Youth Football Trials in UK

Asian soccer star.

Whether it’s parents or football crazy kids, they visit this site to find out how they can get closer to their dream of becoming an Asian soccer star playing professional football.

Well let me tell everyone, unless you have the support, determination, hunger, desire, work ethic, talent and a great deal of luck being in the right place at the right time it’s going to be a long, hard and difficult journey.

A journey that will see many broken dreams along the way, dreams that will be shattered beyond recognition and never to be revisited again. That is the reality of football; many kids get rejected over and over only to drop playing football forever.

But, if parents and kids persist there is always the chance of a pot of gold at the end of the journey.

Take Sobha as an example.

Even though he came to the organised game late (playing Sunday football at age 11), he was a quick learner and adapted to playing in position and tactics like a duck to water. Playing two seasons at premier Sunday league level it was obvious he needed to play at a much higher level and a decision was taken to pull out of Sunday league football for the 2009-2010 season to work on development and prepare for a higher level of the game.

Even though he is with a club that focuses on developmental training and short-sided games (they don’t play league matches) , the way the UK youth football trial system works he won’t be  able to get scouted unless he’s scouted at a game. But that’s not a worry because there are ways to get football trials at professional clubs (i’ll share that in another post).

The point is that many academy and centre of excellence coaches have given us an insight into how the system works. Most professional clubs like to get their kids as early as possible. The older the kids, the harder it is to get anyone to even watch them.

Most scouts don’t tend to go to Sunday league games but rely on referrals from county or district level matches. Also, the norm is to look at kids that have been released from other clubs so they get rinsed over and over within the system.

With this system, unless you are really proactive and resilient most talented kids won’t get a look in.

Another point that came out was the belief amongst many professional academy and centre of excellence coaches that Asian kids don’t have the family support, aren’t built to play the professional game and don’t have the commitment to go in for hard tackles. This was actually a quote from one of the premier league academy coaches.

So any kids looking to fulfill their dreams of becoming an Asian soccer star playing professional football the message is simple; talent alone is not enough. Kids must train to at least centre of excellence level (visiting professional age-group related training sessions will provide invaluable insights), develop the mindset, vision, work ethic, determination, hunger and desire and you may have a shot.