Youth soccer players should join elite club teams like ECNL or MLS Next by middle school rather than focusing on individual drills. Better teammates and coaches accelerate development and attract college scouts. One talented player stayed on his father's low-level team through senior year and missed recruitment entirely.
Is it better to work on your skills or to play for a better club team? And the answer is it's more important to play for a better club team almost no matter how old you are, even if you're 10, 11, 12 years old. Part of the reason is if you're on a better club team, the players are better, the coaches are better, and your skills will improve. Now some of you are with a coach that's like, he's a great coach or she's a great coach, and it's a lower level club team, so we want to stay there because we want to develop. That's fine, but you only get to do that probably until 7th grade. By 7th grade, you need to be looking to go to better teams. And by 8th, 9th, 10th grade, you need to be on the ECNL's MLS Next-esque teams or elite academy teams that are affiliated with clubs that are going to get seen by college coaches. So if you're good enough and you're making your skills so great, I have a story. There was a player I grew up with. His dad was a great coach, and so he stayed on his dad's team. But his dad's team was playing Silver Elite in my era, which was a low-level team. But the kid was amazing. Because he stayed on this low-level team until senior year, I was getting recruited and I probably wasn't as gifted as he was, but I was being seen by coaches. On the flip side, his dad finally said senior year, fine, I'll let you go to another team even though the coaching's bad. And at that point the teams were full. And so he never got to play college soccer. And I saw him in a pickup league the other day cuz we're the same age and he's actually reached out about his daughter and he told me, I do not wanna make the same mistake my father made with me with my child. So his girl is a baller and is already playing pre-ECNL and she's 11 years old. And because he doesn't wanna make the same mistake, if you want more help, gimme a call, links in the bio.
