Soccer Players Formation: Historical and Process Bases for Development in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate how Brazilian literature describes the historical process of soccer player’s development - especially regarding periods, learning sites, educational agents and methods. This research also aims to present a brief historical overview on the process, filling a gap on this subject. Thus, we performed a systematic review based on dissertations, thesis, and articles in Capes Periodical Portal. Due to the low number of studies, we used quoted works and books about the subject. The analysis considered the categorization of the material in five chronological periods that depict the evolution of training process in Brazil, which showed that soccer training started with an elitist model - held mainly in social and sports clubs – and evolved to a popular, informal and free practice, held in the streets and informal fields. The sport later became fully formalized - restricted, controlled and based on scientific methods, being held in the development categories of traditional clubs and clubs-company in order to form players “to sell”. The findings allow us to achieve a synthesis containing all training periods, leading educational agents and teaching methodologies employed in each of them, which may serve as reference for future studies and new researches.