It is very hard to put into words all the benefits soccer has. Specially for me as a soccer player, that has learned everything in life with a soccer ball in his feet. Soccer players, coaches, and fans are the most passionate people for their sport in the whole planet. If you are going to read an article about this topic, surely, it has to be from someone who has lived, played, and sacrificed for this sport.
Benefits of playing soccer? Thanks to this sport I am the person who I am today. It has helped me, not only physically, but to develop completely as a human being in all aspects. I am sure that me, or any soccer player, will tell you that soccer is the best school of life.
I am sure that, if I chose to never play soccer, I would be a completely different person today. We’ll break down each one of the aspects that make this sport special, and the benefits that will bring to you, to your kids, friends, and family if you decide to play this sport we call: “The Beautiful Game”.
I also decided to put together for you a survey I made to all soccer players in my community, or people I have met through this game. In this survey they describe how soccer has benefit their life, and how it has helped them developed as a human being. Make sure to read until the end to check that out. In this way you have, not one, but many opinions from people that have actually played this sport.
Benefits broken down
So, we’ve broken down the benefits of playing the game into: health, social, and mental benefits. In the following bulleted list you can see all the benefits we’ll talk about broken down.
However, in the article we’ll talk about each one more in depth. Use this bulleted list only as a guide. In order to understand the benefits of soccer you should read how each of the benefits contributes to making you a better human being in the article.
General benefits of playing soccer:
- Helps build friendships
- Promotes being more extrovert
- You learn to win and loose
- Teaches you teamwork
- Significantly contributes to higher self-esteem
- Teaches hard work, dedication, and discipline
- Helps build character and personality
- Prevents depression and helps to live happier
- Teaches respect
- Having fun and enjoying the game
- Played globally
- Enhances healthy competitiveness
- Keeps you away from bad habits
Benefits of playing soccer for your kids:
- Keeps them healthy
- Keeps them away from technology and other bad habits
- They make friends and build a social personality
- Teaches them about life young
- Higher self-esteem in a depressed generation
- Outdoor interaction
- Helps them deal with rejection and loosing
Health benefits
I would like to say that health benefits for me are not something that has been the deciding factor to play soccer. If we are going to talk about health, then soccer would not be any special or different from all the other sports or any other physical activity. Making sports, in general, will have, mostly, the same benefits for everyone.
Considering this, knowing the health benefits from soccer is obviously important, but is not something that will be a “game changer” when playing soccer. Being true that soccer can help you drastically improve your physique, what soccer has best to offer is far beyond just having great physical conditions; it’s the non-physical part of the game that has the greatest benefits.
Being said this, here are some health benefits that soccer, and many other sports have to offer:
- Helps strengthen your bones and muscles.
- Contributes to having a lower cholesterol and fats in the body.
- Releases endorphins that significantly contribute to having a better mood and improving memory.
- Improves coordination and flexibility.
- Better reflexes (specially for goalkeepers).
- Decreases the risk of stroke, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
The real benefits
Helps build friendships
I would say that this is one of the best things about soccer: making great friendships. Today, after years playing soccer, I can say that I know people who “life has made my friends, but soccer has made them my brothers”. If you are a person that is not sociable at all, and it is very hard for you to make friends, then soccer is the best sport for you.
I am a shy person outside the field. I don’t like talking to people that much, and it is difficult for me to make friends. All of that changes in the soccer field. Once you start playing soccer, you can make friends without even talking with each other. Playing the game is so engaging that it helps you bond with people without saying a single word.
In fact, most of the friends I have in my life right now, I’ve made them through soccer. Everywhere I go, soccer has helped me be a more social person overall. I remember when I graduated school and went to college. I was a freshman and didn’t know anybody at the university. I decided to enter to the university’s soccer team, and everything changed after that. I had many friends and I was hanging around at college with them.
This is super beneficial for kids, teenagers or even adults. You get to know different types of people and build new relationships, even if you don’t consider yourself as a friendly person.
Promotes being more extrovert
Another great benefit of soccer is that it helps introvert people be more extrovert. Introvert people are those who prefer to spend time by themselves rather than being very sociable with people. In the other hand, extrovert people are those that like and promote interaction, and are a lot more active with the people around them.
There is nothing bad between being one or another, but in my opinion, most of the succesful people in life are more extrovert than introvert. At anything you do, either you’re a salesman, a doctor, a lawyer or a businessman, you need to know how to deal and treat with people. You can’t go through life having no contact with any other people.
Humans live in society, and soccer helps players to fit into this one. We see this problem a lot in kids. At the beginning, most of them are very introvert and shy. Soccer will help them become more extrovert and learn to accept society in a better way.
You learn to win and loose
Hands down, learning to win and loose is the best thing soccer can teach you about life. This is the reason why I say that soccer is the best school of life, because every single thing that happens in this game, can teach you a lesson about life.
Soccer can teach how to handle a lost. It will make you realize that, as in life, you can’t always win. That after every loss, you need to stand up, keep training even harder, and come back even stronger. Soccer teaches not to be sore looser. Of course, we all hate to loose. But there is a difference on how each one of us handles it.
In this sport we will also learn that, sometimes, life is not fair. That there will be times you will lose because the referee made a bad decision that is totally out of your hands. Other times, you will have to accept that the other team or player was better than you, knowing that you need to keep getting better if you want to become a winner.
Also, soccer teaches you how to be a good winner. We all hate more a bad winner than a sore looser. It is fundamental in a sport like this, that you know how to behave correctly when your up, because you never know when you will be down. It’s called sportsmanship.
Soccer teaches you how to be humble at the times you are at the top and strong at the times your down.
Teaches you to work in a team
Learning to work in a team is super important for everyone. Absolutely all people, no matter what you do in life, has to know how to work in teams. Anywhere you are: at school, for example, the teacher will always make you work in groups. At your job, maybe your boss will assign you a task to do with other colleagues. If you are a manager, then you need to understand how each one of your workers is and how to get the most out of each one of them.
Teamwork is important in order to be a successful person in life. You can achieve a lot more with a great team than alone. The same happens in soccer, in order to win championships, you need to play good collectively, as a team.
Another great thing about soccer is that you meet people of all type: shy, social, arrogant, humble, etc. In soccer you learn how to treat and deal with different types of people. This is a very useful skill to have in your dailu life outside the soccer field.
Significantly contributes to higher self-esteem
It has been scientifically proven that exercise helps you develop a higher self-esteem. Playing soccer is something that will boost your confidence and personality. I don’t really know a lot of people that play soccer that have a low self-esteem. I’ve witnessed this myself. I grew up wearing horrible huge glasses to play, using braces or brackets, and with acne issues, and even with all of this things, I always had a high self-esteem.
Teaches you the basics of life: hard work, discipline and dedication
In life you don’t achieve anything without these three things: hard work, discipline and dedication. These three things are well tought to all soccer players. All the best professional players out there have worked super hard to get to where they are. They all say it: Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar. It is true that talent plays a big factor, but without hard work not even one of them would have gotten there.
It is not only about working hard, but also about dedication and sacrifice. If you dream on becoming a professional player one day, you need to understand that you will have to choose soccer over other things in life like partying or hanging out with your friends. You do this because you are dedicated to soccer. This is applicable to be successful at any aspect of life too.
Finally, discipline is something that comes by default in every soccer player. I’ve had the chance to play with and against undisciplined players and guess where they got in life? Nowhere. In soccer, coaches don’t tolerate this types of players. Same happens in life.
Helps build character and personality
In football, all soccer players develop a personality and strength of character by force. The game will always put you into situations where you need to show the best version of yourself, like for example: needing to score 2 goals to complete a comeback, recover from an injury, defending an advantage, or scoring the decisive penalty in the penalty shootout.
Soccer teaches you how to build your strongest part of yourself to overcome the toughest situations. A player without a strong personality and strength of character is going nowhere in a soccer pitch, and in life. All of this that you learned in soccer, can be passed to use in your daily life.
Prevents depression and helps to be happier
We’ve all felt down at one point in our lives. When we feel in that way we tend to over think everything. When I am having problems in my life, the best thing I can do is becoming an addict to soccer. The reason I love this sport so much is because I can have a thousand problems, but at the moment I step into a soccer field I forget about all of them.
When you have a healthy body, are a social person, you are having a great time with your friends, and have fun playing soccer it’s just impossible to feel depressed and sad, and you are more likely to be happier overall. The more you are practicing and playing soccer with your friends, the happier you are and the less you are worried about your life’s problems.
Teaches respect
Again, we talk about how soccer benefits you emotionally. In soccer you learn to respect everyone, specially the authority. In soccer, players respect the coaches instructions, tactics, and philosophy. Being disrespectful with your teammates or coaches is a behavior that is socially unacceptable among soccer players.
In life there will always be authorities you will have to respect and deal with. You can’t go through life thinking that you are superior to everyone, lacking respect to people. Again, this is how sportsmanship in soccer helps you develop as a human being.
Having fun and enjoying the game
This is probably the reason why all the people play soccer or sports in general. We just want to have a great time with other people. We play the game because it is fun and we enjoy it. One of the people that did the survey that is at the end of this article said:
“The experience, the way you live your life around football, the way the passion gets into your heart and makes you love the beautiful game like nobody else can, the way the game makes you love it, and the way it can make you enjoy it is the greatest benefit to playing soccer”.
Played globally
This benefit I can say is exclusively unique to soccer. In my article “Why Soccer is the Most Popular Sport” I talk about how soccer is the only sport that is played in every continent in the world, and why it is so popular.
The reason why this is a great benefit is because you get to meet and play with people from different cultures around the world. For example, I am from Panama and I have played with people from China, Japan, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Africa, and many others. Soccer is a universal language. Anywhere you go you will have where to train and who to play this game with.
Enhances healthy competitiveness
There is a difference between healthy and unhealthy competitiveness. For me, a healthy competitiveness is one in which both sides become better with it. Both sides support each other and always respect and recognize how great the rival is. This is the type of competitiveness that we look for in soccer.
Being competitive is always good. It keeps you away from being a conformist person. The people that are most successful at life are those that push themselves and keep moving forward every single day. This is what happens in soccer. Everyone wants to be the best player and team, which is why competitiveness increases in all the players.
This is very good for kids specially. It teaches them young that they live in a competitive world in which they have to work very hard to be better than other people. Teaching them to be competitive through soccer is good because it keeps them focused on really earning their spot through pure effort and with great respect for competitors, and not with unhealthy sabotage competition.
Keeps you away from bad habits
One of the main reasons why governments in poor countries promote the practice of all sports, not only soccer, is because it keeps the youth away from bad habits. This is compeltely true, Soccer helps them get entertained by practicing something that will actually be beneficial for their health, mind, and social life. Instead of being occupied in other bad habits such as drugs and alcohol.
Benefits for your kids
Before reading how soccer is beneficial for your kids, I want you to click here to see a video from Simon Sinek called Millenials. In this video, Simon explains why young and future generations are presenting so much problems like depression, laziness, selfishness, etc. I need you to see this video so you can recognize that there is a real problem in young generations. Thankfully, soccer will help solve most of this problems in our kids lives.
Keeps them healthy
The first and most important thing is that it helps your kids be healthier. Childhood obesity is becoming more and more common every single year in the United States. I don’t have kids, but it must be very sad to have a kid suffering from this disease. This type of health problem can later bring other social problems like rejection at school, bullying, depression, and low self-esteem. The base for a kid to have a great childhood is him to be completely healthy.
Keeps them away from technology and other bad habits
As you saw in Simon’s video, young generations are growing addicted to cellphones and technology in general. In a world filled with technological devices it is hard to keep kids away from it. It is super sad for me to see that there are kids who’s childhoods is being ruined because they prefer to stay inside, playing with a device, instead of going outside and make friends.
At the end of the day, technology is very prejudicial for kids. It totally eliminates the social mechanisms for them to dealing with people and making friends. It keeps them away from exercise and having a fun childhood.
Soccer is a great option for your kids to grow up as a kid should grow in this modern technological era. Having your kids busy, practicing in a soccer team, keeps them away from all of this technological devices.
They make friends and build a social personality
As I said before, how is a kid supposed to know how to make friends and build a personality if they are attached to a device all the time? By making kids play soccer, they meet other kids and they can make new friends. All the social benefits I mentioned above like adopting a great personality and character, specially helps young kids to grow-up without any mental or social disorder.
Teaches them young about life
By having kids play soccer, they learn very young all the toughest lessons in life. In the video, Simon said: “Parents tell their kids they can have everything they want to just because they want it. When they grow up, they realize they are not special and that they have to work hard to get everything”.
Soccer teaches them young that you have to train hard every single day to be the best player in the team, to win games, and to make the coach like you. They learn that everything you want in life you have to fight for it and that it won’t be given to you just because you want it. They are tought that you need to work together as a team, and that the best things in life take time to be achieved.
This is why young soccer players grow up with a higher self-esteem in a depressed generation.
Helps them deal with rejection and loosing
It may be hard for a parent to watch their son cry because they lost a soccer game, or to cry because maybe one of their teammates doesn’t like him. Learning to deal with rejection and loosing are one of the hardest things to achieve in life, even being an adult.
However, if a kid goes through this pain and grows up in this environment, when he grows up, loosing and rejection will be something completely normal for him, and he will understand that this is part of life. Having this skill is extremely beneficial, not only in soccer, but in every aspect of our lives.
The survey
I decided to make a survey to other people to see if I was the only guy out there that thought soccer had so many benefits. I sent the survey to 17 teammates and friends that have played soccer with me during my whole. Thankfully, they confirmed all of the things I mentioned in the article. Let’s take a look at the results.
Which of the following (health, mental, social, and life lessons) you consider are the most important benefits soccer provides?
As you can see, what is most important when people play soccer is to obtain the social benefits like: building friendships, teamwork, hard work, dedication and discipline. 52% considered this types of benefits to be the most important ones. Health benefits come second with a 47% of people.
This confirms what I was trying to say, people play soccer not exclusively because of the health benefits. If it only was because of that, then it would be exactly the same to play any other sport. What makes soccer special are the social benefits and the life lessons it teaches to people.
Do you consider it is easier to make friends when playing soccer?
88% of people agree that it is easier to make friends when playing this game. As I said at the beginning, the game is very engaging and you can make new friends without saying a word.
In another question I also asked if people considered that soccer has helped them have a higher self-esteem. Again 82% (14 out of 17) of people agreed.
How likely would you recommend a parent to have their children play soccer?
This is a result I was very happy with when I saw 88% said they were very likely to recommend parents to make their kids play the beautiful game. The other 11% said that maybe they would. These are people who grew up playing this beautiful game. They know all the ups and downs from it. As well as them, I would totally recommend parents to have their children play soccer, and, when I have my own, probably I will put them to practice this sport the moment they learn how to walk.
Do you consider you would be the same person today if you would have never played soccer?
70% of people said they would be a totally different person today if they would have never played soccer. With this, we proof that soccer truly has a great impact and totally changes the way people live in a good way. The benefits to this game are so much, that practicing it helps us be a more complete person.
Has soccer been a great school of life?
The last question is the one I was most curious about. I confirmed that I’m not the only one that thinks that soccer has a great a similarity to how life works. Everything in the game teaches you a lesson that you can use in your real life: loosing, winning, respect, discipline, passion, dedication, and many more.
Related Questions
What sport will get you in the best shape? I would say that tennis, surf, and swimming are sports that will help women get in their best shape. In the other hand, I would say that soccer, swimming, and american football will help men be in their best shape. All of these are sports that work on improving strength equally along the whole body (upper and lowe limb).
What is the most beneficial sport? It is important to know that playing any type of sport is beneficial. This word can be very relative, but if I had to choose a very beneficial sport it would be swimming because it works on strengthening the whole body, it has countless of health benefits that other sports don’t have, and it is a very safe sport from injuries.