Every summer, thousands of European families hand over a four-figure sum to a football camp. Some of those weeks change a player. Most don't.
Here's what to check before you book.
The coaching ratio
Under 1 coach per 12 players and you're paying for babysitting with cones. A serious camp runs 1:8 or tighter, and the coach on paper is the coach on the pitch — not their 19-year-old assistant.
The hours on the pitch
Ask the camp directly: how many hours of actual football per day? Not "sessions." Not "activities." Hours with a ball at their feet or in a game. Three is a solid baseline. Two is a holiday. Five is a pre-season camp for U18 boys, adjust expectations.
The coaches' backgrounds
UEFA B, UEFA A, UEFA Pro — those are the real qualifications. Anyone advertising a camp without naming their coaches is hiding something. Anyone naming coaches whose LinkedIn you can verify is probably serious.
Match play, not just drills
A week of technical drills with no match play is worth half of a week with daily games. Games are where kids actually learn to read pressure, time runs, and recover when they lose the ball. Ask: "how many real matches will my kid play?"
The refund policy
If the camp can't tell you their refund deadline in writing, they haven't thought about the financial side enough to be trusted. A clean policy looks like "full refund until X days before start, no refund after." No ambiguity.
The boring stuff that actually matters
Food quality, medical staff on site, how close is the nearest hospital, what happens if the kid gets hurt, how are they getting to and from the pitch, how many adults are awake overnight. These are the questions that separate run-by-parents and run-by-professionals.
Next Level Camp lists every serious camp we can find in Spain and Sweden because navigating this stuff alone is brutal. If a camp can't answer these six questions cleanly, scroll past it.