A professional soccer player breaks down the best path to going pro: college soccer by age 14-15, then a USL2 team affiliated with an MLS club while staying enrolled. UPSL and NPSL offer training and footage but rarely lead to contracts without a direct connection from a coach or teammate.
Should you play college soccer, UPSL, NPSL, or USL2 in order to go pro? To answer the question, it really matters where you are in your career. So let's say you really want to go pro and you're under the age of 17. Training with the UPSL team would be fantastic because obviously the players would be really good. So I would say train with and maybe even play some games with the UPSL or NPSL or even USL2 team if that's possible to you under the age of 17, that's pretty dang difficult. Now let's say you don't have an MLS contract offer in your hands when you come turn 17. Well, then I hope that by the age of 15, 14 even, you were thinking about college soccer, because college soccer is the best way to go pro in my opinion, assuming you don't have an MLS contract in the United States. I'd imagine that would be pretty controversial, so in the comments I'm ready to take it on. Let me know what you think. So now you've set yourself— okay, I'm in college, I still want to go pro, I didn't get that MLS contract at 17, so what do I do? Do. This is when you might say to yourself, okay, let me go play UPSL or NPSL, maybe even instead of college, or maybe in addition to college. If your goal is to play in the USL or in MLS one day, my suggestion would be definitely stay in college, and then most importantly, find a USL 2 team with a direct affiliate to a professional team. That's what worked for me. The coach I play for now at the Richmond Kickers used to be my coach at the USL 2 level, and the other team I signed with a couple years ago, Charlotte Independence, that coach knew me from USL 2 as well. The benefits of NPSL and UPSL are that it can be some really good training, some great way to get footage, and if you didn't go the college route and you still want to play pro, you're staying fit with a competitive team. However, playing UPSL and NPSL really doesn't lead to anything, and if you watch Soccer Visa's video on this, he explains it really well. Because UPSL and NPSL usually are not directly affiliated with a professional team, the way they can be helpful is connections. So let's say your coach of your UPSL team can connect you to a professional team, then that's great. Or if the teammates on the team can connect you to a pro team, well then that's great also. But playing for UPSL and maybe even winning the league or winning most of the games or even being the top goalscorer, unfortunately, even though it should, doesn't really help you go to the next level on paper. Now of course you have improved as a soccer player, so that's really helpful, but it doesn't really connect you to any teams. Now there is a new team in the USL 1 that did sign some UPSL players having been in the final, so it is starting to happen. That said, my suggestion to you would be if you are not playing MLS Academy around the ages of 15, 16, 17, you should start considering college soccer. Then after, during college soccer, you should consider USL2. You can talk about the opportunities to go abroad with Soccer Visa or PSC or AX Soccer. There's a bunch of other ones, but then focus on USL2, going back to college, going back to USL2, and then going to open trials for professional teams. That's what I did, and now I'm a professional soccer player. Need help? Let me know. Link in the bio. College soccer is where I'm at. Talk to me soon.
