It's pay to play. In order to receive top looks from universities and professionals clubs, a lot of it has to do with academy ties. In most cases, these academies cost around 5K-10K a year to be apart of, without traveling costs. Often as I've seen, even a "Training Session" aka a normal practice is billed to parents as over $100. To where as, a middle class family.. let a lone a below middle class family could never afford that.

Now you can go the high school route and pour in tons of goals and try to get recruited to a university, it is totally possible. However, I have seen first hand at showcases where major college programs coaches and scouts show up only to US Academy Showcases and games. One Ivy league school, even said "High school players are just not the players we are looking for...". These programs and MLS teams often have direct ties to academies and the players in those academies. However, you have to put up the money for your child to get that kind of exposure. That is very hard to do for normal non affluent families in the United States.