How to Choose a Soccer School in Montreal: A Parent's Guide

We're three former pros who run Footie Elite. Before we built our own thing, we coached at four different Montreal academies between us. We've seen what good looks like and what bad looks like — and we've left jobs at academies we couldn't tell parents to send their kids to.

So when parents ask "how do I choose?", we don't give them a sales pitch. We give them five questions to ask every school they're evaluating — including ours. If a school can't answer these clearly, they're either hiding something or they haven't thought about it. Either way, you're paying too much.

1. How many kids are in each group?

The single biggest predictor of training quality is coach-to-player ratio. A coach with 8 kids can give every player 5+ minutes of individual attention per hour. A coach with 25 kids can give each player 2 minutes — and most of that is spent waiting in line.

What we look for in a youth program:

• Ages 2-8: 6 kids per coach max. Anything more and you're paying for organized chaos.
• Ages 9-12: 6 kids per coach max — the same standard holds as kids get older.
• Ages 13+: 6 kids per coach max, even for fitness and tactical work.

Ask the school: "What's the maximum group size?" If they hedge ("it depends on registration"), push: "What's the cap?" Programs that don't have a hard cap tend to overfill.

2. Who is actually coaching my kid — every session?

A common Montreal pattern: parents pay for a "school" with a famous head coach pictured on the website, only for their kid to be coached week-to-week by a rotation of part-time university students. The famous coach shows up for the parent-facing demo days but not the regular Tuesday-night session.

This isn't always wrong — many great coaches are 19-year-old university players with playing experience and good rapport with kids. But you should know who's coaching your kid before you sign up, not after. Specifically ask:

• "Who will be the head coach for [my kid's age group]?"
• "Is that person there every session, or do they rotate?"
• "What's the assistant coach's playing background?"

At Footie Elite, the answer is straightforward: Julian, Nico, and Eric coach every session. We don't outsource. That's what makes the model expensive and slow to scale — but also why we have 100+ five-star reviews from parents who notice the difference.

3. What does a typical session actually look like?

Don't ask "what's your training philosophy?" — every academy has a sales-page answer for that. Ask:

"Walk me through what a typical 60-minute session looks like, minute by minute."

A great answer for a 7-year-old session sounds like: "5 min warm-up game, 10 min ball mastery / technical drill, 15 min progression to a small-sided game with a learning constraint, 25 min open game (4v4 or 5v5), 5 min cool-down and recap."

A bad answer sounds like: "We do drills and then they scrimmage." Vague answers indicate vague sessions.

Key thing to listen for: what percentage of the session is small-sided games vs. drills? For ages 4-12, you want at least 50% game time. Kids learn decision-making by playing, not by lining up.

4. How do you communicate with parents about my kid?

Bigger academies often run on autopilot — your kid attends, you pay, the season ends. There's no individual feedback. You learn how your child is doing by watching the games yourself.

Smaller, parent-trusting schools build communication in. Ask:

• "How do parents find out what my kid is working on?"
• "Do you do mid-season check-ins?"
• "If my kid is struggling, will I hear about it before the end of the season?"

An honest answer is better than a polished one. A school that says "we don't do formal check-ins but we're easy to grab after sessions if you have questions" is more credible than one that promises monthly written reports they don't actually deliver.

5. What happens when my kid has a bad day?

This is the question almost no parent asks, and we wish they all did. Every kid has bad days — they're tired, they're upset, they got benched at school, they don't want to be there.

How a coach handles a 6-year-old in tears tells you almost everything you need to know about whether the coach is the right person for your child. If the answer to "what happens when my kid has a bad day?" is something like "we just push through, they need to learn discipline" — run.

A great coach answer: "We pull them aside, ask what's going on, and adjust. Sometimes they need a break and a sip of water. Sometimes they want to sit out the game and just watch — that's fine. Sometimes a kid will tell us something at the field they wouldn't tell their parents. We try to be a safe adult, not just a teacher."

Soccer at 6 isn't really about soccer. It's about whether your kid feels good about themselves on a Tuesday after school. Pick a coach who understands that.

The red flags to avoid

• "World-class methodology" / branded acronym systems applied to 5-year-olds. The methodology used by professional academies in Spain isn't designed for first-graders. It's a marketing layer.
• No published prices, or prices that require a sales call to access. The good academies don't hide.
• Heavy upselling within the first session — pressure to buy a season pass before you've seen the program. The good academies sell themselves.
• Tournaments, trophies, and travel teams pushed before age 11. Real coaches know development and competition are different goals at different ages.
• "Elite" branding for everything. "Elite ages 4-6 program" is almost certainly marketing.
• No trial session available. If they don't let you try before you buy, ask why.

What "great" actually looks like

You walk away from a great trial session with three observations:

1. Your kid had fun and asks when they're going back.
2. The coach knew your kid's name by the end of the session and used it more than once.
3. You can describe what your kid worked on — not in technical jargon, but in a way that makes sense to you.

That's it. If a session checks those three boxes, the academy is doing the job. The fancy logos, the social-media reels, the "elite pathway" claims — those don't matter. What matters is your kid leaving the field happy and a tiny bit better than when they walked in.

Where Footie Elite fits

We didn't write this guide to push you toward us. We wrote it because we're tired of seeing Montreal parents pay $1,500/year for programs that don't deliver. If we're the right fit for your kid, great — we'd love to coach them. If another school is better, sign your kid up there.

For what it's worth, here's how we score against our own five questions:

• Group size: 6:1 across every age group, every session — max 6 kids per coach from Baby Elite (2-3) through Elite Performance (13+). No exceptions, no overfilling.
• Who coaches: Julian, Nico, Eric. Always. We don't have part-time student fillers.
• Session structure: heavy game-time emphasis (50-65% small-sided games), short technical blocks, competitive cool-down.
• Communication: coaches available after every session. End-of-season player feedback for season-pass families.
• Bad days: we adjust. Always. Soccer is the activity, but the kid is the point.

If those answers sound right for your family, a group session is the easiest way to see for yourself. If they don't sound right, we hope this guide helps you ask better questions of whichever school you choose.