Division I All-American center midfielders win games with direct play: crosses, long balls, set pieces, assists. Skip the intricate combinations. Master the basics that college coaches actually want.
The best college center mids in the country probably don't play how you think. So I just watched some highlights from some Division I All-American midfielders who just made the All-American list last year, and this was what I saw. So this was the majority of what I saw. It was just a lot of crosses, a lot of passes in the air, long balls, just really direct. And that was like 95% of these guys' highlight reels. And what I didn't see was much of this. I don't think I saw any combinations in the midfield in any of those highlight reels I saw. So if you're trying to get to the college level and you're a center mid, I'm telling you now what you're probably going to be expected to do is send a lot of crosses into the box, deliver nice corners, maybe take free kicks, stuff like that. But it's, it's just very direct what they're going to want you to do. They're going to want you to get assists and just basically the end product.
