Zev Taublieb warns American college soccer players to skip international ID camps unless a coach asks. U.S. coaches want to see you in person at home. A Bolivian U-20 player with World Cup experience lost Division I offers by refusing to visit the U.S. for evaluation.
Should you go to any international camps if you want to play college soccer? The short answer is no. If you live in the United States and you're an American, you should never go abroad to go to any camp. So if Exact invite you or Tiro Sports from America invite you abroad, we don't recommend it. However, if for some reason the college coach explicitly says to you, could you please come abroad, then that's of course something you would consider. If you are an American living abroad, then there's a lot of good camps out there internationally. Tiro Sports is like the best one. Exact ID Camp does host one in London. I don't know if I recommend that one, to be honest, because I've never been, but typically speaking, if you want to play college soccer, you need to stay here in the United States. Many of you may go, well, my son played or my daughter played in Europe— typically it's your sons— played in Sweden or played in Spain. Surely a Division I coach is going to love them. And the answer is no. Unless you're playing for Barcelona's youth academy or Manchester United or some really well-known youth academy, you're not just going to come to play Division I soccer. The story I want to tell you is we had a student once when I was first starting, played for the Bolivian Under-20 national team and played for Torino, which is a team in Serie A. For their under-20s. He was amazing. I watched his video. He played in the under-20 World Cup. Absolute baller. So you would think upon messaging coaches that this student would get a Division I offer for sure. And he was certainly the level, at least in my opinion. And every single coach said to him, you must come to the United States so we can see you play in person to verify what we've seen online. And the kid said, I'm too good for that. I don't want to do it. And never got recruited to play college soccer. You must come to the United States. If you want more help playing college soccer, comment the word call and we'll schedule a call with you and your parents.
