Are endlessly surrounding footballers from a distance (4)
I believe the answer is:
afar
'from a distance' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'are endlessly surrounding footballers' is the wordplay.
'endlessly' means to remove the last letter.
'surrounding' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'footballers' becomes 'fa' (Football Association abbreviation).
'are' with its last letter removed is 'ar'.
'ar' placed around 'fa' is 'AFAR'.
(Other definitions for afar that I've seen before include "from baseline to baseline?" , "Many miles away" , "At a distance (literary)" , "Remote" , "Pull out at a distance" .)