The path to elite football seems clear: a young player goes through an intense academy system before being sought out by a professional team or a top university via scholarship.
While this is often the case, this structure was largely exclusive to certain countries in Europe and North America until Gulf United FC emerged onto the scene in the UAE.
Originally founded in 2019 by English football coaches from Manchester, Gulf United’s senior team currently plays in the UAE’s First Division League, the second tier of the country’s football pyramid.
In addition to the senior team and its academy, the Gulf United scholarship division is a UAE-based consultancy that helps student athletes across Asia and Africa obtain athletic scholarships to American and Canadian universities. Last year, the program aimed to send 43 players to North American colleges.
With it being the UAE’s only full-time sports scholarship program, the club emphasises that its goal is to not solely help students play abroad, but to do so according to the needs of the individual.
Jack Shiels, who is the Director of Pathways at Gulf United and doubles as the club’s first team captain, outlined why the scholarship division was established.
“Myself and all the people who started Gulf United are from the UK and in the UK this is a very common industry”, he said.
“There’s probably over a hundred agencies in the UK at the moment and there are obviously a lot of kids who play here in Dubai but no one to provide the opportunities for them.”
While it started reactively for players within Gulf United, its scholarship program then expanded to other UAE-based academies as well as different countries. Some of the nations they currently work in include Saudi Arabia, India and Nigeria with Shiels revealing that the program is shortly due to begin operations in Kuwait.
Even though a full-time career in professional football can sound appealing, Shiels emphasises the importance of the North American collegiate model giving players something to fall back on.
“We say to the parents a lot that this program is not about being a professional player”, he affirmed.
“This program is about giving you enough options to choose from once you graduate from university. So if you are good enough to be a professional, you can go for it.
“But after one year or two years, if you feel like ‘I could probably be doing better overall in my career if I wasn’t being a professional footballer’, then you have that opportunity as well.”
The opportunities that Gulf United’s scholarship program provides may even allow the UAE to cast a wider net when calling up players to its national team.
“The UAE FA is doing a lot now to try and widen that pool which is great for young players”, added Shiels.
“For example, UAE-born players in the league system are now classed as locals which is a massive, game changing factor for a lot of players.”
Shiels also says that its scholarship division endeavours to give more female players opportunities to play football at top universities in the future.
Misha Bhandari, who plays for the U20 UAE women’s national team, was previously part of Gulf United’s scholarship program, and through this was successfully recruited to play football at Eckerd College, an American university in Florida.
Another female recipient was Gayathri Manohar, another UAE U20 team member who, through Gulf United’s network, currently plays for Converse University in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
“We try our hardest to get as many female players as we can”, Shiels said on trying to recruit female talent.
“However, the reality is the demand is not there in the same level as the men’s game. We did send two players from the UAE, one of them was playing for the UAE national team and she went to Eckeryd in Florida and one went to Converse college which is in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
“That is one area we would like to build but the demand is something that is quite restrictive. For example, if you look at the amount of academies here compared to the amount of girls teams, it’s not even close. But that’s something we really hope for in the future.”
It is clear that with Gulf United and the promising young talent in the region, the future of football in the UAE looks brighter than ever.
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