Soccer is the world’s most popular sport and the one with the lowest barrier to entry.
That means you don’t have to be a freakish athlete to play soccer, even though it helps. You also don’t have to be a freakish athlete to play the sport professionally, although pro players are very fit.
Comedian, broadcaster, and fitness enthusiast Joe Rogan once marveled at their fitness in one of his podcast episodes after getting introduced to the sport following the arrival of Lionel Messi to the MLS.
From the above, you can deduce that you need to be fitter than others to be able to go pro as a soccer player. Keep reading for more practical tips on this subject matter!
How Do You Become a Pro in Soccer?
Discover how you can become a pro in soccer.
Train from an Early Age
If you want to become a professional soccer player, start playing the sport early.
Soccer’s barrier to entry is only a ball, some friends and a playing surface. However, the skills required of a pro soccer player are honed over a much longer time than many sports.
There are many stories of teenagers and even young adults picking up other sports and going pro due to being in the right place and right time. This rarely happens in soccer.
Have Clear Goals and a Vision for What You Want to Do
As a child or a pre-teen, you may not have a clear vision of the kind of soccer player you want to be. You may think you do, but down the line, you will find that you should be a different type of player. This is the story of many academy kids.
However, it helps to focus on a goal. Do you want to make the USMNT? Do you want to go to Europe? When you hone in on a goal, it becomes easier to plot your chart towards it.
Play High School and College Soccer to Gain Experience
If you’re still in your teenage years, make sure you join your school’s soccer team if they have one. If they don’t, you can pioneer it by gathering other kids who have an interest in the sport like you do.
Do the same in your college years. Join your varsity team or even any team that plays the sport and competes in local tournaments on campus. It will aid your development much faster than just playing or practicing soccer alone.
Join a Quality Soccer Club Team
While you’re in your high school team, find a good soccer club and join them. This is where you get the real experience of playing the sport at a pro level.
The training is different, the coaches are different, the tactics are a lot more advanced, and the study materials are geared toward making you the best version of yourself that can go pro.
Do research on the soccer clubs in your locality and go for their tryouts. If at first you don’t succeed, try again until you get in.
Focus on Your Nutrition to Improve Physical Conditioning
Joe Rogan marveled at the fitness of soccer players when he went to his first game. They did not achieve this fitness by accident.
Exercise and diet are a strong part of a pro soccer player’s culture and routine, which means that if you want to go pro, you have to focus on eating the right foods and doing the right exercises.
Train your legs, thighs, calves, hips and torso because these parts are the most used in soccer. Also, carefully curate your cheat meals so you don’t slip up.
Exercise With Different Drills and Train Regularly
As stated earlier, soccer skills are not easily picked up, even though anyone can play the sport. Beyond playing with your friends, with your high school or college team, and working out in the gym after eating the best foods for your body, you need to practice various soccer skills.
You can do this with drills to improve your skills and ability on the ball. There are various types of drills for various positions on the field. Know your position and focus on the drill that helps you get better.
Practice Strong Mental Preparation Before Matches
Like any other sport, you can sometimes run into monsters on the soccer field. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was a very physical 6’5 striker who was one of the meanest men in his playing days.
You could be a defender who is as small as Lisandro Martinez (5’9), and your task is to defend against a player like Zlatan.
These types of matchups are nightmarish, but if you prepare mentally for it, you can surmount the challenge.
Find something that centers you and do it before every training or any match, even a pickup game. This will help you in your journey to becoming a pro player.
Identify Professional Clubs for Possible Recruitment
Pro clubs always send scouts to high schools and colleges all the time. In Europe, pro clubs even send scouts to local communities to watch the kids playing in the parks to identify the next big talent.
If you live in an area with a pro club, be proactive. Find out what it’ll take to get recruited, hone your skills, and then work towards attracting the interest of the scouts from that team.
If you don’t live in an area with a pro team but have one on your mind, study their schedule, see when their tryouts will take place, and make your way there.
Expand Your Understanding of the Tactics Involved in Soccer
What are the schools of thought in modern soccer? Which is the prevailing one now? What are the formations that coaches like to play with?
Which positions are most in demand? Every day, there is something to find out about soccer.
Expand your understanding of the tactics involved in soccer by reading, watching interviews, reading articles like this one, and learning about the history of the sport. This head knowledge is important in your journey to becoming a pro player.
Develop Your Technical Skills to Become a Star Player
There are two types of skills to develop as a soccer player:
- Basic skills: Passing, kicking, juggling, shooting, defending, etc.
- Technical skills: Curving the ball, various soccer moves, vision and accuracy, etc.
The basic skills get you in the door. The technical skills keep you and move you to the front of the class where the teacher (coach) can see you.
Practice your technical skills as often as you can so that you can be noticed by scouts.
Maintain Injury Prevention Protocols for Optimal Performance
Soccer injuries are scary. It has cut short the dreams of many players. Marco van Basten, one of the world’s best strikers, retired at 29 years old because of a slew of injuries he suffered as a pro player.
At that age, he had already been crowned the best player in the world twice and had scored twice as many goals as many players ever would in their careers. A rookie like you can learn a lesson from this.
Get Mentored by an Experienced Coach
You can rarely get anywhere in life without a mentor. As a soccer player, your first mentor must be a coach.
Whether it’s your high school or college team coach or a local coach who watches you practice with your friends at pick-up games, you need the experience of someone who knows soccer to guide you in your journey.
This mentorship can even help you in choosing the right professional team that will make you a better player and offer you the clearest path to becoming a pro soccer player.
Research Professional Teams and Meet With Coaches
It is important you note this step in your journey to becoming a soccer pro. When you look up pro teams, don’t just look them up because you like their coaches or you like a certain player who plays for them.
Look up their developmental program/schedule.
Take the time to meet with the coaches of these teams you’re researching and listen to their plans for you.
This is why experienced mentoring is important: your coach mentor helps you filter the teams that fit you from those that don’t.
Get Noticed and Build Your Brand
We’re in the age of social media. Your social media page is a portfolio for you, especially as a soccer player. Let your feed have videos or pictures of you playing soccer.
Curate it in a way that will catch scouts’ attention so that they come and check you out. You can upload videos of you in a game performing your best in order to sell your talents.
Videos and pictures of you practicing are also important for both documentation and branding purposes. Do not hide your talents from scouts.
FAQ
How do you get drafted into pro soccer?
- Join a club/travel team and do your best. Your chances increase if the team is an MLS Academy youth team, a team in the US Soccer Development Academy or one in the Elite Clubs National League (ECNL).
- Try out for the Olympic Development Program (ODP). If you can’t make an ODP team, you’re not cut out for pro soccer. If you make an ODP team and don’t do well, it’s the same thing.
- Play college soccer.
- Accept the odds are against you because only 1% of players go pro.
What is the Salary and job outlook for professional soccer players?
Careers in sports pay extremely well. An average soccer player can make as much as $5,000 (after taxes) weekly, which is $20,000 monthly.
In Europe, players earn as much as $300,000 weekly, which is $1,200,000 monthly after taxes.
The good (and fair) thing is that professional soccer is not a lifetime career. An average pro player begins their career at 20 and ends at 35.
That’s 15 years in which they can earn as much as they can, depending on their negotiations with professional clubs.
Final thoughts
Now, you have all you need to become a pro soccer player. It is a long list, but one that can be summarized into these four key points.
Build up your skillset from an early age. Stay fit, exercise, and build up your physical and mental strength. Get mentorship, and lastly, play and practice as much as you can.
If you follow all these steps religiously, your path to becoming a pro soccer player will open up like a rose in bloom.
Also, make sure to always be in the right place at the right time so that you can get lucky!
