A blurry bit underexposed background give a good separation

Shoot in high apertures

Shooting F/2.8 or F/2 will give you excellent blurry background, this way your subject will really pop out and the distractive background will be almost invisible. The hard thing to this is that your shoot is hard to get sharp on the full body of the athlete. If you are shooting offense/defense action its hard to get 2 persons in focus. This is why this does not always work.

Choose a standpoint with a clean open background

Shooting towards clean or structured backgrounds will give you better shots. think of a open field, a part of woods, a empty or filled stadium will do as well. Be aware that a pretty high aperture is required for this to work. probably somewhere maximum to F/4. Personally i love to get a big crowd in the background. with a well exposed subject and a bit underexposed background will give you perfect separation. Getting this the other way around will give you problems.

The spectators in the back are a pretty big distraction

Choose a standpoint with lower chance of players in the background

When you are shooting from the sidelines you often get more chance on a player-less background. Players are often pretty close and wont get blurry by a high aperture, or at least not blurry enough. Shooting from different positions will give you more possibility on clean photos.

A higher perspective

Choosing a higher perspective gives you a awesome background of the field in the back. this way you often have no other players behind the player. the downside to this is that you don’t catch a idea of the field or filled stadium or anything. But this is sure the easiest way to get a clean background.

In this shot i think the distractive background is a good thing.

Blur your background in Photoshop

The other last solution is blur out the background in photoshop. the best way is to duplicate a layer. Gaussian blur the bottom layer and cut out the player. using the feather tool in photoshop will give you a nice even fade to blurry and a more natural look. Be careful do not over-do this. natural shots are important!

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