In this concise coaching video, the speaker outlines three critical mistakes parents should avoid to improve their child's chances of making elite youth soccer teams such as ECNL or MLS Next. First, all communications—including tryout emails—must originate from the player, not the parent, to prevent coaches from perceiving the family as overbearing. Second, any email to a coach must include a clear, preferably horizontal video of the player’s performance; vertical footage is discouraged unless the entire clip is vertical. Third, parents should never attend a tryout "cold"—the athlete must email the coach in advance with a personalized, well‑researched message that references the coach’s background and expresses the player’s aspirations. The speaker ends with a call‑to‑action to contact him via the link in his bio for further assistance.
Chapters
Never do these 3 things if you want your child to make your ECNL or MLS Next team. Number 1 is no emails or anything should come from you. Everything should come from the kids. Even though it seems like, well, you should call for tryouts, etc., have the kids send the emails. It will go a long way. Of course, you can approve every email and you can say it, but have it come from the student's email and have it sound like a kid wrote it, not like mom and dad wrote it for you in their email account. The reason is most coaches at the club level are terrified of you parents, and if they feel you're going to be an overwhelming person, they're not going to have you on the team just because you're going to be overwhelming, and they'd rather lose than have a crazy parent. Number 2, do not send an email to tryout for any of these teams without video. You must have a video, and if you're going to put a video together, make sure it is horizontal, not vertical, if you can help it. If you only have iPhone footage, then make sure the entire video is vertical. Don't give us vertical and horizontal. We need to be able to see really clearly. Number 3, you're like, why do I need to send video? You must send video. You cannot go to these tryouts cold. And this goes for college soccer one day, and it goes for open tryouts for MLS Next or ECNL. You must email the coach beforehand and go, here's my child's playing, can't wait to come to camp or tryouts. And it should come from the athlete. The athlete should say, my dream is to play for the highest level team I can. Coach, I've looked you up. Say something nice about the coach. You can find their names online, on Google, on LinkedIn. They probably played college soccer, they probably played pro soccer. You want to say something nice to them so when you go to the camp, you're much more likely to be seen and picked. If you want help playing MLS Next or ECNL, give me a call. Links in the bio. Talk to you soon. Goodbye.
