Team to bring players from abroad?

Filip I think it is great that you are so proactive in trying to help out your players and expose them to new experiences. One thing you need to realize is that teams affiliated with schools have rules regarding recruiting athletes, AND if it is shown that a kid came to a school for football purposes, he might not be able to play. I realize that might sound crazy, but I know in Louisiana I could definitely see a stink being made if certain schools started to have a pipeline of players coming in from Europe.

We have an exchange program set up with kids from China. We don't have any of those kids that come an play sports; it's a straight educational exchange.

At my last stop we had a couple of kids come in and play football. One was a kid from Russia that was a Greco-Roman wrestler that tried his hand at football. He was a minimal backup on the football team, but as expected he was a tremendous asset in wrestling. We had another kid come from Italy that came from a club team to try his hand at American football. He was only a backup QB for the JV team.

The biggest hurdle for a kid such as yours will be:
-He doesn't know the game like like most kids here
-He will only be here for 1 year; he'llbasically be like a free agent
-Teams might not be willing to serve as a training ground for him; they're trying to win their league, region, district, etc....

That being said, there are opportunities for him here in the states. In my state he would need to get recognized/approve by the state high school league. This happens quite frequently in my state and I'm not aware of any problems with these types of transfers. If he is 18 then he would be a senior or his last year of high school and he will have a great deal of work to do to get playing time, but he would surely get a great experience. Again as a high school coach, I'm looking at my whole program, not just one kid.

Not that he wouldn't be welcome, but in terms of getting the most out of the experience, a younger kid that might get to play at the sub varsity level might be the bigger return in terms of learning and playing experience. A host team wouldn't be risking as much by letting a younger kid play.

The kid from Italy that came over was in part to our HC making a connection to a team such as yours and going over the continent to work with them in a clinic type position.  But the exchange was much different in terms of what the Italian thought could be provided. They later wanted to bring our whole staff over to install our program in for them over a course of 10 days, which would have been 3-5 practices. We work from January through August to install our system in our own school. Here football isn't a hobby, it's the coaches livelyhood. We have our kids in a school class every day and lift and practice 5 days a week from January to May. Then we lift and work out every week day in the summer.

If you want this kid to get the true American experience, then he needs to come over in January and stay through December, or through the end of that school year to May.

If you/he is still interested you can contact me for further details.

I coach at a small private Christian school in southern california, virtually all of the schools in our league have a large portion of foreign students; and most have a couple that play football. I would recommend looking up the small private schools in California

I'm sure the first few names you'll come across are St. John Bosco and De La Salle, please let me tell you that these are not representative of what most private schools are. Most of them provide a high quality education and solid coaching, but are not football factories. He'll still get the opportunity to play football and get college exposure (if that is his goal)

I used to coach at a junior college in California that had a large exchange program, mainly students from Sweden. At least two players from that program ended up on the team. I'm no longer there, but if you're interested, PM me, and I can try to help point you in the right direction regarding the application process.

Thank you all guys, its very helpfull. Hell definitly go next fall as he has to finish this school year here. We are planning to go to some agencies specialized for sending students overseas and than we will see (or Ill try to contact some of you who offered PM contact :-). Main goal here is to guys try studying abroad and join football team there. Its not necessary for them to make it on the field gamedays. Biggest difference here is, that sport in Europe (or at least my country) is not connected to schools, so we (As coaches) are volunteers, and we have 2 practices (1,5hour) per week. We also arent able to run a lot theory with them or push them in gym. So virtually every member in US HS football system gains experience 3-4 times faster than my players here (and definitly with higher quality).