How to make a college soccer recruiting video
A good recruiting video is short, starts with the best moments, and makes your player easy to find. It doesn't need professional editing. Here is what college coaches want from one, and what makes them stop watching.
What the video is for
A recruiting video is how most college coaches first see your player. They watch it to decide whether to look closer: watch a full game, come to a tournament, call. So its job isn't to show everything, but to make a coach want to see more. Send it with the first email to each coach, and keep the link on your player's profile.
Short, with the best first
- Three to six minutes. Longer, and coaches stop watching.
- Twenty to twenty-five clips for a field player.
- The best moments in the first thirty seconds. Many coaches decide that fast. Then the rest of what your player's position needs.
- Each clip starts a few seconds before the moment, so the coach sees the decision, and ends just after.
Make your player easy to find
- An intro card: name, graduation year, position, shirt number and colour, club team and league, and contact details for your player and the club coach. Put the contacts at the end again.
- A marker on your player at the start of each clip: a circle, an arrow or a spotlight, simple and brief. A coach who has to search for your player stops looking.
Games, not practice
Coaches want to see how your player decides and reacts in real games, against real opponents, so field players' videos should be game footage. Mistakes that your player recovers from are fine: coaches like to see how a player adjusts.
Goalkeepers are the exception. A keeper touches the ball only a few times a game, so a keeper's video adds training footage to the games: diving to both sides, catching and parrying, crosses, breakaways, and every kind of distribution (goal kicks, punts, throws, passes back), with the camera following long kicks to show the distance.
What to show for each position is in what coaches look for, by position.
Filming that coaches can use
- Film from high up, near halfway, with a tripod.
- Landscape, always.
- Wide. Coaches want to see the space, the runs and the passing options, not just the ball. Keep the part of the field where the ball is in the picture, and don't zoom in and out.
- Follow the ball smoothly, and keep filming through the whole game.
More in how to film a game with a phone.
Full games too
Coaches who like the reel almost always ask for full games. Have one or two recent ones ready, unedited, filmed wide, ideally against strong opponents, and say in the email which number your player wears and what colour.
Editing: keep it plain
- No music needed. Many coaches watch with the sound off; if you add music, keep it quiet and free of explicit lyrics.
- No effects. Plain cuts between clips, little slow motion, and no long title sequences.
- The same quality throughout: drop a great moment if the picture is too poor to see it.
Sending it
- A link, not an attachment. Put the video online, unlisted if you prefer, and check that it plays on a phone.
- A clear title: name, graduation year, position and club.
- Update it each season, or sooner after a strong run of games. Coaches want to see your player now, so replace the older clips.
The usual mistakes
- Too long, or the best moments buried in the middle.
- No intro card, or no marker: the coach can't find your player.
- Filmed too close, from the ground, or zoomed in and out.
- Only goals, nothing of the rest of the game.
- Old clips from two seasons ago.
- Music louder than the game.