Each day, Manchester United‘s players drive down Birch Road, occasionally stopping for the horses from the Carrington Riding Centre or a cyclist, and turn into the club’s training ground. When the autograph seekers are satisfied and the entry barriers are lifted, they turn in front of the red neon “Manchester United” sign and head toward the first team parking lot behind the main building.

With their sports cars and luxury SUVs locked and their travel bags under their arms, they walk inside.

Once in the area known as the “players’ corridor,” an office behind glass panels is immediately on the left side, with a large desk in the middle and chairs on either side. On the back wall is a large flat-screen TV, and there are telephones and laptops in the room. The door is always open.

But it’s not an office for manager Ruben Amorim, CEO Omar Berrada or director of football Jason Wilcox. Instead, this room is reserved for the player care team. It’s the department that works to ensure each squad member has everything they need off the pitch so they can perform on it.

Player care departments aren’t unique to United. Across the Premier League, clubs are investing more to make sure their players have everything they need to perform at their optimum level. At United’s training ground, these services are front and centre for a reason.

The goal? Players leaving their problems at the door, feeling better and heading into training with a clear mind, ready to focus on football.

What is player care?

If the manager’s job is to oversee what happens at the training ground, it’s the responsibility of the player care department to look after the rest. Anything and everything a player might encounter can land on their desk, most of it not football-related.

“It’s based around the person rather than the player,” player care expert Hugo Scheckter told ESPN. “A very vague way of putting it is that it’s everything that affects a player that’s not football or medical. For three or four hours a day, players are at the training ground. Everything outside of that can be covered by player care.

“It could be personal-developmental stuff, giving them the life skills to improve themselves, welfare stuff like signposting to mental health provisions, or operational things like relocations and problem-solving. We’re trying to be that resource where they can remove the stress away from life to focus on football.”

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Scheckter has worked for Premier League clubs, including West Ham and Brentford, and in 2020, he set up the Player Care Group. He has years of experience helping players find houses, pick schools for their children, tax cars and sort match tickets.

Other times, it means dealing with emergencies such as a car accident or home break-in. Occasionally, the problem is more unusual.

“I had one player who asked me to hunt a bird that was scaring his girlfriend. He wanted it shot, and I had to say, ‘We don’t do that in England,'” Scheckter said.

“My solution was to get an ultrasonic bird that basically scared it away, but his first thought was can we [kill it]? Ultimately, they wanted a problem solved, and I can understand that. The bird was tapping on the window all the time, and his girlfriend was scared of birds. So we got a little £10 thing on Amazon to scare it away.

“It can seem a small thing, but then on the other hand, if he’s awake all night or always getting complaints from his girlfriend, it can affect performance. It sounds silly, but it can be quite important as well.”

‘The canaries in the coal mine’

In the search for marginal gains and a competitive edge, clubs are increasingly taking player care more seriously. Foster and Partners, the London-based architectural firm responsible for the £50m revamp of Manchester United’s Carrington training ground, purposely put the player care office toward the front of the players’ entrance to the building.

It’s a similar story at clubs all over the world.

“The player care team are like the canaries in the coal mine,” one high-level source at a Premier League club told ESPN. “Often, they’re the ones who can spot the first sign of trouble.

“Coaches and medical staff will know everything about a player’s performance, but the player care or player support team know far more about their non-football lives than a manager or coach. And the two things are intertwined. One impacts the other.”

Scheckter adds: “I think it used to be a very reactive service where a player would bring a problem in, and they would try and solve it. Now, I think you’re seeing more and more clubs who are trying to get ahead of those problems, so they don’t even appear at all. Or if they do, that they’re well-managed, and there’s a process in place.”

Investment in player care varies from club to club. Player care teams can range from one or two employees to five or more. Most Premier League clubs have separate departments for their men’s, women’s and academy sides.

Most of the time, however, the department’s effectiveness depends on how seriously it’s taken by the first-team manager and his staff. Some coaches can be quite dismissive of anything that goes on outside the training ground, but others are keen to take a more holistic approach.

“A lot of time, it’s club culture-dependent,” Scheckter said. “I’ve had managers who are not negative towards it, but kind of apathetic. It depends from manager to manager. With some, you just stay out of the way, and with others, you’re really involved at the top table in management meetings every day. That’s really exciting as well.”

There are clear benefits to including the player care team in performance meetings that include other key heads of department.

“You’ve got the nutritionist there, you’ve got the fitness coaches there, you’ve got the coaching staff there, the manager there. And the conversation can be about a player who has lost three kilos in the last month,” Scheckter said.

“I can be like, ‘Oh well, that’s because his girlfriend is away and he doesn’t cook.’ So next time his girlfriend goes away, we need to make sure he’s getting food delivered or we get a chef in, or whatever it is. The nutritionist in isolation might be thinking he’s unwell or he’s skipping meals. It’s good to have that joined-up approach.

“I’ve gone to managers before and said privately, ‘Look, his mother died a year ago on this day, just so you are aware,’ and they’ll go, ‘OK, thank you. That’s why he was off today in training.'”

With football becoming an increasingly global game, there’s pressure on player care teams to help players new to the country settle quickly. It’s not unusual for departments to be in touch with counterparts at rival clubs, especially if they have players of the same nationality.

“If we’ve got a player from Brazil, we might get in touch with another club local to us if they also have a Brazilian player,” one Premier League source said. “It’s in our interest to do that, share intelligence, and help build a wider network for a player’s family to help them feel settled.”

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In many circumstances, the role of the player care team extends beyond the players.

“The partners, especially at the Premier League level, none of them tend to work or very few of them tend to work, and so you have a situation where they’ve just sat around and so trying to provide a purpose for them and a direction for them is really important,” Scheckter said.

“We see it more and more where the player is really happy, but the partner or the family aren’t, and so we’re seeing clubs invest more and more into family programs.

“It can be hard moving to a new country. We’re definitely seeing that as a bigger issue, where players are happy, partners are not, and then that’s leading to a player either wanting to leave or talking about potentially having to leave, which is a disaster for clubs.”

Whether it’s to take on the role of wellness professional or concierge, the job of the player care team is to keep players happy. But that doesn’t mean clubs want to pamper their stars.

“There’s a balance,” one source told ESPN. “We don’t want players who are detached from everyday life. But we also don’t want players worrying about renewing a passport or a dispute with a landlord because that takes up mental space.

“There’s a growing understanding throughout sport that mental well-being is important to performance. We want to take away the burden of the stresses associated with everyday life as much as we can so players can focus on training and matches.”

‘Make sure the athletes are the best they can be’

More often than not, the player care team members work in the background. On other occasions, they’re thrust into the spotlight.

After West Ham failed to win for more than two months, new manager Nuno Espirito Santo revealed that the club’s player care department sourced baby pictures of the players to decorate the dressing room to serve as motivation ahead of Newcastle’s visit to the London Stadium. It worked, and West Ham won 3-1.

“It was a surprise for everybody,” Nuno said afterward. “The player care [team] really do things really nice. They did it in a really nice way, the player care. The players didn’t know.

“It’s nice to see when we are young and had dreams. For us, it is important to go back to that feeling of being young and happy and try to enjoy things.”

Scheckter tells a story about a player he encountered at the start of his career in player care who appeared to be fine on the surface but left at the end of the season because his partner hadn’t settled.

There also have been small wins that can make all the difference.

“There was a player who was consistently late for team meetings and he was an African player, and he got dropped from a game,” Scheckter said. “The manager was basically like, ‘He’s just not professional, he’s not focused.’ So, I went and spoke to him, and he was very upset about it.

“I said to him, ‘Why are you late? He said, ‘Well, where I’m from … we don’t have reliable transport, we don’t have reliable timekeeping devices, and meeting time in my culture and my life has always been a suggestion.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, OK, I appreciate that, but in the UK or in England, if you’re not five minutes early, you’re late.

“And so I said, ‘OK, let’s work with you.’ I would go and knock on his door or go get him before everything he had to be at for a couple of weeks, and after those couple of weeks, then he kind of got it and was on time. It’s about working proactively to solve problems and make sure the athletes are the best they can be.”

In the end, the goal is always the same, whether the issue is timekeeping, staying on top of the pressures of the game, or dealing with a bird that won’t stop tapping on a window.

Borussia Dortmund‘s Karim Adeyemi prefers a move to Arsenal over Manchester United, while Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski is wanted by AC Milan. Join us for the latest transfer news and rumors from around the globe.

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TRENDING RUMORS

– Manchester United are one of the clubs to have discussed Borussia Dortmund forward Karim Adeyemi with Jorge Mendes, TEAMtalk reports, adding that the 23-year-old favors a move to Arsenal over any other interested club. Adeyemi has a contract that runs until 2027 but could leave before then, and the Germany international is open to making a move to the Premier League as he feels he is well suited to the game in England.

– AC Milan want to sign Robert Lewandowski as a free agent when Barcelona striker’s contract expires in the summer, Tuttosport reports. The Rossoneri believe that the Poland international, 37, can further strengthen a winning mentality that coach Massimiliano Allegri and veteran midfielder Luka Modric have helped to develop. The latter has been so influential that Milan have already decided that they want to take up the option of a one-year renewal of the 40-year-old’s contract.

– Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United and Newcastle United are among the clubs actively monitoring the situation of Eintracht Frankfurt left-back Nathaniel Brown, according to TEAMtalk. The 22-year-old signed a long-term contract that runs until 2030, but the deal includes a gentleman’s agreement or release mechanism that could be activated by clubs in certain European competitions. The exact figure is undisclosed but is estimated to be as much as €55 million.

– Roma are eyeing Manchester United’s Joshua Zirkzee to strengthen their attack in January, according to Sky Sports Italia reports. The former Bologna player’s five appearances for the Red Devils this season have all been as a substitute, and he has only scored seven goals for the club since arriving at Old Trafford in the summer of 2024. However, Roma believe the 24-year-old’s Serie A experience can help them in their title bid — they are level on points with leaders Inter Milan after 11 games this season — while The i Paper reports that Everton and West Ham United are also keen.

– Sunderland‘s Granit Xhaka is a prominent name on Juventus‘ list of targets as the Serie A club looks to strengthen their midfield in January, according to Tuttosport. They had already looked to sign the 33-year-old in the summer but the move fell through. The Bianconeri believe that the Switzerland international’s leadership, technical ability, physicality and tactical intelligence could help them. Even so, it is uncertain whether they can agree a deal with the Black Cats with €15m potentially being required.

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OTHER RUMORS

– Napoli continue to look at Kobbie Mainoo with Manchester United only willing to let the midfielder leave on loan. (Calciomercato)

– Chelsea will face competition from Juventus for AC Milan goalkeeper Mike Maignan, whose contract expires at the end of the season. (Football Insider)

– Manchester United winger Jadon Sancho, who is on loan at Aston Villa, has held meaningful discussions with representatives from Fenerbahce, Galatasaray and Besiktas. (Ekrem Konur)

– Borussia Dortmund have joined Manchester United in the race to sign 16-year-old AIK striker Kevin Filling. There is no agreement with any club but he could move in the winter window. (Florian Plettenberg)

– Barcelona have submitted an offer worth between €25m and €30m for Vasco da Gama winger Rayan. (Ekrem Konur)

– Brighton & Hove Albion is one of the Premier League clubs who could try to sign Real Madrid striker Gonzalo García in January. (Daily Mail)

– AC Milan could look to sign a striker in January unless Santiago Giménez and Christopher Nkunku improve, and West Ham United’s Niclas Füllkrug is being evaluated. (Corriere dello Sport)

– AFC Bournemouth are exploring a move for Nordsjaelland midfielder Caleb Yirenkyi, who is valued at £20m and has received interest from other Premier League clubs including Arsenal. (Daily Mail)

– Aston Villa are willing to accept offers for Emiliano Martínez in January and are exploring alternative goalkeeper options. (Football Insider)

– Arsenal are stepping up their interest in twins Edwin and Holger Quintero from Independiente Del Valle. (Daily Mail)

– Leeds United are open to letting Willy Gnonto leave in January if they receive a suitable offer, as they want to make reinforcements of their own. (TEAMtalk)

– Udinese will request €40m for Arthur Atta and don’t want the midfielder to leave during the winter window despite interest from clubs in Serie A and abroad. (Nicolò Schira)

– Tommaso Baldanzi‘s agent has held a positive meeting with Hellas Verona, who have re-opened talks to sign the Roma attacking midfielder on loan with an option to make the deal permanent. (Nicolò Schira)

– The prospect of Luis Henrique leaving Inter Milan in January can’t be ruled out. (Tuttosport)

In a spectacular display of skill and dominance, Pakistan’s star javelin thrower Arshad Nadeem captured the gold medal at the Islamic Solidarity Games 2025 in Riyadh, successfully defending his previous title and reinforcing his status as a national hero.

The competition, held at the renowned Prince Faisal bin Fahd Stadium, highlighted Arshad’s exceptional talent as he outperformed a field of seven athletes, including fellow Pakistani Yasir Sultan, who claimed a well-earned silver medal.

The javelin final quickly became one of the standout events of the Games, with Arshad and Yasir entering as the leading contenders based on their season-best throws.

Arshad, coming off his Olympic gold victory, delivered a remarkable performance, recording a winning throw of 83.05 meters on his second attempt out of six.

This throw not only secured him the gold but also demonstrated his consistency and composure under pressure.

Yasir Sultan, who had previously won bronze at the 2023 Asian Championships, complemented Arshad’s triumph with a silver, giving Pakistan a one-two finish in the event.

Their impressive performances highlighted Pakistan’s growing strength in athletics, particularly in field events like the javelin.

Another Pakistani competitor, Salman Iqbal Butt, also participated but did not reach the podium in this highly competitive final.

The Islamic Solidarity Games 2025, which bring together athletes from Muslim-majority nations, have once again provided a dynamic platform for both emerging talents and established stars to showcase their abilities.

Arshad Nadeem’s gold adds to his illustrious collection, inspiring young athletes across Pakistan and beyond. As the games continue in Riyadh, fans are eagerly anticipating more medals from the Pakistani contingent.

This triumph serves as a testament to the rigorous training and dedication of Pakistan’s track and field athletes, positioning them strongly for future international competitions.