A coach breaks down why a player's answer to a recruiter about weaknesses backfired. Instead of claiming a weak build and poor aerial ability, the player should have said he's working on timing his forward runs to help offensively while staying disciplined defensively. How you phrase things in recruitment emails matters as much as your tape.
How do you respond to coaches when they ask about your weaknesses? This is what one of my students said to a Division II school, and then I'm going to show you why we changed it. So this student says, my weakness is I'm a smaller and leaner build for a defensive player at 5' at 156, 5'10". I'm also looking to improve the amount of aerial duels. So typically college soccer can be back and forth and about aerial duels, so you don't want to tell a college coach that you're tall and not good in the air. That's a bad idea. Now the truth is, I've— this player and I have worked together a long time. He's very good in the air, so he just was trying to think of something, and that's where I come into play and like, don't say that, because one, it's not good to say, and two, it's also not true. So we wanted to change it to what I believe one of his weaknesses are, but we also phrased it in a very particular way on purpose. How you phrase your emails to everybody is, is what— how you're going to get recruited, really, really is the video and how you phrase your emails. So we changed it to, for weaknesses, I'm working on timing of my run so I can both get forward into the attack to deliver more crosses, but also stay connected to my back four. My coach and I review a lot of film. That's me. After each game, I cut every moment and
