The Surprising Truth About Professional Football that Amateurs Don't Realize...

as an amateur or a semi-professional footballer we all imagine our life as a pro what it feels like to play in front of thousands of fans what it feels like just to kick a ball around all day and that be your only worry and what it feels like to be paid to do so but when you actually get to the pro level there's some surprises some good some bad so from the beginning Circa 2015 the very first thing that surprised me about the professional game was just how fast the game moves the speed of play at the professional level it's not like they're way more athletic or way faster or way more agile or they're way more flashy on the ball or technical it just seemed like they were all on the same page and they were all thinking three or four steps ahead you step into a professional level Rondo and it's overwhelming you're standing on the side of the Rondo and you're just watching this ball just zip around from player to player and every player just seems to be handling it perfectly and all of a sudden it comes into you and you're so focused with the pace the ball whips into you that you don't even have time to think about where the ball should go and then it no surprise you end up losing the ball or passing it into the guy in the middle and then now you're in the middle of the Rondo and this is honestly how it feels in every single drill from the passing patterns to The Possession drills to the small-sided you're just constantly surviving at this level at this speed of play and I really don't think this is something you can truly appreciate or understand until you step foot in a professional level training session or with other Pros but it 100% is the very first thing that surprised me about the professional game the second thing that really surprised me about pros and this kind of ties into speed of play but it's just how simple and effective pros play 95% of the time by the second or third day of training with professional team for the first time once the dust almost settles and I'm able to really look around and actually analyze why the speed of play is so high you realize that it's so fast because every player is taking one or two touches and they know exactly where that one touch pass needs to go as that Ball's coming into them or even before that Ball's even played into them and then that 5% of the time when they receive the ball with time and space facing a defender or it's in the final third or they're around the box and something needs to be created that's when they do something special that's when they take extra touches or try out a move or try a high-risk option because that's what the game's calling for at that moment Pros are just exceptionally good at making the right decision for that specific moment in time and most of the time that moment is calling for the player to play quick fast and effective the third thing that surprised me was just how competitive it was once I had trained with this professional team for a few weeks I started to know the players which players were the key players which players started which players were on the bench and which players didn't even travel or suit up for the games and again I remember having this thought looking at this third string right back and thinking this guy's a ball this guy's a really good player but once you sit down and think about it it makes sense this guy's a pro he's a professional level player he was once the standout at his division one or division 2 college team or Semi-Pro team or he came from another country with a smaller professional league and he was a standout player there there's a reason why this guy is paid to play the game and it sounds so obvious of course all Pros are going to be good players but it really didn't sink in the even guys that don't dress up for the games are still Ballers because when you're a semi-pro the gap between the starting players and the the second string players is is pretty noticeable and if you go down to the amateur level or a pickup game the gap between the best players there and the worst players is huge but as you go higher and higher and higher up that Gap shrinks and shrinks and shrinks until you're at the Prem where you have multiple players in these positions where the only difference between them is Tiny marginal details and again as a fan I don't think you realize that the difference is that close between these players until you're actually there and you see it firsthand all all right guys so if you need a highlight video or you need an upto-date highlight video then the sponsor of today's video is for you Stafford production specializes in the creation of professional level highlight videos I had the opportunity to work with them they created my 2023 highlight video and Not only was the process incredibly streamlined I also love how my highlight video came out I do promote players to create their own highlight videos film their own games do all this stuff yourself to learn the process but it 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I sent you and get yourself a professional level highlight video today the fourth thing that surprised me about the pro game is that being good enough to sign a pro contract is just step one out of a 10 20 step process to sign that Pro contract when I was younger even on honestly when I was in college I just thought that if I developed my technical tactical and physical game up to the professional standard that I would be offered a pro contract and it makes sense but it's way more complex of a process than I thought this surprise really sunk in after I had gone on multiple trials with multiple different professional teams the one that sticks out of my head I was on trial in 2018 with a professional team in the USL championship and I had a great trial there the coaches seemed to really like me I really performed I thought I did really well but afterwards when I sat down and spoke with the coach he basic basally said look you're a USL Championship right back but you're not our USL Championship right back he went on to explain to me that he wanted his team to have an identity of being more creative Ticky taka more Latino based type players and that my more American style hard work make 10,000 Sprints up and down the field One V one defending a little bit more grittier style right back was not really going to mesh that well with how he wanted to play the game so that's when I realized that being good enough was step one step two is fitting into the style of play that the coach or the team wants to implement step three is do they need your position step four is do they even have enough roster space to sign you step five is if you're an international do they have a foreign spot for you step six might be do you fit in with the guys as a group off the field step seven is does the front office want to sign you do they see a need to sign another player step eight is can the team the player come to an agreement on salary and housing and bonuses Step n is do they have the housing that you require and step 10 does the league fully approve of this signing is it in the appropriate window does the Players Association approve of your salary there's just so many steps that go into this process and it was just shocking when I saw that it was so much more complicated than I thought the fifth thing that surprised me as a pro footballer is just how little pros make fif Pro did this Global football employment study and this is back from 2016 so you have to realize these numbers are lower than they are today only 14% of fulltime professional players worldwide made over $100,000 a year and 74% of profession professional players worldwide made less than $44,000 a month if we're looking at the US the median household income for 2023 is like 75k a year if we look at the MLS there are players in the MLS on the minimum who are making 67k a year so again let this sink in right now there are players who are marking Messi playing in front of 30 40 sometimes 60,000 fans in a beautiful huge Stadium at the first division of American professional soccer and they're making less than the median household income in America even in the league I compete in the USL Championship I think the average salary hovers around $50,000 of total compensation and that total compensation also includes your housing so on one hand it is amazing to be able to make a living and play this game kick a ball around and get paid to do it it really is a dream come true but even if you are a successful Pro and you make it to the USL Championship or MLS you still aren't guaranteed to be making money where you can just retire from everything once you're done playing and as a kid a high schooler or Semi-Pro I put professionals on this pedestal where I imagine if you're playing in front of 10,000 20,000 30,000 fans you automatically you're set for life but in actuality you're only retiring from what you make as a pro if you are in the global Elite the top 1 2% of Pros worldwide the sixth thing that surprised me is just how much free time you have day-to-day once I started to settle into the routine of being a professional footballer you quickly realize that a lot of your day is just spent waiting for the next day waiting for the next training session waiting for the next game on your longest days you might get to the facilities at 8:00 a.m. have breakfast do your prehab training you have your after training treatment you have your lunch you go to the gym you shower you're all done you will probably get home around 2:00 p.m. so you leave around 7:30 get home around 2:00 even then the longest days you still have majority of your afternoon evening night to do whatever you want since you're a pro and you don't have any other jobs or you don't have school or anything the rest of your day is just kind of chilling you watch TV you play video games maybe you have other Hobbies you hang out with your family and you really just prepare for that next training session you recover the right way eat the right way and sleep the right way when you travel for games it's just a lot of waiting on airplanes waiting in hotel rooms waiting for kickoff I stand by the fact that being a pro footballer is the dream life it is the best job on Earth there's a reason why I haven't quit because it is the best thing but that free time starts to eat at you there's a lot of players that complain about boredom or loneliness there's a huge reason as to why I do this whole become Elite Channel because I'd go crazy if I didn't have something else in my life to occupy my time but it is so surprising when you finally become a pro and you think you're going to have this crazy action-packed lifestyle and you really kind of just sit around and watch a lot of TV and a lot of movies the seventh thing that surprised me about being a pro is just how basic the training sessions are after you go through a couple Seasons at the professional level you start to see that all the training sessions are pretty much the same regardless of where you play which team which coach even which country you do a war warm-up drill passing pattern some possession you do a tactical drill focused on a theme and then you try to implement that theme in some small sighted and then you maybe finish with some Crossing and finishing that is like the template for the average training session at the professional level of course the drills can change a little bit the focus can shift restrictions can be added but that's pretty much what an average session looks like and I don't know why I thought this but as a kid I thought that a professional level training session was going to have the craziest complex passing patterns the craziest drill and it's going to be such a complex thing that that was really where you get the challenge of the professional level setting but in reality the complexity of the drill isn't what makes it a professional level drill what makes it a professional level drill is the speed of play the intensity and the attention to detail by all the players and coaching staff you could have a square passing pattern where all you're doing is just doing two touches and passing the ball around the square but you can make this an incredibly intense professional level drill if every single player's locked in in to this drill that's a professional level drill even though the drill in itself is something that you can do with an 8-year-old the eighth thing that surprised me about the professional level is just how much the focus shifts from development to preparing for the next game at the Youth Level amateur level Semi-Pro level a lot of the focus even majority of the focus is on developing the players to improve these players to one day play in college or one day play at the pro level winning is important you want to win you want to be successful but that's secondary to the development of of the individual players at the professional level that completely gets flipped on its head of course development is still important you want all these Pros to develop his players to grow as players to improve but the main focus the only thing that matters is winning games and performing in the season and as a player I knew that winning was more important at this level but I was a little surprised with how that affected the training sessions the training sessions are way more geared to the first team performing the Tactical side of it how we're going to go out on this weekend how we're going to play how we're going to press all that kind of stuff and way less about just improving your technical skills or improving you as a player and I think a lot of players are surprised with that especially if they're not in the first team and they're getting the focus they kind of feel like they are in the shadows and they're almost forgotten about the ninth thing that surprise me is just how Cutthroat of a business the professional game can be if you're not performing every single day in training with how competitive the environment is most likely you're not going to get a chance to play on the weekend if you don't play in games there's little chance that going to be offered a contract that next year for your current team or even for a different team even if you do play in these games if your team is not performing and you at the bottom of the table most likely your team is searching to find players as a replacement for you that can get them to the top of the table the second that your performance dips you're out of form a little injury pops up someone comes in to replace you and the spotlight instantly shifts to them all the while every single team is constantly looking for better players more talented players and younger players to come in and fill your position every single day it's a constant fight in your position in your team in your league and in the professional game only the players that can consistently perform at a high level every single day week after week month after month season after season are the ones that stick around and have long successful careers I watched the full David Beckham documentary the other day and even him he's one of the best midfielders in the world and all of a sudden he gets sold to Real Madrid just like that I didn't really know the full behind the scenes and just how Cutthroat it was just not even a good buy just one day yeah you're gone if that's how brutal and Cutthroat the game can be to one of the best players in the world imagine how brutal and Cutthroat the game could be to me or to other players who are not even close to David Beckham I think when I was younger and more naive I I always just thought that once you get to the professional level and you finally get that chance and you make it it's really easy to hold on to it you're safe you've made it you can relax a little bit and hold on to your spot until it's your choosing to leave and go to a different team but as soon as you get to the pro level the the grind and the battle and competitiveness that's just the start you have to deal with that every single day for the rest of your career the 10th thing that surprise me is just how amazing being a pro scoring a goal signing a contract playing in front of thousands of fans actually feels as a kid I imagined all of these things and I imagined what it would feel like but once you actually do it it it's even better than what you imagine all of those moments surprise me with how amazing they actually felt they're very very few things in the world that can give you that same Rush as scoring a goal in front of thousands of fans or playing for your first time in front of 25,000 people it's just an incredible feeling that I really really push all of you guys to chase those moments are something that you'll remember for the rest of your life and it does take a lot of low moments and sacrifice and grind and work to get there but it's 100% worth it and as Pros we have a saying that the worst day out on the field is still better than the best in an office so that's it guys that's 10 things that surprise me about the professional game if you like this video please hit the Thumbs Up Button subscribe I'll see you guys in the next video all right guys [Music] peace

Channel: Become Elite

Views: 678,463

Keywords: soccer, football, sports, vlog, matt, sheldon, become, elite, professional, pro, footballer, athlete, workout, weight, lift, train, training, saint, louis, fc

Id: 7E798U31uGM

Length: 15min 18sec (918 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023