Tevez, Fabregas & Nasri might be unhappy where they are, but 700 players no longer have a club as pre-season begins

Tevez, Fabregas & Nasri might be unhappy where they are, but 700 players no longer have a club as pre-season begins
England may be the land of milk and honey for the elite players but life as a footballer is not all it's cracked up to be for many professionals who are without a contract

But they should spare a thought for the hundreds of fellow professionals who are facing up to pre-season without a team to play for.

According to players’ union the Professional Footballers Association (PFA), some 700 footballers are currently out of work as preparations for the new season begin in earnest up and down the country.

It's a list that includes trophy-laden footballers such as Patrick Vieira all the way down to trainees who have not been able to turn that experience into a professional contract.

Owen Hargreaves has even launched his own YouTube channel to prove his fitness in a bid to find a new club following his release from Manchester United.

The economic downturn that has seen unemployment escalate among the general population has also hit the world of football hard and many high-profile footballers are now bracing themselves for a life outside the game while many teenagers have had their dreams destroyed as football clubs tighten the purse strings.

PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor puts into perspective the difference between football’s haves and have-nots with new Uefa and economic conditions biting players hard.

“Football cannot be immune to what is happening in the outside world, but sometimes you might think that bearing in mind some of the transfer fees that are being paid for top players,” Taylor told Goal.com.

“The very top players are millionaires nowadays but that is not the case even when it comes to those players spread throughout the Premier League and in all the divisions of the Football League or the Conference. Nobody is complaining but it is nothing more than a fair wage lower down with a view to trying to reach the top - of course, not all of them do.

“There are currently 700 members, including 200 apprentices who won’t be signing on full-time for their clubs, who are now out of work and looking for new and I will be interested to see what sort of efforts clubs make to recruit a number of them.

“There has been a lot of transfer talk but not a great deal of money changing hands and some of the bigger, richer clubs are also bearing in mind the Uefa financial fair play rules which mean they are having to focus on that as well, which is a factor.”

The out-of-work footballer is not a new phenomenon – and some are voluntarily out of contract as they seek lucrative new deals - but football seems to re-aligning itself to cope with the more austere times.