Soccer is undoubtedly the biggest and most famous sport in the whole world. Its popularity exceeds all other sports with billions watching and/or playing the game worldwide. Its governing body, FIFA has the most number of member nations, and the World Cup, its flagship competition is universally considered as the biggest sporting event on the planet, eclipsing even the Olympic Games. To cut a very long story short, it is a very simple but yet very famous sport and every country, even the USA which is so resistant towards the sport have started to openly embrace the sport as one of their own. This sport is also being played by a huge number of people around the globe, and that includes kids/children all over the world, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, and social status. In the actual fact, the activity of playing soccer among kids, including random kickabouts whether on a proper soccer field, a makeshift one, a Futsal arena, or even on the streets like how many superstars such as Carlos Tevez and Thierry Henry started out when they were kids themselves are considered so normal, so widespread, that kids, and even their parents, are likely to not realize the plethora of benefits that they stand to gain, ranging from their physical well being, emotional well being, to the possibility to reach a dizzying height in life just from casually playing soccer with other kids on a good day.
Many people call soccer as a male dominated sport, and the more extreme ones would even declare that this sport should be out of bounds to the more feminine gender. However, since we live in the increasing era of emancipation between the genders, and also the increasing popularity and standard of the womens' soccer worldwide, and as the title suggests, since this is only talking about kids in general, the benefits highlighted in the following paragraphs will be applicable for boys as well as for girls.
The first benefit for the kids from playing soccer is obviously the fact that the game helps each kid to build a sense of team-work, and to constantly expose them in a team based environment. We know that soccer is one of the most team oriented sports in the world. Many people might argue that other sports such as baseball and basketball are also team oriented sports, but if we are able to quantify/measure the level of “team elements” then soccer will definitely be ranked up there relative to other sports. To cite a real life example, just look the excitement within and surrounding the NBA team Miami Heat when they managed to sign James le Bron, one of the hottest names in basketball in recent times. Just because of the acquisition of this one player, Miami Heat has been touted as the next NBA champions for the next season. This is reminiscence to a few years ago when the same team signed Shaq O'Neal from LA Lakers. Just because of him, they did win the following season's NBA championship. While the same certainly cannot be said for soccer. When a team signs one player, that one player will not be able to carry the team forward all on his own. He has to adapt to his new surroundings, his new club's tactical set-up, as well as his new team mates' style of play. The transition of the one newly transferred player will not be as smooth as the ones observable in NBA such as illustrated above. Even when a player has been successfully integrated into a team and/or a whole newly assembled squad has successfully earned a decent amount of team chemistry, one player could not do it all. Cristiano Ronaldo, Steven Gerrard, Leo Messi, Maradona, you name it. No player on earth will not be able to do everything on his own for the team.
The lengthy explanation above only serves to highlight how soccer is a very team oriented sport. Thus, when kids play soccer, they would learn how to work in a team. In a soccer team, each and every player has his own duties, and it is imperative that every one of them adheres to their own set rules all the time. There's no “I” in a soccer team, everyone has to work together to make the whole team functional. When there's even only one player in the team who is out of sync with his/her team mates on the pitch, the team's structure and general well-being will be in jeopardy, and the team will not function as it should be. This will definitely drill into the kids' minds that it is crucial that they think about others and not only themselves. In my opinion, this is especially important for only children in the world. Only children have always been labeled as kids who are not able to integrate well into the society when they reach adulthood, and they are also perceived to be destined as individualistic and egoistic individuals with no sense of team work at all as they supposedly have been getting whatever they want from their over-parenting parents and that they don't need to share their belongings with anybody since they do not have anybody to share anything with in the first place. Even though these harsh stereotypes and labellings have been dismissed by other groups of scholars, there are some truths in those stereotypes and soccer can help compensate the lack of sharing opportunities at home due to the absence of siblings, as these kids would learn how to work and operate in a team through the soccer matches that they participate in, and they would also learn that they cannot always get anything they want anytime, for example, they need to fight and jostle for the ball, try their best to beat the defenders or stop the strikers, and so on.
As they learn more about the game, and as these kids start caring more about winning trophies and competitions, they will learn some selfless traits from soccer. For example, when kid A has the ball around the right flank and he is surrounded by four defenders, then kid B, his team mate is waiting in the penalty area and he is minimally marked at best. Kid A has two choices, firstly, to be an egoistical hero and try to beat those defenders and to score the goal himself which he is likely to fail or secondly, to just send a pass to kid B for kid B to score a goal and win the match for his team. This is especially important in the working life as increasingly people need to work in a team, and that sometimes or even more often than how people perceive it to be, the harsh life often expects people to sacrifice their personal gains for the best of the team. Soccer prepares these kids to be those team players in an amazingly perfect, amazing, and of course fun manner.
This is also tied to the second benefit for those kids from playing soccer. It is no longer a secret that modern life is increasingly identical in meaning to “sedentary lifestyle” and that obesity and of course the problems associated with it such as diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke just to name three have officially been considered as epidemics, especially in the developed countries in which most of the time spent by people, and for kids as well, are simply between the keyboard and the chair. The all important physical exercise is increasingly considered as an activity not worth doing and that it is just a waste of time. The bare minimum exercise of an average of 30 minutes a day are considered by many, especially kids to be useless and pointless chores and that the time supposedly used for the physical exercise is better off in their minds to be spent on supposedly more productive activities such as studying for the kids. However, they fail to realize the sheer importance and necessity of doing physical exercise regularly and not only they will regret it much later in their lives when they have to gripe with a Pandora Box full of problems such as the various illnesses associated with the modern sedentary lifestyle such as diabetes and heart diseases to the various social stigma in the society against obese people.
Therefore, I feel that soccer really helps in an immense way to alleviate the kids from all those problems. When the kids play soccer regularly, they only realize it as playing a fun game with their friends. Even if they realize what I have mentioned above about the team bonding exercise provided by soccer, they are unlikely to realize that by playing soccer, these kids are doing themselves a great favor in each game day by exercising vigorously for the duration of the game. Assuming that thy play for at least 1 hour, we could just look at the statistics of professional football matches to see how players cover distances for up to 13 or more kilometers in one game! That is a great workout which would undoubtedly and markedly improve the fitness level of those kids as well as keeping themselves healthy physically and mentally. It has been proven that kids who exercise regularly tend to do much better in school compared to their more sedentary counterparts. Again, by playing soccer, the kids get a multitude of benefits, they get the fun, and they get healthy.
Thirdly, I would also like to elaborate more on the benefits of playing soccer for the mental health of the kids who play the game. It has been mentioned above on how students who exercise regularly tend to do better in school, but there is also one more important mental aspect which could be improved by playing soccer. Soccer is a simple game, and when simplified to its simplest form, it is just a game in which players who are playing the game are all constantly having one aim in mind, and that is to score goals, and of course to score more goals than the opponents. This is actually the macro and the more attacking side of the aim in football, and there is another more micro and defensive side of the game in which every single player on the pitch each has a defensive duty to regain possession when the opponents are with the ball. The tandem of both main aims in soccer means that the kids who play the game are having those aims constantly embedded into their minds. In the long run, the will to fight to reach the goal, the determination to overturn things when things are tough, as well as the occasions when they have to sacrifice their personal gains for the good of the team means that the kids will be stimulated to become a competitive, determined, and even tough individuals.
When these kids grow up, and when they eventually enter the workforce regardless of their fields of choice, they will take away with them from soccer the tough mentality and the sheer determination when they are striving towards their goals in life. This shows one great benefit from playing soccer in childhood (and even constantly in their lives later on) which could potentially span across almost if not all aspects of life.
Last but not least, and in fact one significant benefit, is simply the dazzling and lucrative opportunity for the kids to become professional soccer players. It has been assumed up to the above paragraph that the kids who play soccer will eventually go to the workforce and an impression seemed to be given that these kids will leave soccer for good once they have entered the workforce. However, that is not the case. We know that the professional soccer globally is a multi-billion dollars history in which one million Euros is considered “very cheap” and/or “very little amount” and that a top player could earn that amount in just approximately two months or even less. Like how I mentioned at the beginning on how top players such as Thierry Henry, Carlos Tevez, and Robinho just to name three started out playing soccer in their respective hometowns when they were kids and now they are the who's who of soccer. In other words, another and perhaps the most significant benefit that kids stand to gain by embracing and playing soccer is a glittering career in the professional scene.
The kids might just be playing casually with friends and/or representing their schools. It does not seem like a big deal at all to a casual and average observer. But in the professional scene exists people known as scouts who are employed by national team federations and football clubs (local or overseas) whose duties are to identify and pick out promising talents to be groomed into the final product and to serve the scouting team with distinction.
The obvious benefit of playing soccer professionally is of course in terms of finance. Many soccer players spent their childhoods in poverty, but soccer more often than not offer a way out of their plight. It is true that not many will get the chance to be the Ronaldos and Kakas of this world and earn millions of Euros annually, but even if they do not, soccer could at least provide an avenue of financial help at the semi-pro and/or amateur level. This is observed quite extensively in the countries in which soccer is the top sport such as the UK and France in which many people from policemen to binmen ply their trades in soccer on a part time basis. They could yet find their way to the top rung of soccer ladder from this route, such as how Steve Savidan, the somewhat legendary French player (who was a binman himself) would gladly testify to all aspiring semi-pro soccer players.
Even for kids who are not living in a top footballing nations such as Malta, Bhutan, and San Marino in Europe. they could easily be selected in the national teams of these nations and compete with the world's best in the European Championship against the best names in soccer such as Italy, Spain, and France. Even if they garner 0 point and even 0 goal scored, the experience of playing against the top soccer players such as Wayne Rooney, Daniele de Rossi, and David Villa is too invaluable. Thus, I would say that the biggest benefit for kids who play soccer is of course to pursue a career in soccer, whether as a top professional and be the next who's who in the sport, as well as just supplementing one's income by playing the sport on a semi-pro basis. Even for girls, fret not, as the women's scene of soccer is increasingly developing really well and the women's game is improving and garnering positive reputations as well as time passes.
We have seen how soccer is incredibly good for kids and that the benefits stated above are not mutually exclusive and that they are able to earn all of those benefits stated above all at once. Again, it is incredible and I would even say a bit spooky on how a simple sport such as soccer is simply irresistably good for the kids and how a world of benefits these kids stand to gain just from playing this game. This is the magic of the game, and the sheer impacts of soccer for kids around the world is just one little aspect of what soccer is capable of. In short, we, especially if we are soccer fans, should start thinking about educating our kids about soccer since a very early age and to encourage them to play the sport considering the plethora of benefits that they could gain from playing soccer. For the kids, let's tie up your boots' laces, bring the ball to the nearest play, and let's kick the ball around!
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