Soccer was the first sport that I started photographing about 3 years ago. When preparing to shoot a soccer game you have to take into account the distances involved and your placement on the field. You will most likely want to have a telephoto zoom lens though, as most of the time the players will be far away from you. A 70-200mm or a 70-300mm should be sufficient.
Placement on the field is another thing you will need to think about, luckily you should be able to free to move during the game to get different angles on the action. At Red Bull Arena, where I do photography most often, you have to pick a side of the field before the half starts and stick to it for that half. For example, I normally pick the side the NY Red Bulls are attacking because getting shots of goal scoring is typically the best type of action, especially if you are posting pictures for an audience of Red Bull fans. Typically placing yourself somewhere near the corner of the field or near the goal is the best place to get shots of goal scoring action.
When it comes to lighting it varies depending on the time of day the game take place. The stadium lights versus the sunlight gives some very different types of pictures. Typically changing the white balance is not needed to much because the stadium lighting is quite good and doesn’t effect the image too much. Although I have edited the two images below, they each show the different types of lighting effects you can get depending on the time of day the game takes places. The top two images were taken during an afternoon game and the bottom two at a night game.
My setting for shooting soccer are usually a shutter speed of at least 1/1000, an f/stop of 2.8, an ISO ranging from 1000-3200 depending on the time of day, white balance set to auto or daylight again depending on the day, auto focus set to AI Servo, and High Speed Continuous shooting. You want to have at least a shutter speed of 1/800 or higher because soccer is a fast moving and erratic sport, so to freeze the action you’ll need a high shutter speed.
After the game, I usually will import my photos into Lightroom, go through the pictures and find the best ones, and then post the them on Instagram over the next few days.