African footballers’ wives: “Those paid dollars and pounds, their head is not five!”

Abstract

Marrying a footballer may be perceived as exotic, going by the popularity of footballers, but as some studies note, coping with lives of footballers who migrate frequently is challenging. Life as the wife of an itinerant footballer involves frequent relocations. But most of these studies rarely gain insights from wives; instead, they rely on secondary sources such as their husbands for insights on the wives’ and families’ lives. Nevertheless, the views of these women are important and contribute to a better understanding of their lives and those of their family. This study reports interviews of 17 wives of migrant footballers in Nigeria. The interview participants acknowledge stress in their life but they also tell stories of how they continue to cope with such stress using various modes of interaction with their environment. The socio-cultural environment has its impact on the type of coping strategies that the women choose to use. While the wives increasingly find coping strategies for the footballers’ absences, they also move towards loathing their husband’s work and career.