A soccer coach outlines how young players ages 7-12 reach elite leagues like MLS NEXT and ECNL. You need to join clubs with those teams, even starting on a B or C squad. He took eight years climbing from C-team to MLS NEXT, emphasizing that early placement matters more than raw talent alone.
If you've never played club soccer, here's how you could play MLS NEXT or ECNL if you're 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 years old. It's really important that you're not only training on your own, but you're finding the teams that have MLS NEXT and you need to join their second team, their B team, their C team. I was on the C team until I was a senior. It took me literally 8 years to make the version of MLS NEXT. I was trying out every year and they kept telling me I wasn't good enough and I wouldn't give up. I just kept going and going. And they got to know my personality, and that was a huge reason why they eventually brought me on the team. So if you're 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and you can just try out and try and try again and be told you're not good enough, well then you can go home. Between those ages, you can pretty much develop as a player so quickly, so fast, it's amazing. Once you hit 13, 14, 15, while you can still certainly develop, now it does matter where you begin to play, and there are consequences to not being at certain levels. Even in my own case, yes, I went on to play Division I college soccer, but I was never playing at UCLA, at Stanford, at Notre Dame. I played at a small Division I school, and had I been on a better team earlier, it could have been different. We just had a student commit to Duke as a sophomore. They've been playing on an IMG MLS Next team for a very long time. It makes a very big difference. When you see those little kid videos of some baller at 4 or 6 years old, those are the players that tend to go on to have very good careers if they don't get injured or if they don't get hurt. And some of them do quit and don't make it, so drive will always be the detailing factor. But being a good soccer player is obviously very helpful. If you want more help, call me. Links in the bio, and I'll talk to you soon.
