WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO PASS A FOOTBALL TEST?
Becoming a professional football player is a dream within the reach of few. However, there are alternatives and strategies that can help you to enhance your talent and make a good impression when trying out for football in Europe. Success is not a gift to anyone. Sport is synonymous with competition and you have to be the best to stand out.
The world of football is probably one of the most difficult markets to enter due to the high level of competition. Countless talented players, excellent coaches, prestigious clubs, International Football Academies, High Performance Centres, Football Schools and a host of other elements make football the most popular sport in Europe and much of the world.
For this reason, it is not unreasonable to say that it is not at all easy to make a place in the elite and thus fulfil the dream of every young player to be a professional footballer. Football tryouts are becoming more and more demanding, but with hard work, effort and sacrifice, they can become an excellent opportunity to give your career the first push it needs. But can you become a professional football player without passing a football tryout? Of course you can, that’s what Professional Football Academies are for.
However, before we start explaining what is currently the best option to develop and enhance your talent in order to make a place for yourself in the football elite, it is worth talking about the classic football trials of the teams, which are very similar to each other and which are used by European football clubs to try to detect a talented young footballer that they have not observed in their scouting network.
Football Trials in Spain
Football Club Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid, Sevilla FC, Real Sociedad or Valencia CF are some of the clubs that make up the long list of entities that every summer open the doors of their Sports Cities to organise their respective football test days in Spain. There is no doubt that the Spanish First Division and even the Spanish Second Division teams have a great reputation in Europe and the rest of the world, something that allows them to have a huge number of talented young footballers ready to give their all in their training sessions.
Therefore, summer is the perfect time to be able to carry them out, as domestic competitions such as the Leagues and Cups are over and also the trial players are available for long journeys, if necessary. In 2020, due to the expansion of the COVID-19, the calendar has been modified, delaying the trials to the end of the summer, which will allow the young footballers to prepare themselves even more in order to be victorious in these days, in which the majority of them need to register beforehand, which is done online. However, it should be noted that it is not easy to be victorious.
Many young players with great talent attend these football trials in Spain, so the probability of being successful in these football trials to join a professional team is very low, especially when we talk about clubs of the stature of Real Madrid, FC Barcelona or, among others, Atlético de Madrid, as only one percent of the more than 9,000 boys and girls who attend the training days year after year become part of their respective quarries. Most of them are directly discarded in the physical tests.
Football tryouts in Portugal
Portugal is a very interesting alternative when it comes to trying out for professional club football. This country is known for being a great trainer and developer of talent, something that has allowed its powerful clubs to have youth academies that are the envy of the whole of Europe. FC Porto, Sporting Portugal, Benfica, Os Belenenses, Vitória SC have taken many of their young players to the top throughout their years of existence. Many of them achieved professionalism in this country before playing in Europe.
How to plan a football trial?
However, the demands are the same as in Spain, but the style of football and methodology used do not vary too much from those implemented in Spain, so it is easy to adapt to the demands of the coaches in charge of scouting in Portugal. In the lower divisions, the demands are less demanding, and this is one of the keys to starting your career, even if it means continuing to develop and do your best to attract the attention of the scouts of the big clubs mentioned above. To plan your trials, the first thing you need to know is when are the trials at the club you are interested in? You can check it directly on their website or call directly and ask the technical secretary.
After you know the tryout dates, you need to register for the tryouts of the football team. The task is not easy if you don’t know and here you have to be innovative and resourceful. Here is an article that can help you. You should prepare for the physical tests to improve your skills. There are manuals on how to plan exercises for football tests or ask the advice of a physical trainer who works in a professional club you know. An alternative is to attend a football training camp. Don’t forget that nutrition and hydration together with psychological factors and rest are fundamental to pass the football physical-technical tests and not be discarded in the first moments.
Football tryouts in England
Who wouldn’t like to play in the Premier League? The English Premier League is undoubtedly one of the most attractive competitions in the world. The birthplace of football is England and this country has one of the most powerful leagues thanks to its tremendous economic potential. Nowadays, the Premier League is nourished by an infinity of foreign players, something that has made the league much more competitive and varied, as the arrival of coaches born outside the British Isles has broadened the horizons and matured the different styles of play.
However, football trials in England are not very common among the big Premier League clubs. José Mourinho’s Tottenham and Burnley FC are the clubs that are most committed to organising this type of trial day in England. What do the rest of the clubs do? The other clubs run private training sessions where you need an intermediary with enough contacts to be able to organise a private trial with a team from that club, which makes it more complicated to get access to an English football academy. There are sports companies specialising in trials but very few players actually get access to official trials.
Football Tests in France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands
What are the other interesting European countries in which to take a football test? The best countries besides Spain, Portugal and England are France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. These nations have strong domestic competitions with a long history in the world of football. Thanks to this, clubs such as Juventus, Bayern Munich, PSG and Ajax have won trophies and reigned supreme in their Premier Leagues. Meanwhile, other teams such as Borussia Dortmund, Olympique Lyon, Inter Milan and PSV have put a lot of effort into their youth academies, something that the league champions have not neglected either.
For the same reason, these countries are another option to take into account when trying out for football in Europe. However, the language will be a big disadvantage and can make the trial days less satisfactory, as not understanding the coaches’ instructions to one hundred percent can lead to not performing at your best and thus reduce your chances of capturing the attention of the coaches. A fluent level of English is advisable.
What are football trials like in Europe?
The summer days on which European football trials are organised can vary in the calendar depending on which club organises them, so you need to keep a close eye on their social media and websites to find out exactly when they will be held. However, most tryouts in Europe have a very similar duration and management, as the important thing about these trainings is that coaches and other professionals – such as scouts and analysts – can assess the talent and capabilities of the young player as quickly as possible.
How are football testing exercises planned in Europe?
The training session in these European football trials consists of four sections: the warm-up, the individual technical exercises, the match and the cool-down. The aim of the warm-up is to activate the players and prevent any type of injury, especially muscular injuries. Coaches and physical trainers usually perform a traditional warm-up with stretching, mobility and continuous running at a gentle pace and time. It is vital to be fully prepared to complete a good warm-up so as not to have any physical problems and not be able to perform to the maximum. It is important to avoid muscular injuries. In any case, the Club’s medical and physiotherapist services are available.
After the warm-up comes the key moment of the European football trials: individual technique and the match. In the individual technique exercises, speed, ball control, technique, passing accuracy and shooting at goal are tested. They are exercises where all the attention is focused on the young footballer and this causes nerves to increase, so that the fear of making mistakes is a constant and this can completely spoil the test. For this reason, a good psychological preparation is also important.
Calm and self-confidence: The match is the icing on the cake. It’s about proving that you can excel surrounded by players who are also brimming with talent. However, it is true that shining brightly in a match attracts a lot of attention, but coaches, thanks to their great experience, know first hand that it can be a matter of good or bad luck, so to convince the coaches in a match you have to get their attention first in the technical training.
The return to calm and hydration serves to lower the players’ pulses and release all the tension produced by the football tests. It does not serve to evaluate the level of the player, but it does serve to know the character of each player, because by stretching and relaxation exercises you can see which player is more open with the others, more introverted, more collaborative, etc.
The hidden face of football tryouts in professional teams
Joining the youth academy of a professional football club is a dream, yes, but it is a dream shared by many people. It is not at all easy to organise football try-outs as big as those organised by Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Atlético de Madrid, FC Porto, Tottenham, Borussia Dortmund or Juventus, among others, and it is even more difficult to be selected. Why is it so difficult? What are the disadvantages of these football try-outs in Europe?
The first disadvantage of these football try-outs in Europe is the low probability of being selected due to the large number of players who are also on trial. Football, as we have already mentioned, is a sport of the masses and there are many children who dream of becoming a top footballer from a very young age. This means that at the slightest chance they apply for football trials, either for their favourite team or for the professional team in their area. Thousands and thousands of players are concentrated in the same football tryout days and only a few will be selected to be part of the youth academy. This means that the percentage of young players selected is between one and two percent.
But what happens if I am not selected? Dealing with failure is no easy task and to cope well with defeat you have to be psychologically well prepared. The expectations to succeed are very high and often the parents’ expectations are even higher than those of the young players. This raises the pressure on the player to unsuspected levels and can have an impact on the children in the long run, especially those who take part in the European football trials for the Infantil, Alevín and Benjamín categories. That is why tryouts for semi-professional players should be planned carefully and not conducted unless prepared or as a tool for evaluation and improvement.
In addition, having to be evaluated quickly through technical exercises and a match can cause the player himself to start comparing himself with his teammates and can create self-confidence problems when he makes a mistake. Am I good enough to play football? Am I the worst of them all? Why don’t they pass me the ball so much? These are questions that the child may ask himself or herself that may end up making him or her loathe this and any other sport when it turns out that they have arisen in a somewhat unrealistic and artificial context.
The best option to become a professional footballer
It is clear that in order to reach the elite of football, you have to be prepared and have outstanding footballing conditions. There are many players who have these conditions, so in order to stand out among so many, it is necessary to know how to strengthen them, not only with training, but also with a complete training and development programme in high performance where the player is prepared both athletically and academically.
Professional Football Academies
International Football Academies, especially if they are in Spain, are undoubtedly the best option for the integral development of the athlete. These International Football Academies can have High Performance Centres that help even more in the training of the football player, something that even many professional football academies do not have, as they have limited sports facilities in the middle of the city, which makes it impossible for them to expand. In addition, access to an International Football Academy differs greatly from the traditional football trials that professional clubs hold in the summer, as the Academies do not work against the clock as much and the coaches can observe the player more closely at Summer Camps, Football Clinics or specialised trials.
You have great academies in Spain;
- Soccer Inter-Action (Football Academy with FC Porto methodology in Spain) in Valencia.
- Marcet Foundation in Barcelona.
- Kaptiva Academy in Barcelona.
- Inter Soccer Football Academy in Madrid.
- Spain Soccer Academy in Seville.
Football camps
The Football Camps are the most interesting option to join an International Football Academy. These football camps in Spain serve to live a new experience at the same time that you put yourself in the hands of professionals and technicians trained in High Performance. The Summer Camps organised by the International Football Academies (as is the case of Soccer Inter-Action FCPorto World Camp) serve as tests to evaluate the level of the footballer and for the footballer himself to see first hand if he is ready to spend a season enrolled in a high performance training programme. The great atmosphere and the available resources offered by these International Football Academies are an extra attraction that the youth academies do not have.
Football Clinics
The objective of the football clinics in Spain is very similar to that of the football camps. However, the big difference is that the training in the Clinics is even more specific and individualised. Technification is vital for the development of the football player and here all the resources are focused on enhancing the individual skills of the player. What does this lead to? A greater closeness with the coach and an incredible feddback to know first hand the concerns and objectives of the young player.
The specialised football tests offered by International Football Academies are very diverse. In fact, only the renowned International Football Academies are able to organise such days, as they need to run football clubs as well. This is the case of Soccer Inter-Action, which organises football trials for U23 players in the summer and, depending on their level, qualifies and tests them in teams of different categories, such as Tercera División, Regional Preferente or Juvenil Nacional. The possibility of playing in the Third Division is a big boost in the career of the young player, so these trials are very important to be able to become a professional in football. These trials include full board and all kinds of technicians at the service of the player’s development. In addition, fair play is taken into account in the trials.
As if all this were not enough, there are International Football Academies that thanks to their contacts and partners have greater advantages with the big professional clubs. For example, Soccer Inter-Action is the official partner of FC Porto in Spain and thanks to having its official FCPorto Dragon Force Football School in Spain in its High Performance Centre, it can organise private training sessions in Portugal that do not require so much pressure. Many of its players have already passed through FC Porto’s facilities and have been able to try out in their teams and in Portuguese clubs that have seen the possibility of being able to ‘fish’ players trained under the Porto methodology.
What are the advantages of football testing at the Academies?
As we have already mentioned above, there are many advantages to try out for football at International Football Academies. In these academies there is no competition against other players to see who is selected and who is not, the player is simply evaluated thoroughly and is offered conditions and an individual improvement plan to continue to develop their full potential. Apart from the fact that this leads to a better atmosphere, fair play in the football trials and that all the players work as a team and as colleagues.
It is also worth highlighting the integration of the young player into the block of players who are already taking the Annual Programme, something that will allow the aspiring player to see how the International Football Academy works on a day-to-day basis. In addition to this, not only the players can see, enter and value the functioning of the Academy, but also the parents, who will be able to know in advance everything that surrounds and happens inside a High Performance Centre, something that will reduce their worries about having their son or daughter interned in such an Academy. The tutors and the rest of the staff of these International Football Academies are always available to give any kind of information about the Annual Programme and to make all the necessary visits to their sports facilities.
Vivir en una Academia Internacional de Fútbol
Quite an experience. Attending the Annual High Performance Programme of an International Football Academy in Spain is at the very least a challenge that will be remembered by the footballer for the rest of his life. Breathing football at all hours can only be done if you are inside a High Performance Centre, something that helps a lot to focus on the goal of developing to the maximum and squeezing all your potential. So how does a football academy work?
The International Football Academies in Spain such as Soccer Inter-Action -located in Enguera (Valencia, Spain)- have as fundamental pillars of their operation the studies, the training in High Performance and the maturity of the football player as a person, in terms of regulated studies, in the Football Academies there are different study routes available depending on the country, both of residence and of stay.
In addition, these centres have specialised staff in the pedagogical and academic sector who guide the athlete towards his goal of combining football with the completion of his studies. Agreements with prestigious institutions such as the British School provide a lot of value and alternative future professional opportunities for the player.
High Performance Training is the cornerstone of the development of the individual as a footballer. Intense and professional training sessions focused by and for the footballer. Their qualified, trained and experienced coaches and trainers are there on a daily basis, trying to enhance all the player’s talents in order to achieve their maximum form so that they can take the next step towards professional football.
And not only do they have coaches, but they also have video analysts, sports psychologists, nutritionists, physical trainers, physiotherapists… all with the common goal of making the young footballer grow. Along with the workers, the commitment to technology is a hallmark of the Football Academies, as they always try to innovate in order to facilitate the learning of both their players and their workers; language courses, video-analysis, communication and new technologies are an almost essential complement.
Health and fitness, and more so now with the situation of prevention that we have to have with the COVID, is the priority in the High Performance Centres. Avoiding injuries, recovering the injured player as soon as possible and in adequate conditions, preventing contagions. Sports doctors, sports cardiologists, nutritionists, physical trainers, physiotherapists and nurses are part of the daily work.
Finally, maturity also plays a very important role for the International Football Academies, as these High Performance Centres bring together a large number of young players from all over the world. This promotes multiculturalism, tolerance and accelerated language learning. And yes, all this helps a lot to achieve greater maturity in a player. That is why the sports psychologist must supervise the whole process.
