What is Better MLS Next or ECNL?
MLS NEXT players are 70% more likely to play Division 1 soccer than ECNL players, mainly because MLS NEXT has better showcase events where college coaches scout and stronger overall competition. Getting coaches to your games through invites, highlight videos, and targeted emails matters more than which league you're in.
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What is better, MLS NEXT or ECNL? The short answer on paper is MLS NEXT will get you more exposure. If you just look at the statistics, you're 70% more likely chance of playing Division 1 soccer if you are playing MLS NEXT, and that data is taken from ChatGPT as well as Gemini in the AI space. Now, is it perfect? No, not necessarily. You can still definitely play Division 1 soccer if you're playing ECNL, but there's really 3 main differences. The first one being MLS NEXT and MLS Fest. This is where the majority of Division 1 schools go to watch games to scout their players. Now, to get invited to MLS NEXT or FEST, this can vary based off your club, how well you perform, playoffs, etc. But when I say invited, getting invited to those tournaments is important, but largely out of your control. Your team needs to play well. You need to be part of a good club. Trying out for better clubs is important. But what's in your control and what I want to help you with is having the college coaches actually come to your games. So if you invite them to ECNL playoffs or MLS NEXT FEST, most of the time they will pick MLS NEXT FEST, not because they don't like ECNL, but statistically Typically speaking, on the majority scale, there are more players in one place at a higher level at the FEST or FLEX events. Now, if you're going to the final ECNL playoffs, or if you already have an established communication with a coach, they very may well come to you instead of FEST. Now, typically speaking, ECNL playoffs and MLS FEST don't overlap on the exact same day, so typically you are fine and they will still come to your game. I want to be clear that if you're playing ECNL RL or MLS NEXT 2 and you go to playoffs and you go to the finals or close to it, you are what's called the big fish in the small pond, which means that you are more likely to get recruited at a high-level school because you're one of the best within your organization. I want you to know that even if you're playing ECNL, you could totally still play Division 1 college soccer. What I want you to keep in mind is if you don't get those coaches to come to your showcase games, then you are in trouble. They will not come to your league games. Now, in the world of MLS Next, they might come to your league games, right? If you're playing Red Bulls or the Galaxy, or you are on one of those MLS Pro academies, the coaches very well may come to a league game because at that one league game there might be 3 or 4 players they recruit all at once. This is because when college coaches go to watch games, they only have a certain budget, so they cannot go to every game in the country. Hence why they're going to prioritize being in the right place. The second reason MLS Next is better than ECNL is because typically speaking, the competitiveness is better, especially if you're playing against pro-affiliated clubs, right? A pro Galaxy would probably be an LAFC, SoCal ECNL team because the Galaxy kids are trying to go pro. So naturally the level's higher. So the college coaches are going to go to where the high level is. But I want to reiterate College coaches don't always get it right. There's plenty of players that don't get picked even within your MLS clubs. So if you do something different, hence make more video, go to more ID camps, write more emails, write better emails, ask certain questions, go to fall games. It doesn't necessarily matter if you're playing ECNL and you're not playing MLS Next. I want to add to that, if you are playing MLS Next, odds are you want to go to the very top level schools. Well, so does every other kid who wants to go to those top schools playing MLS Next has a 4.0 and above. So what we need to do to be different is Write more emails, go to tournaments, go to ID camps, get genuine interest. And if you're already playing in MLS Next or ECNL by sophomore year, you should start sending messages because you are an elite level player and the coaches will start taking note of you. So when junior year or June 15th hits, the chance that they respond to you is 10 times full. The final big difference between MLS Next and ECNL is the MLS Next Pro teams that are directly affiliated with academies. Their job is not to help you play college soccer. Their job is to help you go pro. Now, luckily, the journey to go pro and the journey to play college soccer overlap. MLS NEXT Fest helps you go pro and helps you play college soccer. ECNL's job is only to help you play college soccer. Now the problem with that, as I've already mentioned, is ECNL on a whole is probably a lower level than MLS NEXT. Now could your ECNL team beat an MLS NEXT team? Yes. Could your MLS NEXT team beat another ECNL team that's the champions, even if you're a low-level MLS NEXT team? Maybe. That's not what matters. What matters is exposure and being exposed first. You can be really good, maybe the best player on your team, but if the college coaches have already picked in your position who they like, you are always going to be second best, even if you are a better player. So this is less about being necessarily the best and more about being first. And just a brief story on my own case, I was not the very first person to talk about the college soccer recruiting process, as you can imagine, but I was the first one on TikTok and I was the first one on YouTube and I was the first one on Instagram. Hence why I'm the most popular one. It's the same thing in the recruiting process. Now my job is to give you the best chance by making you better video, picking out which ID camps to go. But I can't do any of this with you if we start really late. So often when I work with students, I'm really working with 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th graders. We do work with some 11th and some 12th, depending on the situation. Hence why you have to apply and, and see if you're the right fit to work with us. So bottom line is, if you want to know what showcases you should go to, if you go to my Instagram and comment the word ECNL or the word MLS Next, you will find a list of all of the showcases that I would recommend you go to if you're playing those two leagues. If you're on YouTube, which is where this video is particularly being posted to, you can comment those and I will send you the link so that way you can get to the list, et cetera, because you have to go to my Instagram because it's an automation for that. If you would like, I would ask you to please subscribe and like the video, but more importantly, ask me a question in the comments. You know, I want to be here to help you guys. I try and help you all for free as much as I possibly can. But then if you want our services where we have this really cool system, how we email schools automatically, and we have this really cool system in which we stay organized and I fix your videos and I fix your emails, which I'm pretty darn good at, then give me a call. And you can do that by links in the description. Thanks so much for watching. I'll talk to you soon.
