The other thing is the way soccer is done in this country. that is, pay to play, with high school programs virtually ignored from a serious recruiter's perspective.
That's not just this country. In most countries, soccer clubs develop players who typically go pro after secondary school. School boy soccer is not taken very seriously in the UK, for example. Soccer is kind of caught in the middle here where players in most US sports (football, basketball, baseball, etc) are developed through the high school to college progression. In most of the world, a soccer player who waits until age 22 to turn pro is well behind the rest of her/his contempories.
