Soccer offers an obvious fitness benefit, as the game requires walking, jogging and sprinting for an hour indoors or 90 minutes outdoors. As a team sport that requires six players on the field in indoor and 11 outdoor, as well as substitutes, soccer also has built-in social advantages. As you get to know your teammates, you can make new friends outside of your family, school and work spheres and grow in unexpected directions.
Group Acceptance
At the youth level, being good at classroom activities may not enhance a child's acceptance and may even hinder a child's status. Competence in soccer and similar activities, on the other hand, is strongly and positively related to social acceptance, writes kinesiology professor Jane Watkinson in "Let's Play! Promoting Active Playgrounds." This may be a hard fact of life, but it exists, and social acceptance accrues to a child not only for playing soccer, but especially for being good at it, Watkinson observes.
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As with other adult team sports, you meet people, but in soccer, "you meet people from around the world," says Wes Harvey, former men's soccer coach at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. More than other widely practiced recreation sports in the U.S., such as basketball, football, softball and baseball, foreign players from all over the globe enjoy and excel at soccer, and look for recreational and competitive league teams to continue their passion for the game. If you have an interest in finding international friends, soccer can deliver on this interest. Co-ed teams also offer opportunities for single players to meet and begin friendships and dating.
Interaction with Friends
Although soccer has rules and scorekeeping and requires a competitive focus, at heart it is play. First-graders on a soccer field know for example that their purpose is to attempt to win. Yet they enjoy the activity simply as an end to itself, as an excuse to play and interact with friends, writes University of Wisconsin-Green Bay psychology professor Fergus P. Hughes in "Children, Play and Development." The young player may even lose sight of the fact of his intended purpose -- athletics and exercise -- in playing soccer. Similarly, adults may love not only playing soccer itself but also driving to the game together; catching up by chitchatting about new jobs, children and pets; and conversing on the sidelines about their favorite professional teams or plans for a pub or sports bar outing.
Transition for Immigrants
Players with English-speaking ability or who are bilingual may join a club of primarily English speakers. Other immigrants to Europe, North America and Australia often struggle at first with the local language and a lack of social ties, especially if they don't speak English. Playing soccer with an ethnically based club offers them a avenue to develop ties and network with compatriots, notes contributing author and sports development writer Daniel Lock and colleagues in a chapter on "Soccer and Social Networks in Australia" in "Sport Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Stability and Change." The club can offer a chance to assist in their settlement while pursuing an activity they already know well, as well as chances to find employment and stay fit.
