SolveYourProblem Article Series: Soccer
Teach Me About Soccer

Are Private Soccer Lessons Worth It?

When faced with the dilemma of deciding whether or not you should invest in your child receiving soccer lessons, there are several different factors to take into account. Ultimately, unlike baseball wherein many different mechanical instructions are necessary to ensure efficiency, individual soccer lessons are not critical or even needed. This is due to the fact that much of a soccer player’s skill can be obtained most efficiently at a practice by developing team chemistry. Baseball and other sports that require such individual training do so because without proper mechanical instruction, you may cause permanent damage and never play again; however, with soccer, no such mechanical instruction is needed as you will not be injured or impaired in a life-threatening manner due to lack of individual instruction. Nonetheless, if you feel they need to especially nurture a soccer player, then they should pursue the avenue.

The first decision you should factor into the equation is obviously financial. In other words, will you be able to subtract “x” number of dollars from your disposable income and still be able to persist on a normal basis. When calculating this, parents should remember that individual lessons can be fairly expensive. They are no different than a child taking piano lessons or tennis lessons, in so far as the training being provided is by a professional; thus, the hourly - and in some cases salaried - wage that is charged can be quite expensive. Nonetheless, if you can afford to purchase such a service, then by all means proceed in doing so if that is what’s desired.

The second factor you should take into account is whether or not your child can play at a high level of competition. This should be done in the most objective manner possible because often times - if not always - a parent is subjective in perceiving their child’s gifts. Thus, in order to make the best decision, you should get an outside perspective, preferably a professional to evaluate the situation. If in the case the outside perspective determines your child warrants soccer lessons - and this outside perspective is not the prospective trainer - then you should do whatever needs to be done in order to have that child individually tutored.

A third factor you may take into account is what soccer training usually entails. Depending on the trainer, the tutoring of a soccer player usually consists of teaching a child how to physically prepare for soccer. This is the case because many people do not know the proper regimen to undergo in preparing for the grueling sport. Thus, a trainer will usually teach a child how to eat and drink (ie: nutrition), when and how long they should run, and how to psychologically prepare oneself.

Nonetheless, most trainers do provide technique instructions. These instructions consist of proper foot placement, proper sliding techniques, and so on. Given this, a parent must ask himself or herself whether or not a child can learn these things through repetition and practice; furthermore, you should ponder how the children of Brazil or Venezuela - perhaps the best soccer nations on the globe - became such great players. One thing is clear. They didn’t utilize trainers and they got better through hours of playing the sport. Often parents who invest in these individual soccer lessons complain about having wasted their money - not because the child quit the sport shortly thereafter - because essentially the soccer coach merely gave the child common information that they could have looked up in five minutes without paying a dime. Thus, unless you are to be trained by a professional team, such an investment may be considered unnecessary.

A reason you may not want to pursue individual lessons is because soccer focuses on team cohesiveness. Working as a team refines much of this cohesiveness by fostering such skills as timing and communication. Given this aspect, essentially what good does it do someone who receives lessons? When you receive lessons you merely work with oneself. Thus, unless you were to get an individual trainer and pay for him or her to train the whole team, then such an investment is fruitless, even perhaps counterproductive.

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SolveYourProblem.com : 2009

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