Solo Session: The only Footballer to play a World Cup and hold a PhD

Hello students and graduates, welcome to PhD Lunch, the podcast of late night talks in which PhDs have a drink and talk about the research topics. The World Cup is underway. Debutantes and smaller nations drawing against well known and favorite national teams to win the competition hosted by Canada, Mexico and the United States. We're also seeing probably the last dances of legendary players like Ronaldo, Messi, Modrich and many others, some of them playing for the sixth time in their careers and bidding farewell to the beautiful game at the greatest tournament of all sports in the world. As a Portuguese football fan, I hope that Portugal will finally win their first World Cup after winning their first UEFA Euro Cup back in 2016 in France. Aside from this, there were great footballers who may not have played the World Cup before but earned APHD upon retiring. There are current and retired players who had played the World Cup and rather earned honorary pH DS, which is different from the actual structure of a doctoral degree. We have the examples of Marcus Rushford and Vincent Company who both obtained honorary pH DS at the University of Manchester. Cases of former footballers and earning a pH D after three plus years of research is quite rare but they do exist. For example, we have the former Nigerian football player, Felix O Wallaby who won the 1st edition of the Afghan Cup in 1980 and obtained his PhD in PE at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. And recently, Jean Thomas, a former Benfica striker who had four cups for Portugal and obtained his doctoral degree in Sports Science at the University of Coimbra. After researching in depth about this topic, did you know there is only one footballer who earned APHD while still playing football and appearing at the World Cup? Chirid Nak, a female German international footballer, became the first ever PhD while still an active player who played the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France before retiring in 2022. With 15 international caps for Germany, Nach managed to maintain her high footballing level while playing for Athletico Madrid alongside her doctoral studies, which is something not many active elite footballers can do, according to her. Nach's PhD is in special needs education, a subject that she had explored during her undergraduate at the University of Colne, and then reinforced her background in her dissertation about the importance and promotion of basic writing skills in students with learning difficulties. She successfully defended in 2021, while still playing for Athletico, arguing the complexity of basic text production for special needs children from years 3 to 7, based on five previous empirical studies in which NAK is the co-author. Across her five articles, both in German and English that helped Nach to complete her dissertation, she concluded that writing fluency and exercises around spelling, diverse oral lexicon and multi component storytelling could improve better marks in children's vocabulary, knowledge of the grammar and high quality written language. Despite the limitations in using learning and diagnostic methods, she applied for her case studies combining APHD. We feel it. Football isn't an easy task, but for Nak, she managed it by having a supporting team and The philosophy of Women's Bundesliga in helping female footballers to work or study during the day and train in their respective clubs during the evening. Doctor Turid Nak is a role model for so many girls and women who want to achieve higher in their studies while playing competitively. After retiring from professional football in 2022 at Volksburg, she currently works as a football pundit for The Zone and Sky and the football analyst at Impact. Thank you all for tuning in, it has been a pleasure.