Would it be better if more colleges started

The best players are playing in the pros instead of going to college

Lamine Yamal ain't going to no college.


These kids are going pro as teenagers.

If anything we need MLS teams to have youth academies. Arsenal played a 15 year old. We just don't do that in our pro sports.

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The best players are playing in the pros instead of going to college

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College players are pros these days.

I would have SEC club soccer teams play in the USL. With the promotion/relegation coming, that would be awesome.

Yes and no.

More mens college programs would, on the surface, provide more opportunities and development.

The biggest problem is universities are giving their limited scholarships to international players. Unless they do something like cap the number of international scholarships per team, I don’t think it will make a big difference.

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yes and no. More mens college programs would, on the surface, provide more opportunities and development.

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agreed, of course the best players need to be an academy style system, but having some future opportunities to play college soccer on a scholarship would be a motivation for lots of different players and parents and want to play college ball but don’t have professional aspirations

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The women became dominant because of Title 9 and the rest of the world not giving a shite until recently. That's not the landscape for the men.

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Exactly, Title 9 gave the USWNT a 30-40 head start over the rest of the world, where men’s soccer, despite being involved with the inaugural World Cup 100 years ago, pretty much restarted from almost nothing 30 years ago.

You may get one from a Division I team to make a few appearances for the national team in friendly or exhibition every few years, but that’s going to become rarer and rarer.

I see areas with good HS soccer teams have plenty baseball kids play as a second sport instead of football for HS.
Our area has no soccer HS team so there’s no point for kids here to get into .
Same for college teams. It would trickle down into HS teams and attract more kids to get into it at a younger age.

people absolutely hate any mention of college soccer for a couple reasons:

1) other countries dont do it.
2) the quality of players that we are looking for pretty much never come from college soccer and probably shouldnt. clint dempsey is the exception. there are plenty of other guys who have contributed positively to the USMNT from college (Tim Ream, Walker Zimmerman, Deandre Yedlin, Matt Turner, Graham Zusi, Matt Besler, the list goes on and on the further you go back). The problem is that basically none of these guys, aside from Dempsey, SHOULD be the quality that would be indicative of successful professional development and shouldn't ever be starting on the national team in world cups.
3) college soccer is completely fricked with 23 year old international freshmen (exaggerating a little on age, but we all get it) right now and every team is basically half international players, often more.


personally, i think there is some merit to it. People have already mentioned it in the thread.

if the D1 college pathway exists and in a more plentiful fashion, it simply provides more opportunities and reason for players/parents to look at soccer and/or continue playing. some major overhaul/reform would be needed and it's likely not going to happen, but i don't see why more D1 soccer, especially in the south, can't coexist with academy style development.

develop the future pros that never step foot on a campus or even consider it. have a landing spot for those that aren't pros at 17. increase your player pool and your public interest. the vaunted "d1 scholarship" when it comes to basketball and football is basically what every sports parent and child in america dreams of.

the key point: the plan is NOT to strengthen college soccer to get those players to national team level success. the plan is to strengthen college soccer to get more and better players/athletes as kids and create a larger pool to draw from.

My post on the subject from a similar topic a few days ago is copied below. It has to make sense for the schools/conferences and its purpose wouldn’t be to develop national team players or pros, but I think it could absolutely change the way the game is viewed which could have an indirect impact on those two things.

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I don’t think the purpose of having more visible college teams in the region would be to develop pros or national team players. The primary reason still has to be a benefit to the schools and conferences.

But I think it would have an indirect impact by going a long way to “normalizing” the sport, probably getting more kids involved and staying in it longer if they know playing in college locally is an option. Maybe some meathead parents would encourage it instead of worrying about their kid catching the ghey.

Maybe some high level players are identified and put on the right pro pathway that otherwise wouldn’t have given the game a chance.

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Isn't their a 16 year old playing for Philly in the MLS?

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Teams can sign teenagers now. 10 years ago they couldn't. They had made an exception the one time for Adu. But before you had to go to college and get drafted. That to me would delay your development.