How to choose a football academy in Romania
A good youth football academy has three things you can verify: no more than ten children per coach, coaches holding a UEFA or FRF licence, and fees published in public. Everything else, trophy record included, matters far less than you are told. This guide gives you the exact questions to ask on a first visit.
No academy should call itself the best. We do not, even though that is probably the phrase you searched for. What we can do is give you the criteria academies are actually compared on, including us, and let you decide.
Almost every academy website says the same things: passion, professionalism, development. None of those words help you. The following six do.
1. How many children there are per coach
This is the only number that genuinely changes what happens in the hour. At twenty five children to one coach, half the session is a queue. At seven, the child touches the ball several hundred times.
The question to ask: how many children are in the group and how many coaches are on the pitch at the same time. Do not ask how many are enrolled, ask how many turn up on a normal Thursday. The gap is often ten children wide.
| Ratio | What that looks like in practice |
|---|---|
| Under 8 to 1 | The coach corrects every child in every session. |
| 8 to 12 per coach | Correction happens in groups. Reasonable from age 12 up. |
| Over 15 to 1 | Supervision, not coaching. The child waits in line. |
2. What licence the person on the pitch holds
In Romania a youth coach should hold at least a UEFA C licence or an FRF children and youth qualification. UEFA B is the reasonable standard from age 10 up. A licence does not guarantee a good coach, but the absence of one guarantees nobody has checked their training.
The question to ask: may I see the licence of the coach who works with my child's group. A serious club produces it in two minutes. If the answer is vague, you have your answer.
3. Whether the fee is written down anywhere
An academy that does not publish its fees has a reason. Usually the reason is that the fee moves, or that costs are added later: compulsory kit from one supplier, a registration fee, a licensing fee, a travel contribution, a summer fee.
The question to ask: what is the total I will pay across one calendar year, including everything. Ask for it in writing, even on WhatsApp. An honest club sends it without hesitating.
In the Banat region in 2026, a monthly fee between 250 and 550 lei is the normal range for a private academy running small groups. Below 200 lei, check the coach ratio, because that is usually where the saving is made.
4. What happens when the child gets older
Plenty of clubs that are good with the youngest groups have nothing after age 12. The child attaches to a coach and a set of teammates, and then has to move anyway. Ask what groups exist at 14, 16 and 18, and whether those groups play in an actual league.
Ask the reverse too: what happens to a child who is not keeping up. A club whose only answer is that they leave is a club built around its own results, not around children.
5. What to watch during the trial session
Go to a normal session, not an open day. Stand at the side for an hour and watch four things:
- How many children are standing still at any given moment. If more than a third are waiting, the drill is badly designed.
- Whether the coach uses the children's names. If they do not know them after two months, the group is too big.
- How they speak to a child who makes a mistake. This is the only real information you will get in that hour.
- Whether parents on the touchline shout instructions, and whether anybody from the club asks them to stop.
6. Red flags
- Eight-year-olds are described as talents or prospects.
- Paid trials at clubs abroad are offered.
- The fee is payable a full year in advance with no way to withdraw.
- Kit is compulsory from a single supplier at above market price.
- There is no written contract or set of rules you can read at home.
- The group spans three years of age or more.
What no academy will tell you
Of a thousand children who start organised football at six, a handful will make a living from it.
That is not a reason to keep your child at home. It is a reason to choose the academy on how the next five years will feel, not on who promises the most at the end of them. A child who trains three times a week between six and fourteen will be healthier, better coordinated and more used to losing and carrying on. All of that survives wherever the football goes.
Choose the place they want to go back to next Thursday. The rest sorts itself out.