Looking after the needs of a player off the pitch is crucial to their success on it… but too many Scottish clubs don’t have adequate care for foreign arrivals

The scarf is hoisted above his head, the camera clicks and the new recruit starts to grin before he is wheeled into the press room to talk about his hopes and dreams for the future.

In the garden of promise and potential, everything is rosy and the future looks bright.

Once the cameras stop rolling and the microphones are turned off, the harsh, invisible realities of moving to a new country become visible.

For players abroad, there is visa paperwork to sort out and a bank account to open in the UK so they can move out of a hotel and pay for an apartment or a house. To get to that remote training ground outside the city, they need a car and there may be schools to find for the kids.

Tracey Smith has been a lifelong Hibernian supporter and was a non-executive fan representative on the Easter Road board before being asked to help a number of new players settle in.

To show their best form on the pitch, they had to overcome the daily rigours of adapting to life in Edinburgh. Seeing a gap in the market, Smith set up her own player care consultancy to help newcomers across the UK with basic administration.

“Last night I delivered a mattress topper to a player because the mattress in their accommodation isn’t great,” she says. Post Sport.

‘So you make sure they are as comfortable as possible. Because if they don’t sleep well, how can they perform optimally during training and competitions?

And when that happens, the manager starts asking questions and saying, “What’s going on?”

English Premier League and EFL academies must have at least one player care professional. At first-team level, the picture is uneven. While some clubs offer help and support as part of their fees, Smith calculates that only half of clubs in the Scottish Premiership offer full-time player care. Budget constraints are a problem.

Rangers manager Philippe Clement shed light on some of the logistical issues facing players moving to Scotland or England, blaming Brexit paperwork and bureaucracy for a delayed debut for new £1.5million Dutch defender Robin Propper.

A surrogate mother to players thrown in at the deep end, Smith welcomed the Ibrox boss who shed light on issues rarely considered by fans and media. Or, for that matter, clubs.

‘There are still a lot of clubs in Scotland that don’t have player care,’ she adds. ‘If they’re paying so much money for players, why wouldn’t they look after them?

‘From the feedback I’ve had, I’d say maybe half the clubs in the Scottish Premiership are doing what they can. Others will be bringing in a lot of staff to help players alongside their day jobs. It’s an area that needs some work and attention.

‘What they need to remember is that players are the biggest assets that football clubs have. It is very important because it also affects the performance on the pitch.

‘If they can do it well for the players off the field, it becomes easier to actually get them to play with it.

‘All the Premier League clubs in the south have player care because they can easily afford it.

‘At the SPFL it’s about whether there’s money for an extra person, because it’s a full-time job.’

The Player Care Group, based in England, is a leader in this field, providing training and certification that is recognised by football clubs on both sides of the border. Far from the glitz and frenzy of Sky Sports deadline day bulletins, there are real, hard business matters to be dealt with. Signing the contract is just the start.

Before setting up on her own in January, Smith was a full-time player care coordinator at Hibs, working with first-team players, academy prospects and women’s teams.

‘Today I organise British bank accounts for players so they can get their salaries, get an apartment, buy a car,’ she continues. ‘People don’t see those things when a player has a scarf over their head, but it all has a knock-on effect on how they settle and when they play.

‘As fans, we look at footballers based on their performance on the field and judge them based on that.

“People put them on a pedestal and think that everything is OK because some people get a lot of money. The reality is that they are just normal people. I worked at Hibs and helped two Lithuanians, Deivydas Matulevicius and Vykintas Slivka. One of the lads was single, while the other was waiting for his family to arrive.

‘Deivydas just became Dave because no one could pronounce his last name, bless him. And he changed so much when his family arrived. He was transformed.

‘When you sign a player, you sign a family at the same time and you have to make sure that they are taken care of as well. Because if a partner doesn’t settle down, that can have an effect on a player and they can feel like they have to move on.’

While traveling between London and Edinburgh this week, Smith had to familiarize herself with the concept of passport vignettes. These stickers are placed in passports after an application for entry clearance has been successfully completed.

“Visas are the biggest problem,” she explains. “Before Brexit, anyone with an EU passport could cross and there were no problems.

‘Towards the end of a transfer window it gets really busy. You see new players being thrown into a hotel and they don’t really know what’s happening. Sometimes I think there’s an element of “man up” and getting on with it.

‘But for me, what I do is vital for the mental health and wellbeing of the players and for their performance on the pitch.

‘They operate in a high-pressure environment where they are judged by so many people on social media. Nowadays it’s 24/7 and everyone has an opinion.

“I’ve had a few players call me ‘mom’ because that’s what you become to them. You help them with all aspects of their personal lives to become the best player they can be and that starts on the field.

“It’s nice to see a player calm down or lend a listening ear when he’s feeling a bit down and isolated and think, ‘I’ve made a small contribution to helping.’”