Fisayo Adarabioyo - How to Become a Professional Football Player

1. Around the world, there are literally millions of children who aspire to becoming professional football players. On top of that, there are hundreds of small league adult clubs with players also wishing to make it into the professional realms of football. Many people are good enough; they just fail to grasp the opportunities open to them. Sometimes this is down to a lack of awareness of just what these opportunities may be. In the past, people believed that the reason they could not turn professional was a lack of skill or strength, but this simply is not the case. With the right training, anyone can improve their game, and occasionally, this improvement is enough to tip a talented player from the semi-professional into the professional football arena. The first thing that any aspiring football player should do, is to sign up to one of the open football trials held throughout the UK, there are many from which to choose. Large football clubs, in order to test the skill level of individual players and to assess whether they are talented enough to make it as a professional player design football trials for this purpose. To get through open football trials, you do not necessarily have to be exceptionally good, but merely exhibit great potential. The problem with becoming a professional player lay not so much in the availability of places open for potential players, but rather on the amount of time and effort, a player is willing to put into becoming a professional footballer. This means signing up to open football trials, perhaps joining a football academy, and practising as often as possible. It is not easy, but the opportunities are out there, the difficulty comes in realising what these potential breaks may be.

2. There are ways of improving your chances of success at open football trials, these techniques will help you to achieve the most you can from football. At home, practice the fine motor skills needed to become professional. This means juggling with the ball, make sure that you practice bouncing the ball off various parts of your body, juggle from foot to chest, from knees to head, and build up patterns so that juggling the ball becomes second nature. These skills will help you to understand the physics behind ball control, as well as a more subtle understanding of your body — improving fine motor skills until you have honed them to maximum capacity. If you want any chance of passing an open football trial, then you must practice running and stretching. Stretching is fundamental to any sport as it helps to prevent injury. As a footballer, certain injuries may halt your professional career in its tracks — often such injuries are preventable. Additionally, stretching also increases flexibility, an important aptitude that is needed to perform many ball skills at professional level.