Understand what your role on the pitch is, how to put your teammates in the best conditions and capitalize on each of their strength. Learn about football tactics, formations, and their weaknesses, how to exploit a particular archetype and how to counter it.
Become a true student of the game of football so that one day you can become a master. Your physical form is one of the main factors that influence your performances. Work on your cardio to boost your endurance and stamina. Getting football fit is not as hard as you would think.
Focus on a high volume of high-intensity exercises that aim to improve these vital athletic elements:. Regular exercise coupled with quality sleep and a healthy diet will allow you to avoid injuries and to play at your peak physical condition. Your diet has an enormous impact on your physical form.
Every high-performing professional players have rigorous eating habits that help them push themselves further. Eating healthy and balanced will significantly reflect on your work on the field.
Make sure that everything you eat or drink is part of an athletic diet and is done so in appropriate quantities. Coaches, players, friends or even family laugh at your dream to become a football player. Negativity will come in different shape and form but always remember to believe in yourself, even if no one else does. Confidence is an essential asset that you need to add to your mindset. It comes from positive thinking, proper preparation and success.
Belief, hard work, mental fortitude, humility and a dash of talent can take you to the top. The road to the professional world is a bumpy one, so brace yourself and believe with all your heart that you can do it. Nowadays, we have straightforward access to high-quality recording devices. Take advantage of this and have someone record your games. This will be helpful for two reasons:. A football CV is a little different than a standard one. It should display your height and weight as well as your position s on the field.
Be specific about your skills and abilities and include metrics such as:. Add a full body picture, contact info, and make sure to list your experiences, personal accomplishment, as well as titles won with your teams.
Do not hesitate to also include links to articles or videos where you appeared. Being properly geared and prepared will have several positive effects. The right equipment will boost your confidence, improve your performances, and prevent injuries. Wether you are a goalie looking for the goalkeeper gloves or a defender looking for soccer cleats, make sure that your equipment fits your playstyle and adapts to your uniqueness.
This is no different in this situation, you have to get out there and market yourself. Here are a few ways you can increase your chances:. Your football career is nothing else than a string of practice sessions and games. You need to focus on performing consistently at a high-level. Avoid getting lost in your thoughts or daydreaming about playing for the national team.
Also, who knows? Your focus can make all the difference so take advantage of every second you get to be on a football field. Last but not least, focus on your relationships. Whether it is with your coaches, the staff or your teammates. If they like you and trust you, it will boost your self-confidence, and your performances on the field will only benefit from that.
If you have done everything right up to that point, you should be in a position where scouts are watching your games. Keep in mind that you will not be judged solely on your football abilities. Your attitude, the way you communicate with your teammates, the way you behave. Show your talent, your ambition and your dedication and great things will happen to you. Most teams will post tryout dates in their social media and websites. Unless a team exclusively calls you to tryout for their team because they really liked your playing style, I think tryouts are not the best way to become a professional soccer player for everyone.
With that said, they always offer the possibility to open new doors. Here are a couple of tips to get the most out of a tryout:. This next advice I will give you might not work for most of you, because it requires a bigger financial sacrifice.
You can totally become a professional soccer player without them, but if you have the money this tools can be very helpful. Student-athlete academies are schools that are dedicate to make the best athletes, at the same time they study. We could describe them as high-schools that perfectly combine studies with sports.
Their objective is to graduate students with sports scholarships for college. I went several times to IMG, and I have to say it is just impressive. It is literally a high school that focuses on creating elite athletes in all types of sports: Tennis, soccer, american football, lacrosse, track and field, golf, basketball, and baseball.
They have the best multiple sports facilities in the world. I went to camp multiple times there, and it was always my dream to study in this school. However, student-athlete schools are very expensive about 80, dollars a year , an amount that is impossible to pay for a normal middle class person. Most people that go to this school look at it as an investment, they think that if they pay that amount of money they might earn a sports scholarship for college and be one step closer to being a pro athlete.
If you have the money, believe me, this is a great option to be as close as possible to become a pro. This is an online platform that connects coaches from colleges in the United States and players. In this platform, you make a detailed profile in which you insert all your information, videos, experience, etc. It is great because it helps coaches fill their roster and helps players find coaches that can possibly offer scholarships. Their plans are expensive though. You can buy a plan that offers a simple profile that connects you with coaches or you can even buy a plan that gets you an agent that contacts coaches and looks the best match for you.
You can check this tool at www. They are expensive though, but for me are totally worth it because you learn a lot, have fun, and have the chance of being scouted by coaches. The best way to become a professional player is to actually be a very good player, so anything that helps you improve is extremely useful. At the beginning I said that the process of becoming a pro is different in every country. I would like to give an example of one chance I had to become a professional player in my country, Panama.
Here in Panama, normally players become pro the same way as most countries: they enter federated teams academies and make their way up. However, during the last years, we are seeing more and more players go play college soccer in the United States. I had the chance to enter a team that prepares players exclusively to earn scholarships in universities in the United States.
You have to go to tryouts first to be selected and after that, as you would expect, you have to pay an extremely expensive price to play. I tell you this because there will always be different methods to get to that level you want to be. Just make sure to make a good research and take all the options you can according to where you live. As in everything, to achieve any dream there will be obstacles to overcome. If you take into consideration that on your way to becoming a professional player you will find all of these things, it will be easier for you and less frustrating when you bump into them:.
Be mentally tough, put in the work and sooner or later you will have achieved the goal. I emphasized a couple of times in the article the importance of having a Soccer Training Program. If you want to set apart you have to put in the extra hours, but most importantly, know how to do it. Of those 2 million, , injured players visit the doctor, and 30, wind up in the hospital.
About , The journey to becoming a pro soccer player is quite different in the United States and in Europe. European soccer, on the other hand, is not as present in the education system. Instead Europeans typically begin playing on their local teams or on official youth teams for professional football clubs.
Then, they continue to play for better and better teams until they are eventually contracted… or not. Both paths have their advantages and disadvantages.
In America, players have the opportunity to receive a college education while training to become a professional soccer player. In Europe, on the other hand, players have more opportunities to play advanced football at a younger age. In Europe, players who are serious about becoming professional soccer players typically join official youth teams for professional football clubs. In most cases, clubs invite a large quantity of young players to play with the younger official youth teams.
Then, they simply release students when they are no longer considered advantageous to the club, leaving students devastated and with no knowledge of their options as semi-professionals or otherwise.
Read more about the problem with youth teams of official football clubs. Very few reach the ultimate goal of signing a professional soccer contract with an official football club, and even fewer re-sign. In fact, 5 out of 6 signed players are dropped before the age of Although in the European system there might be more opportunities to become a better soccer player , most young players on this journey wind up not only heartbroken but also without a solid education to keep them on their feet.
Fortunately, both Americans and Europeans have the option to join high performance soccer academies in the U. These high performance academies are essentially boarding schools that are highly focused on professional soccer training. Unlike professional football clubs with official youth teams , high performance academies work in the best interest of all their students.
However, unlike professional football clubs, high performance academies match their students with semi-professional teams so that they can still make money playing soccer.
Attending such an academy can be quite costly. Read more about high performance football academies in Europe and the USA. There are three main types of entrance trials for high performance academies — summer camps , one week as a student winter camps , and day trials. Some academies are more flexible than others regarding entrance trials offering full academy trial programs and day trials all year round. Other academies hold trials on a few specific dates throughout the year.
Like summer camps, the full academy trial programs last for one or two weeks and serve as entrance trials for the full-year professional soccer player training programs at the academies. Unlike summer camps, however, they take place during the academic year , which means players get the chance to train with current full-year academy students and experience what life would be like as a full-time student at the academy. The full academy trial programs vary slightly from one academy to the next.
Some academies, like the high performance academy in Barcelona , and the high performance academy in the UK are extremely flexible with their starting dates and offer very personalized programs.
Other academies, like the high performance academy in Valencia , offer specific starting dates in April and May when students can participate in a full academy trial program. Regardless, these entrance trials offer the same overall benefits for the students. Soccer players who attend full academy trial programs get the chance to experience exactly what life would be like as an academy student.
Students meet their future teammates and classmates and train with them on the pitch during typical training hours. They live in the same residence, eat the same foods, etc. Students at these programs receive more personalized coaching and attention than participants at summer camps for two reasons. First, fewer participants attend these programs, so coaches can pay more attention to each participant both in terms of evaluating their skills and in terms of offering advice to improve their performance.
Secondly, coaches know that every soccer player who participates in a full academy trial program is highly considering joining the academy as a full-time student. You have to have fun playing football if you want to be a footballer," Beckham said at an Adidas promotional event in But I made the sacrifice of staying in watching Match of the Day on a Saturday evening and when I had a game on Sunday I went to bed early.
Professional footballers are athletes and in order to reach that physical level one must eat a healthy diet and exercise. They expend a lot of energy in training and matches, so the key is to find a happy nutritional balance in your meals, which means getting enough protein and carbohydrates, as well as fluids.
Messi, for example, follows a strict diet which includes plenty of water, fish, whole grain foods, fresh fruit and vegetables. Ronaldo, likewise, incorporates foods such as fish and eggs into his diet. Naturally, if you want to make it as a professional footballer, it is not advisable to eat junk food or a lot of sugary treats.
Exercise plans should be tailored to each individual and they will be different depending on your age, with your body going through natural changes during puberty. However, football is a sport of endurance which incorporates explosive elements, so it is always important to focus on certain areas. You should, at the very least, develop the fitness to last 90 minutes on a pitch, but ideally you'll be able to last longer - in case of extra time!
Cardiovascular exercises and high-intensity interval training - running, rowing and weight training - helps build up strength and endurance.
Warming up with light jogging and stretches is advised before any session to reduce the risk of injury. You should also take care to maintain balance in your routines by ensuring you work on your upper body and lower body equally. Read more about Messi's diet and exercise routine here. Read more about Ronaldo's diet and exercise routine here.
Creating a resume of your positions, attributes, achievements and perhaps even visual highlights, if they exist, is a useful exercise in the pursuit of a career in football.
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