
A youth soccer coach tells parents their 9-year-old needs elite club training now to play college soccer. Less than 2% reach Division I. Most kids who make it started intensive training by age 6, not in their teens.
Chapters
I'm only 9 years old. Should I be really thinking about club soccer? Should I be thinking about leaving my club team to try out for a better one? I know Johnny over there left the team, but you know, he's not happy over there. He said that the coaching is not very good and that, you know, they're pushing them too hard. Let me tell you something. I come across hundreds of kids every day who come to me and say, what level can my kid play? And I tell them they're not good enough to play college soccer, and if they are good enough, maybe they can play Division 3. They go, you know, what did we do wrong? What should we have done before? Now that we're 14 years old, like, what did we do? You did not get high enough level training or you didn't play against high enough level players when you were 8, 9, 10 years old. How do you think you got really good by 14? You were playing with really good players at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. That 10-year-old who you see on Instagram who's so good, you think that's a fluke? No, they're training at home, they're doing extra, they're playing with dad. That's what it takes if you want to play college soccer one day. College soccer is equally as competitive as pro soccer. Less than 2% of kids play Division I college soccer, especially with the internationals. So the answer is yeah, you got to be thinking about club soccer, you got to be thinking about who's going to coach your kid, you got to be thinking about where you're going to go and which team to join, and then you got to have a program that allows you to say, hey, here's my best chance of helping my son or daughter play college soccer. If you










