For many young people in America, finding success is very hard. For one thing, the game is a lot different here and how it is carried out. The level of professionalism and play is different as well. For instance, in every where else except the United States like in Europe or South America, pro teams are scouting out players at a very young age for their academy system. It works like this:

• Play for a amateur club team
• Get noticed by a pro club team
• Get put on that pro team’s academy program
• Get noticed by the Senior club-hence-The Real Deal

In America we do the mumbo jumbo of playing for a rec league, play city-league, play club, maybe Police League in the middle of that, maybe ODP, then finally get on a college team. Weird and confusing structure indeed.

Here’s how to find success. If I were a parent or adviser to a parent of a child who really wanted to go pro. I would tell them to play as much soccer as possible…literally. I would advise the following:

1. Find a good city team – (ages 6 – 18) AKA Sunday League-these teams practice maybe 1 or 2x a week plus games on Sunday. Not very hard, just getting them used to it. You could probably find 2 teams in a Sunday league–one the same age and one the level up. The more soccer the better.
2. Find a good Club team(10 – 18) – Club teams are organized travel teams. The highest level is Premier or division 1. A person needs to be here by high school.
3. Join Olympic Development Program – district, region, state, hopefully national!
4. Go to as many clinics as possible i.e. camps, college camps, college ID camps, etc. etc.
5. By the latter years of high school, join a local semi-pro team or a team that competes every year in the United States Open Cup – while this team probably won’t win this cup, the exposure is good enough.
6. By the time you or your player is a Senior at high school, this player should have played almost everywhere and experienced a lot of soccer.

Hopefully at the end of that whole long ride and commitment, you or your player will have a scholarship at a 4-year University or maybe even be a draft pick – I think there were 4 guys just out of high school in this year’s MLS Superdraft… Wow – Dream that!