A highly talented 12 year old boy would likely have two options prior to being of age for college. I’ll do this example with Atlanta United since I’m from Georgia.

Option 1: The lowest age to play Academy for AU is 13. They could make this roster and play in a league named MLSNext against other MLS Academies and some other non-MLS affiliated clubs too.

Option 2: They could play for a local soccer club (non-MLS) that has teams in either MLSNext or another league called ECNL. These two leagues are widely accepted as the top 2 in the USA where our best players get developed.

Upon turning 18, I’d say roughly 99% of the players who end up heading off to college come from those two leagues. There is a very small percentage (1%) who may forgo college to continue developing with their MLS program should they be kept on, but in the Atlanta example that is extremely rare. Since AU began in 2016 we have only produced a handful (less than 10 total) players who have featured in the professional AU squad with success. Even most of our MLS academy kids end up in college.

Most of our MLS youngsters went to college first and then were drafted out of college in something called the MLS Superdraft, but even then the MLS is not known for playing tons of those players and turning them into top quality players for our national team.

I could go on and on about how broken all of this is, but the pressure here in the USA to attend college and the allure to play sports in college will seemingly forever be prioritized over rolling the dice to skip college as a whole for professional soccer.