A soccer coach weighs ECNL versus MLS NEXT for college recruitment, arguing MLS NEXT gives better exposure through FLEX and FEST events where coaches evaluate individual talent. Playing time, grades, and video matter most. An ECNL team only wins if the coach guarantees minutes and direct college coach attendance.
Is it better to play on a good ECNL team or a bad MLS NEXT team? The short answer is I would tell you to play for a bad MLS NEXT team. Emails get better responses when you say MLS NEXT. If you have good grades, it really helps as well. Most MLS NEXT scheduled league games are totally irrelevant. They don't help you at all in the recruiting process other than with video. So if you're not playing at all, that could be its own issue. But otherwise, MLS NEXT on a whole is better. If you're going to flex or playoffs, and you think that's a bad MLS Next team that loses every game, the coaches don't care if you win or lose that much. Now, they care if you win or lose because if you're winning all the time, you're a better team and you have better players and therefore they want to come watch you. But let's say you're a really good player on a team that loses all the time. It doesn't matter. They're not trying to recruit a whole team. They're just trying to recruit an individual for the position they need. So if you're going to have to choose between MLS Next and ECNL, I would tell you play MLS Next. But there are some caveats to that. What if, for example, your ECNL coach is going to help you with the recruiting process? What if your ECNL coach tells you, hey, you're going to play every single minute, get a lot of video, and college coaches are coming to our games? Well, then of course you don't have to switch. If you're just asking a black and white, then right now MLS NEXT, FLEX, and FEST have the most college coaches. So you want to have the best chance. And if your dream is to play Division 1, would you rather go for it and end up not making it because you decided to go for it, meaning you tried to go play for an MLS Next team, FES, etc., and turns out you played no minutes and you didn't get recruited? Or would you rather play it safe, go to an ECNL team, and, you know, never know what could have happened if you played for a better team? I know my personality is I'd rather have gone for it and fallen on my face and not made it versus never trying because I was afraid that I wouldn't play any minutes. If you want more help playing college soccer and you have that personality and you want to go for it, then schedule a call with me and your parents, and we can do so by the link in the bio.
