“Both a soccer player and a lawyer”: Multidimensionality, open future orientation, and cultural capital accumulation among upper-middle-class youth in professional soccer

Previous studies have consistently demonstrated that boys from low socioeconomic backgrounds perceive professional soccer in totalistic terms (“soccer or nothing”) and hold a closed, deterministic future orientation. Addressing this theoretical gap, the present study asks: what happens when players come from affluent families in socioeconomically advantaged localities, and how does the sociological meaning of the game, training, and future orientation shift when boys do not require economic or social rescue? Drawing on in-depth semistructured interviews with 15 upper-middle-class adolescent boys (aged 12–14) from affluent Israeli towns, the findings reveal an inverted logic of Lareau's Concerted Cultivation, shaped by the accumulation of cultural capital. In this context, soccer functions not as a lifeline but as a sophisticated platform for constructing the “successful boy.” Participants present a multidimensional identity, experience school as a space of belonging and achievement, and manage a dual career combining sporting ambitions with strategic planning for elite military service and higher education. The study advances sociological understanding of how cultural capital is produced, converted, and reproduced through sport in privileged contexts, and underscores the urgent need for the sociology of sport to engage with privilege and empowerment, not only with deprivation and social rescue.