Pros And Cons Of College Soccer Players

Currently, the way college scouters export and import players into their schools is absolutely terrible and perhaps even biased. In addition, college soccer players are being taught in a manner that will not help the U.S. produce adept soccer players. For players looking to continue their soccer career and further their growth of their skills college would seem like a good option, however, college actually proves to be a better barrier stopping them from going pro than a supporting lift. There are several areas where college soccer fails to produce skilled native born U.S. soccer players but the most prominent issues are scouting for players and the style of play in which the players are taught. Money becomes an issue for U.S. native born soccer

Those who were able to pay for club soccer are going to have the best chance of playing D1 soccer even if there exists numerous amounts of poorer kids who are twice as skilled. That is, all the extremely talented athletes who weren’t able to play club have the odds stacked against them when it comes to college soccer (Carpenter). These unfortunate players could go to lower division colleges or cheaper colleges, but the chances of being discovered by USMNT scouters or MLS scouters is slim to none. For the U.S. to discover more talent across the nation college soccer scouters need to broaden their search and look at low income areas as well. That way they can discover more talent to develop in college, which gives MLS teams and the USMNT increased amounts of options that are possibly more skilled. Moving on to the other issue, the style of play in which college soccer players are typically taught is incorrect, and it affects the quality of U.S. soccer players. In colleges and even high school many coaches only teach their players techniques to try and win. What is meant by this is that coaches will find the strong links on their team and focus the movement of the ball through those strong links in hopes of getting a scoring opportunity

As mentioned earlier the USMNT farest placement in a World Cup was the semi-finals back in 1930 (Rosenblatt). The USMNT was ranked number 24th in 2016-2017 in the standings of national teams, however, don’t be mistaken the USMNT struggles to beat teams 30 or more ranks below it (ESPN). In the recent World Cup qualifiers in 2016-2017 the USMNT lost to Guatemala, ranked 129, they lost to Trinidad and Tobago, ranked 87, and they tied to Honduras, ranked 68 (FIFA). Although this is embarrassing it isn’t the only aspect of the U.S. that shows that we can’t produce high quality soccer players. The United States isn’t one of the top 15 countries for exporting players to the world, meaning that the players that make it to pro in the U.S. aren’t skilled enough to be wanted by other countries (Guvener). In addition, there is only around 70 U.S. men’s soccer players that play in the top five leagues: Premier League, La Liga, Ligue 1, Serie A and Bundesliga (Guvener). Note that 40% of these players were developed in another country’s youth development program (Guvener). It is easy to tell that the USMNT isn’t up to par with the best nations in the world like it should be, and this is why the current development system for soccer players in the U.S. needs to go. Statistics such as these should not exist for a country like the U.S. It is simply