Many Cameroonian youths wish and aspire to become professional and rich footballers or football players in Cameroon. Of course, they want to play in the best football clubs abroad and in Europe.
Are you one of them?
Do you want to become as successful as many great international footballers globally?
If Yes, this article is only what you need to read today.
The Cameroonian football industry has witnessed a tremendous improvement in past years as there are now many international football players and academies present in the country.
Cameroonians love the sport, and they always show this via their extreme passion and participation both at the national and international levels.
In Cameroon, you'll see fans supporting top local and international football clubs like Coton Sports, Union Douala, Kadji Sports Academy, PWD Bamenda, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, etc.
Although Cameroon has produced professional footballers who have represented the country in international games and competitions, it is still difficult to chase a professional career in football as a youth or teenager.
Many factors seem to hinder upcoming footballers in Cameroon from progressing to the next level.
That's why today, I'm willing to show you the proper steps to follow this year in pursuing and achieving your football goal/career.
As an aspiring footballer in Cameroon, you will not be lost on how to go about putting your talents and skills to great use because you'll get complete guidance and advice on how to go about your profession as a footballer.
At the end of this article, you will be fully energized to pursue your passion of becoming a professional footballer.
So, ensure to take your time and read to the end to achieve your footballing dream.
Who is a Footballer?
A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays a different football.
The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby league, and rugby union.
Footballers begin as amateurs, and the best players become professional players.
They usually start at a youth team (any local team), and from there, based on skill and Talent, scouts offer contracts.
Once signed, some learn to play better football, and a few advance to the senior or professional teams.
For years, successful footballers are often respected and well-regarded by their countrymen and fans.
How to Become a Rich Footballer in Cameroon (Play Abroad)
Here are the proper steps to become a successful footballer in Cameroon and earn money:
1. Assess Your Football Talent
In becoming a professional footballer in Cameroon, the first significant step you need is to realize your football talent, assess yourself on the type of player you are or want to be, and work hard on your strengths until they become second nature.
Are you a defender or good at goalkeeping?
Are you a striker? What type of striker are you? False 9? Target Man? Etc.
You will need to also create a portfolio of your videos, playing skills readily available in any form to show to whoever may be interested in you.
See Also: How to Be Rich in Cameroon?
2. Be Determined and Prepared For Football
There is no successful footballer who became famous by chance.
The starting point to becoming a professional footballer in Cameroon is a firm determination about your vision.
Carry out your research and decide on what you are about to do because aside from having the skill or talent to play football, there are other things you have to do to be famous.
Football is a profession that requires hard work, discipline, determination, Patience, mind, and body.
You may have the talent to play football, but you must decide about taking it as a profession.
You must rate yourself to know your strengths and weaknesses in football.
There will be challenges on your way up, and you will give up too soon if you are not firmly determined from the start.
3. Be Passionate About the Game
If you want to become a footballer, you must devote yourself to the game.
The amount of love you have for football drives your passion.
Live football. Breathe football. Dream football.
Without passion, there will be little to no progress in your football career.
Passion can make you endure periods of intense challenges, as they will undoubtedly arise.
You must have a genuine interest and be willing to learn and know more about this field.
Money, although necessary, should not come first in your quest to become a football player; if not, you are most likely to lose track and may not achieve your goal of playing for any club of worth.
Be passionate about your hobby and stay focused.
Your passion and gifts can translate into something big, i.e., something you do in your spare time can just be what people all around the world are looking for.
Avoid being distracted by events around you.
With enough flair and passion, you will live through challenging moments in your journey to football stardom.
4. Start Playing Football Early
Start playing football at a young age.
If you are opportune to know that you want to become a professional footballer at a tender age, I'll advise you to train immediately.
Do not worry so much about playing on a team early on.
Get your friends and parents to play football with you as much as possible from an early age.
You can later shift to playing in organized youth teams between the ages of 5 and 14.
Starting off at a young age will set you at an advantage because you will have enough time to develop yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Let's assume you began professional football training at 8; at age 20, you'd have had 12 solid years of coaching and mastership to become a trained professional footballer.
5. Develop Your Football Gift
Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the best footballers in the world, once said, 'Talent is not all that matters.
Even though you can play football and know how to win games with your team, you still need to develop your football skills.
If you want to become a successful footballer, you must trade comfort for hard work, diligence, and dedication.
You need to go for your personal training and partake in your team training if you really want to become a professional footballer in Cameroon.
Continue to develop your strength and work on your weakness.
If football is what you truly love doing, then you shouldn't feel tired of training and having fun while improving yourself.
Train every day to improve your physical and mental skills.
If you are good with only your right leg, see how you can start using your left leg; if you are good with both, work on your stamina and learn to make accurate passes and throw-ins.
Work on your dribbling skills on the field and in your mind.
Learn to catch a ball and keep the goal post if that is your desired position.
You can choose to train on your own or with friends.
You can also attend football training camps.
Attending football camps helps build your enthusiasm and awaken the spirit of competition.
Take part in organized football games early and often.
Try representing your town, school, office, or church at football tournaments.
6. Possess Some Basic Skills
Although practice makes perfect, you should have some basic skills and add these to your practice.
Skills added with constant practice will most likely get you to your desired destination.
This is seen in Cristiano Ronaldo of Manchester United of England and Lionel Messi of Paris Saint Germain of France.
7. Be Persistent on Becoming a Professional Footballer
Persistence in following your passion is essential.
All the football stars making an impact today all started from humble beginnings.
Perseverance and persistence brought them their current fame.
You need to continue to believe in yourself that you are the best, and you need to never give up even when it looks like all hope is gone.
Resist any form of temptation that will make you go astray.
Resist any temptation that will make you think you have practiced enough because if you believe this, your relevance will start fading away.
Continue to aim high and try to play like your football mentors – those you look up to.
8. Make Good Plans
Pursuing your football career will require so much of your time in training and learning.
Before you start out your football career in Cameroon or even abroad, you must have a plan on the ground on how to achieve your goal.
This plan will serve as your guide as you move on and when you go off balance.
In your plan, you must decide on the following questions:
Do you want to start off your football career in Cameroon or Abroad?
What football club would you love to play for?
Where will you receive your football training sessions?
How to get a trusted player agent(s) that will link you to football clubs and the club you want to play for?
Where do you intend sourcing for funds for kits, academy charges, and training sessions?
9. Always Stay Fit and Maintain Good Health
Football is a very physical sport that requires every part of your body and high energy consumption to remain on the field for 90 minutes plus extra time.
Most athletes get disqualified because they fail some medical tests.
Sometimes, it is not because they deliberately take harmful substances into their bodies; they may be careless about eating.
So, a nutritious diet, rich in protein, vitamins, and carbohydrates, plus exercise, is vital for you to stay in shape always.
10. Attend Good Football Training Academy
Joining a football academy is a significant way of quickly showing yourself to the world.
It is highly recommended that you attend a football academy where your skills will be polished and put to good use, exposing you to the right audience.
Without exposure to the right audience, your dream of becoming a professional football player is likely to be achieved.
Football academies will help you get the qualifications needed to be a professional footballer. One good thing is that you can sometimes join a football academy for free in Cameroon.
There are various top football academies in Cameroon where you can register to train yourself to become a professional footballer.
These academies have links with clubs abroad and can offer you the chance to play for one or more of their sister clubs home or abroad.
Scouts of club footballs visit academies to watch upcoming talents and catch them young.
So, buy their forms and make sure you meet their qualifications and requirements.
You can read these qualifications on their websites or at the football academy office branches.
11. Join a Good Local Football Team
Not everyone will have straight and easy access to a football academy.
If you cannot join an academy yet, you may enter a grassroots football team to boost your skill.
The best team will help promote you, just like joining an academy.
By joining a football club, you get to perfect your playing skills and get the attention of scouts through playing with a team.
If your team isn't as standard as it should be, you may switch to another team to have a better chance.
Loyalty is great, but personal development matters too.
Stay in a positive and growth-fueled environment that will enable you to succeed as a professional footballer.
12. Prepare for a Talent Scout
A talent scout can just appear anytime to assess your football team.
This calls for you to always be on your best behavior.
A scout's assessment of your individual performance can land you in a bigger club.
A scout will observe your display of team spirit, your ability to play with focus and calmness under pressure, etc.
Clubs might hold trials or talent days.
They also rely on the network they have in place to spot the best players and refer outstanding players onwards.
A scout will watch your entire attitude, not just your ball play, i.e., you will be monitored for the charactTalentmuch as Talent.
Involve yourself in all crucial tryouts.
Prove that you can be calm and focused even under pressure.
Remember to play your best at all times.
Show your ambition and competitiveness, but don't be mean.
Show your team spirit by helping your teammates.
You should also show that you can be calm and focused under pressure.
13. Go to Trial Camps Abroad
This idea will work for you if you have just graduated from a football school and are still within the age of 15 to 18.
You should start attending trial camps, especially the well-organized ones abroad.
If you're able to get yourself into a trial camp, top scouts and agents will see you play, and if your skills excite them, you could get admitted into one of the top-flight youth teams.
European clubs do if they find an excellent inexperienced player in Cameroon is they agree that the boy will keep playing in Cameroon until he is 18.
As soon as he completes 18, he can join the European club.
14. Sign Up with an Intermediary (Licensed Players Agent)
This applies to those who already play for a professional football club in the Cameroonian league.
You just need to look for an Intermediary, also known as Players' Licensed Agent, who will represent you and help you get invitations for trial tests with clubs abroad.
Having already professionally filmed and edited video clips of your best performances in the Cameroon league makes it even easier.
By so doing, agents can present your video clips to clubs and make them invite you for a trial test.
15. Networking with Other Footballers
As an aspiring footballer in Cameroon, do not underestimate what connections can do for you.
Suppose you want to become a professional footballer in Cameroon and Europe. In that case, you must connect with the right people (agents, upcoming or top footballers) who will introduce you to a good club.
Many of the players you are playing with today will become famous and get international contacts faster than you.
You need to connect with them now by being their friends so that when they become known internationally, they can help you too.
If you have contacts or social media handles of top Cameroon footballers, you can contact them to help introduce you to their agents or even club scouts.
You might just be lucky, and you will be sent for trial in any of the top clubs in Europe's top football leagues.
16. Promote Yourself and Your Team
You can promote your team and yourself.
Even if you are talented and can dribble from one end of the football field to the other, you still need to show yourself to the right audience by marketing your skills.
As an aspiring professional footballer, when you promote yourself or your team, you indirectly call the world's attention to yourself, which is one-way scouts can spot you fast.
You can use your official social media handles to showcase your skills and talents, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and others.
Some contents you can post include:
- Pictures of you and other players
- Results of matches your team is involved in
- Videos of you training hard
- Videos of your team playing or training
17. Land a Professional Football Contract
If you put in a great effort at developing your football skill, you can get signed into a football contract for a professional career.
But you have to exercise the utmost care in accepting a contract. A bad club can dim your light.
It is recommended that before committing to a contract with any club, whether international or local, the services of a lawyer and/or a manager should be hired.
You can pay them based on commission if you cannot employ the two.
That is, they get maybe 15% – 25% of contracts they can get for you.
The contract document should be read by both the player and the lawyer. The lawyer interprets any legal terms contained within the contract and explains its implications if they are good or bad for business.
You really have to be very careful as some Cameroonian players have found themselves under bondage which is hard to escape, resulting in their failure to excel.
Read and understand the terms of engagement before accepting to join a professional football club.
18. Have Good Communication
Football is a team sport, and good communication is vital.
Prove at all times that you are good at communicating.
Use your manners, express yourself clearly, avoid unruly or angry behavior on the field, and be a team player.
A player who is too much of an individual player, or refuses to communicate properly, is a liability on a team and not likely to go far.
19. Have Patience
Accept that becoming a football professionally is a gradual process.
You'll continue to learn, build your technical skills, learn soccer knowledge, and contact other people.
Look for professional development programs and see how you can become a part of these.
Ask your coach or club mentors for advice on what's available.
20. Regularly Assess Yourself as a Football Player
After you have played for a while at pieces of training or in your team or club, seriously look at your skills.
Find out what position your innate skills are best suited to.
When working this out, don't just think about yourself.
Think about how your skills feed into your teamwork and how your strengths fit into the game.
You must be exceptional at what you do because there is a lot of competition.
Seek your coach's honest opinion about your strengths and your chances.
Learn from your coach's suggestions about ways to improve or honeTalentnatural Talent.
Strive to be the best at your level. If you're not, make an honest assessment about how you can improve your skills or if you need to shift to a unique position.
You should also be able to prove that you're good at games.
Be consistently good and show that you can deliver every week, not just once in a while.
If you're the outstanding player of the week every week, you're on the right track.
21. Be Prepared to Travel Often
Football clubs and agents will expect you to travel often to meet their wants.
Be fully prepared for this; ensure to have your international passport and other travel documents ready.
Before moving, consider how often you'll be playing, if you speak the language of where you'll be moving to, if the pay is adequate, if the club is challenging, and has a good reputation. If there is suitable medical treatment, you will become injured.
Read Also: Football Betting Sites in Cameron.
Conclusion
No time is too late to pursue your dream of becoming a professional Cameroonian football player.
You just have to prepare to work hard and smart.