Tuesday, June 17, 2008

How Brasil kids learn to play soccer?



I will not write here as a specialized soccer guru. My younger son has just 8 yeas old and I have seen him and his friends to ply soccer and thought: how did he and all of those kids learn to play soccer?
Well, frankly, that is a mystery. And that mystery took me as an important question: how Brazil kids learn to play soccer?


I think there is not a simple reply to that question. In fact, if we knew that answer the Brazilian soccer should ever gain the soccer world cup. But, as the entire world knows, it is not right.However, there are some things that make us intrigued, not because at Brazil we have Pele, widely regarded as one the greatest footballer of all time, either because the Brazil national football team, five times world-wide champion soccer.

This curiosity appear when we see kids playing soccer without shoes, in the streets, improvised fields, of land, sand, gram, wherever, with a sort of unstoppable dribbling and goals.Ronaldo, Ronaldinho Gaucho, both so-called the best world futboll player, they played football with special skills since childhood. They are identified as a rising star.

What do they have of fellow creature with millions of Brazilian children? I do think this soccer learning begin around 3 or 4 yeas old. I ask some kids how do they learned to play soccer and they answered me it was with their fathers. Maybe at this age they became conscious about football skills. Anyway, I think the father and a ball as present it takes the boy to awake for the soccer.

Nowadays, we can also say that the girls, in a lesser ratio, are awaked for soccer. But the ratio of boys without a doubt still is bigger.On the other hand, soccer is a form of socialization of the child. It is a strong element in such a way to make new friendships, even to solidify oldest one. And those friendships can be consider too an element of initiation at the art of to play soccer.
When we observe small football play and we find natural players, making its dribbling, showing its affinities and abilities with the ball, we have to imagine that beyond the soccer schools, the domestic learning environment has been basic in the learning of these children.

In a way, to play soccer with my son is very good and it takes me a sentimental player. My abilities are not the same ones of when I also was a child already, at my first moment of learning of the soccer art. I remember the football play through the street of my house. The memories came to me facing me at my past. But these memories are collated with my present day, when I see my son to give me one dribbling underneath of my legs, to mark a goal and to saying that he is a champion. Well, I do think he is.