Come join the team!

Being different and distinguishing yourself by competing with others helps orientate people, inside and when dealing with the outside world. Marketing departments also try to show that a company is different by promoting its “unique selling proposition (USP),” to get customers excited about its products and show how they stand out from the competition.

When it comes to soccer, you might initially think that all clubs produce the same “product,” or even that taken together, all the clubs in the Bundesliga produce the same product, namely live matches in stadiums. After all, they are marketed centrally by the league, creating what we can describe as cooperative competition. When it comes to the players though, that is usually where the cooperative thinking ends. Instead, clubs bid against each other, fighting for the best footballers.

Money plays the decisive role in this process, with the rich clubs having the best cards in the competition for talent – I’d rather not call it a war! But if clubs have roughly similar resources, then alongside offering money, softer factors come into play, too. These include the atmosphere in the club, for example, or even the stadium at home games, or the coach and their idea of how the game should work.

There is also the question of the other members of the team. Will I feel comfortable there? What are the prospects for my future development, will I be able to grow there? And will I feel appreciated, even if something goes wrong? Just like companies, soccer clubs should develop a profile and become aware of their DNA. You rarely hear a term like “employer branding” in the world of football, but basically, the Bavarians’ “Mia san mia” or the “Werder family” in Bremen are exactly the same thing!