year we had conducted 247 classes, 686 in FY2008, 792 in FY2009, 877 in FY2010, 766 in FY2011, 837 in FY2012 (as of March 2013) and the numbers continue to increase.

464 retired soccer players became teachers who are fully paid. More than 120,000 kids in more than 1300 schools have takes these classes to build stronger mentality.

We signed mutual agreements with 51 local communities, got financial support from 36 companies and organizations and the numbers are growing.

For FY2013, we already signed mutual agreements with over 100 local authorities and are planning to conduct over 1,500 classes. Also, retired athletes such as baseball players besides soccer players have also joined this project. As of 2012, this project became authorized by the Japan Olympic Committee (JOC) and is aiming to spread even further as an official JOC program in the next five years.