LaLiga Players Head To U.S. On College Sports Scholarships

July 4, 2019

Members of the 2019 LaLiga ProPlayer scholarship are heading off to attend universities in the United States, where they will continue their football careers while combining it with their university education.

The 24 players who are participating in this first season of the LaLiga ProPlayer programme attended a farewell ceremony yesterday at the LaLiga headquarters, as well as a training session where representatives of AGM (a company which manages U.S. sports scholarships) explained what day-to-day life is like as a football player in the United States and how professional football operates in the country.

In this first edition of LaLiga ProPlayer a total of almost $3.5 million has been obtained in sports scholarships, which means an average of $145,000 for each of the 24 players, who will mostly study in the U.S. during the next four years.

Those players who have already started their studies in Spain will complete them in three years thanks to the support.

LaLiga President Javier Tebas, and Felipe Martín, Marketing Director & Head of Sponsorship & Social Media at Santander Spain, attended the ceremony to personally bid farewell to the 24 LaLiga ProPlayer players.

“There was still one issue we were yet to deal with in football: the education of our players and their future after their professional careers are over. Education is freedom and programmes such as this provide players with the necessary tools to choose and dictate their own future,” said Tebas.

“We’re proud to back projects such as this which bring together our two passions: education and sport. We provide more support for higher education than any other company in the world, having invested €1.7 billion since 2002. Sport is also a great way of transforming society in both economic and human terms,” added Martín.

The objective of the programme, led and promoted by LaLiga, is to offer younger players from LaLiga Santander and LaLiga 1|2|3 clubs (one per club) the chance to take advantage of their potential sporting talent in order to obtain scholarships at American universities, where they can combine their academic studies with their football development.

The programme targets players between 16 and 22 years of age, from LaLiga Santander and LaLiga 1|2|3 clubs. The involvement of the LaLiga clubs and those in charge of their grassroots football has reached its highest point with this project, and clubs are aware of the difficulty of becoming a professional first-team squad player and the need to actively support the academic training of younger players.

Thanks to LaLiga ProPlayer, players will receive personalised consulting before, during and after, while obtaining the sports scholarships at the main universities in the United States. The programme will also assist the students with SAT and TOEFL language preparation courses.