He's played soccer for seven years. Why hasn't he made a single friend there?

Written By Christine O'Leary

"He's been in the same soccer team since he was six. Seven years. And not one friend has come out of it with no invitations, no replies when he invites someone, nobody he ever sees outside of training. How is that even possible?"

It's one of the most heartbreaking things a parent can say to me, and one of the most common. Your young person shows up, week after week, to something they enjoy, surrounded by other kids the same age… and somehow the friendships just don't form.

If that's your family, I want you to know two things straight away: it's not a reflection of your young person, and it's far more common than you'd think. There's a clear reason it happens and, happily, something you can do about it.

Being around people isn't the same as making friends

Here's something we don't often say out loud: shared activities don't create friendships. They create opportunities for friendships. The soccer team puts your young person in the same place as potential friends every single week, which is a wonderful starting point. But being in the same place is only step one.

Friendships are built in the gaps around the activity: the chat before training, the walk to the car, the message the next day, the hang-out that has nothing to do with soccer. For a lot of young people, particularly those who are autistic, have ADHD, or feel anxious socially. Those in-between moments are exactly the part that doesn't come automatically. They know how to play soccer. Nobody has shown them, step by step, how to turn a teammate into a friend.

Why the invitations go unanswered

Parents often describe the same cluster of things: he doesn't get invited, and when he does invite someone, there's no reply. It's easy to read that as rejection. Usually, it's something much more fixable.

Making and keeping friends relies on a set of specific, learnable skills and when one or two are missing, the whole thing can stall:

  1. Conversation beyond the activity. If every exchange is about the drill or the score, there's not much for a friendship to grow from. Friendships need two-way conversation about shared interests like trading information back and forth, not just talking about the game.

  2. Swapping contact details. You can't follow up with someone whose number you don't have. Knowing how and when to exchange contact information is a skill in itself.

  3. Following up. A friendship rarely survives on once-a-week contact alone. A quick message during the week keeps it alive, and many young people simply don't realise this is the part that matters.

  4. Organising a get-together. This is the big one. Friendships deepen when young people spend time together outside the structured activity, and planning a get-together (who, what, when, where) has real steps that can be taught and practised.

When an invitation gets no response, it's often because one of these pieces wasn't quite in place. The timing, the wording, who was asked, or how. It's rarely about whether your young person is likeable.

What actually bridges the gap

This is exactly the work we do in the Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®). We don't tell young people to "put themselves out there". We teach the concrete steps on how to hold a two-way conversation, how to swap contact details, how to follow up, and how to plan a get-together that actually happens, and then we have them practice, week by week, with real peers and with your support at home.

The soccer team was never the problem. It's a brilliant source of potential friends. Your young person just needs the skills to turn that opportunity into the real thing.

If you'd like a place to start:

Christine O'Leary
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