Combining full-time professional football with accountancy

In late April at Ashton Gate Stadium, Emily Syme was singing Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten into a microphone as streamers swirled in the air and champagne was sprayed into a throng of footballers.

It was moments before Bristol City Women returned to the top tier of English women’s football after beating Charlton Athletic 4-0. Following their sensational win, City will now face the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal next season.

Two days later and after the confetti settled, Emily was back in the office, having swapped her Robins football kit for office wear.

“I’ve always wanted to do both and had the desire to keep both ticking along aside one another,” the midfielder told Bristol24/7 in a Zoom call from Albert Goodman’s office where she works three days a week as a trainee accountant.

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She added: “Every hour of every day is planned and assigned to doing something which can be a lot sometimes – but it’s something that I’ve always had to balance.”

“It does make me laugh because the office a lot of the time is how you kind of expect it to be: very stable, very polite. Largely just get your head down and work.

“And then I go in to football, sometimes in the same day, and everyone’s shouting and the music is blaring. It’s chaos.

“But I really enjoy combining both things as football is a very sociable team sport, where you meet so many different people, while accountancy is more of a mellow environment.”

Emily signed her first professional contract with Yeovil Town in 2018 before joining Aston Villa in 2019 – photo: Fever Pitch

Despite the Women’s Super League (WSL) being a fully-professional league since 2018 and City a pro team, Emily has the unusual distinction of opting to continue her mathematical studies while juggling being a full-time, professional footballer. For the 22-year-old, it is a way of future-proofing her career.

Emily said: “I think having football and the maths combined provides a massive foundation for doing most things in life that I want to do.

“I want to go after football and see how far I can get with it really after such a great season.

“But ultimately, football is only going to last a certain amount of time so getting that educational foundation and then seeing how far football can take me is the best option.

“I think I could go anywhere with them.”

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A small group of top players in the national team, the Lionesses, have become household names and make substantial sums of money. But for the rest of the women’s professional game, it’s a different story.

In fact, players in the WSL earn as little as £20,000 a year and top-paid players are making 50 times less than their male counterparts, the Telegraph reported in March 2022.

On how to address this in the future of the women’s game, Emily said: “The next stage is to try to get participation up in terms of attendance at games and people interacting with the sport.

“If it’s treated as a business, more income will be poured into the game and there’ll be more sponsorship opportunities and people invested in women’s sport as a whole.

“Probably all women’s teams rely on the men’s side of football to financially support them, so the next stage of the women’s game is for it to be able to stand as its own entity and support itself.”

Growing up playing in a local boys team in Taunton, Emily Syme never thought that professional football could be a career option for her.

“I just played for the enjoyment factor, really,” she said. “It was only when I finished college and then went into my first WSL professional season, that I thought I actually really enjoyed this.”

“I then decided at the end of that year to pursue more academic routes, just because I felt that was the best option in terms of my future career.

“It’s only in the last few years that I’ve really thought this could really be something of substance that I can continue the rest of my life with.

“It was never like a massive dream growing up, which I think potentially is contradictory to what a lot of people say.

“When I was younger, football was not a standalone profession that you could do kind of like your job.

“Even in the last five, six years, it’s become a real option for young girls playing football.

“But for me, it never was a reality until more recently, with all the growth in the women’s game elevated by the Euros win.”

Looking to the future, Emily hopes to finish her Maths degree from Loughborough University and continue playing for Bristol City.

Main photo: JMP

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