Scott Armistead is an athletic trainer with the Seattle Sounders MLS team, who won the Leagues Cup this year. Photo / Mike Fiechtner, Seattle Sounders
Scott Armistead arrived at a crossroads after his final year of collegiate eligibility at McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois.
The Auckland goalkeeper had been on scholarship at the small school in America’s Midwest, studying towards become an athletic trainer, equivalent to a physio in New Zealand. At the conclusion of his studies, he was left with the choice of either pursuing football further or counting the blessings the sport had given him and focusing on his career.
Armistead had found success between the goalposts. He was part of the New Zealand team for the under-17 World Cup in Mexico in 2011, had hoped to work his way into the OlyWhites squad for the 2016 Olympics, which New Zealand ultimately failed to qualify for, and earned a scholarship to study in the States.
But as he weighed up his options, one thing became clear to him.
“As many do, I did have a glorious dream of making a career out of football and it was right after that Olympic campaign, I came back here and I finished off my last season of eligibility and I was looking at, do I keep on pushing and try to become a professional footballer or do I kind of say, okay, I’ve had a good run at it, now let’s start looking at life beyond football,” he recalls to the Herald.
“No one makes that decision lightly. I’m not going to compare it to guys that are retiring from their playing career. But it’s essentially giving up on something that you’ve worked for since you were 3 or 4 years old, something that you’ve found success in a couple of different ways and you found a niche for yourself and then all of a sudden now you need to make a decision – am I going to keep on pushing and trying or am I going to step away from it and work somewhere else?”
Now, the 31-year-old has forged a career in football – just not in the same way he had imagined when he was young.
Armistead is working as an athletic trainer for Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders and recently hoisted the Leagues Cup – a title contested by top teams from USA and Mexico – after his side beat Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami 3-0 in the final.
“I’ve been fortunate enough that even stepping away from it, I still managed to keep myself in and around the game, and I still managed to keep myself in and around very high-level players and very high-level environments.”
Remaining in football wasn’t necessarily the plan once Armistead had committed himself to his work, though. It was by chance that, while applying for jobs after completing his Bachelor’s degree, he noticed an opening in Casa Grande, Arizona.
It was a place he recognised the name of, though it took a little research before he found it was the same venue he had been to for a pre-World Cup camp with the New Zealand Under-17 squad ahead of the 2011 tournament.
The job being advertised was for a newly established FC Barcelona academy.
Getting the role, Armistead was thrown in the deep end as the programme had “absolutely nothing infrastructure-wise from a medical standpoint”.
“I had to build out all of our inventory, build out all of our stock, any of our return to play progressions or treatment strategies were all kind of built from scratch, so that was definitely my first experience of not only work but work inside of football as well.”
During that time, he got his Master’s degree at Arizona State University – a significantly bigger college experience than that of McKendree University – before taking a job with a lower-league American side, FC Tucson, and quickly being recruited by FC Cincinnati in the MLS.
It was there, working under current Brighton and Hove Albion head of performance Gary Walker, who had previously spent more than a decade with Manchester United, that Armistead grew into his work, learning plenty about different strategies and theories on rehab and performance, and how to operate within a high-performing unit.
But he was also getting the odd runaround on the field, too. At the time, former Manchester United defender Jaap Stam was the team’s manager, and Armistead recalls the Dutchman was big on staff games.
“He would walk through the building, and if you were sitting there he would tell you, ‘get outside, we’re playing in five minutes,’ and if you told him that you had work to do, he would say, ‘you can do that afterwards, come on out.’
“Every game was like it was a Champions League final for him. He was flying in with two-footed tackles, he was elbowing guys, it was pretty intense.”
Armistead moved on from Cincinnati after the side won the Supporters Shield – awarded to the top team throughout the regular season – and he and wife Ellie made the move to Seattle.
Now completing his PhD remotely through Teesside University in Britain, Armistead has become involved in football in a way he might not have thought possible outside of playing.
He says looking at careers in the peripheries of one’s chosen sport is something more budding athletes should keep in the back of their minds, because there are plenty of ways to stay involved if turning professional is out of reach or unsustainable.
“Every sport is growing so much, and with the sport growing, so do all of the roles in and around it ... there’s so many different avenues and it, it doesn’t have to be medical, it doesn’t have to be strength conditioning ... see if there’s something that interests you around the sport that isn’t necessarily one of the 11 players that step on the field on a Saturday,” he says.
“As these sports grow, there’s going to be opportunities, potentially where you don’t even think that there is. If there’s something that is sparking your interest, investigate it a little bit and see if there’s an opportunity and, if there’s not, there’s more than likely a way to make that happen.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.