Parents’ Visions and Strategies regarding the Schooling of Sons who are Soccer Trainees

Abstract

This article describes the schooling strategies utilized by the parents of young (age range 10, 24) soccer trainees and how these relate to the school itself. The results showed that parents and soccer trainees placed schooling in second place in favor of the sport. Therefore, they sought strategies and schools whose academic obligations were more flexible. Their actions were derived from an idea that schooling had greater time elasticity than sport professionalization. At school, this created tension and stigma regarding the soccer trainees and their parents, and showed that, at the institutional level, both the school and the soccer club were poorly structured for the demands of such a hybrid arrangement.