The Transition from College to MLS Next Pro: A Goalkeeper’s Journey

My name is David Sweeney I currently play for The Town FC the affiliate club with the San Jose Earthquakes. We play in MLS Next Pro, which is a third division league in the United States made up of both clubs affiliated with and not affiliated with MLS first teams. Before playing for the Town I played club soccer at De Anza Force for the Development Academy. After high school I then went to college at my home town university San Jose State (SJSU). At SJSU I earned the opportunity to have my first start versus University of San Francisco and from there I took the spot and did not look back. Over my 5 seasons at SJSU I played in over 70 games. In those 70+ games I made 281 saves and kept 20 clean sheets leading the school record books in both categories.

From College Fields to Pro Aspirations

Before the school records and signing my first pro contract I started playing Goalkeeper when I was 13 years old. In this day and age that seems kind of late but at the time I was splitting my time between goalkeeper and center back. But near the end of the spring season our starting goalkeeper decided to quit playing soccer so I then became the full time guy. Over the next year I spent extra hours trying to improve at the weakness I had. My coach at the time would spend extra time with me to help me improve the basics. Near the end of my 8th grade year after lots of success with my current team I got the opportunity to try out for De Anza Force. I got the spot and spent the 4 years improving as a goalkeeper and as a human because driving everyday forty five minutes there and back to training took lots of commitment and focus on and off the field. 

Embracing the Professional Challenge

During the days at De Anza Force playing pro soccer was always in the back of my mind. But it wasn’t until my junior year in college did I see it as a reality. During that year my team and I lead the league with the most clean sheets and I lead the league in all goalkeeping statistics. From this time I truly believed I could make it pro. Before this realization I had already put into place a strict regime of how I slept, ate, and did extra training. When I realized playing pro was a possibility I doubled down on this process and did more work.  After my senior year I got a trial for The Town. I played very well in the scrimmages I was invited to as well as the initial two week preseason invite I had received from those scrimmages.

Consistency & Commitment: Lessons on the Pro Stage

After the two week period the staff of The Town told me they were not going to sign me but said I could stick around and be a training player and hope that something changes and a spot opens up. Now at this time my perception of professional soccer had been turned on its head. As I grew up I always thought of pro soccer as a glamorous lifestyle that if you were good enough you made it and when you made it there was plenty of money and no more worries. I was completely wrong. As the months went by and I continued to train with the team a couple key factors stuck out to me that differentiated college soccer and professional soccer.

First, you must perform everyday. What I mean by this is you must be ready to train physically and mentally at your 100% every single day. In college there were days where the team may have been doing an easy day or not training at all but at the professional level you must be switched on all the time. Second, consistency is your key to success. During my first two weeks at preseason with The Town I killed it. I was the best goalkeeper out there including the one they had already signed. But the third week rolled around and my performance had dropped. Then the fourth week the same thing. The goalkeeper coach pulled me aside and asked if everything was ok. I told him yes and he told me I need to get it together or I’m out. This was a wake up call for me. I had to analyze everything I was doing on and off the field that was holding me back from performing at my best. As the year went on I started to figure out my process of how I can be more consistent. To this day I am still trying to master the skill of consistency. After about seven months of training with The Town circumstances changed and I was able to secure a contract. That next weekend I played and got a shutout. It was a great feeling but I knew consistency was the key. I played well over the next five games and earned Goalkeeper of the month for all of MLS Next Pro. 

From my journey there are a couple key takeaways.

First, focus on consistency and the only way to have consistency when playing goalkeeper is focusing on “Your Process.”

If you focus on your process no matter the result of training or games you will always have the process to focus on. The more you focus on giving your 100% to “Your Process” the more likely you are to succeed.

Second, be intentional with your process. For me anyone can show up everyday and go through each task with minimum effort. But if you want to improve you must go into every training, film session, gym session, recovery period with intent.

Without intent nothing will be achieved. Moving forward, a big goal of mine is to play a larger role in the success of The Town this year. Last year I got the chance to play 5 games and this year my goal is to play 10 games.