Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #113 - Liviu Bird, Las Vegas Lights assistant coach in the USL Championship

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I Hate Soccer #113 - Liviu Bird, Las Vegas Lights assistant coach in the USL Championship · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Lee View Bird is the assistant coach at Las Vegas Lights who plays in the USL Championship.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: I caught up with him last weekend when they were uh in town playing Detroit City FC.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: They actually won the game 1-0 and they climbed up and they're back into the playoff race.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Previously, he was with the Oakland Roots.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: He uh spent most of his coaching career in Seattle, uh, where he coached at a couple clubs and coached a USL 2 side.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_02: He also spent a year with uh the Columbus crew.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: We discussed his career, uh, some of the sacrifices he's had to make with his family to be able to coach professional soccer, the day-to-day schedule of a USL player and a coach, and we just get into uh talking soccer and talking professional soccer.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Going over my YouTube stats, and at the time of this recording right here, I have 4,784 subscribers, but for some reason, 70% of you that are going to watch this video aren't subscribed to the channel.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: So please like and subscribe to this channel because it gives me the opportunity to talk to more people across across the country, really, just like leave you.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I hate soccer.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Play tomorrow night, correct, and then leave Sunday morning.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this one we're we're staying a little bit later than usual.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think our flight leaves at about 3:30 on Sunday.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Usually, usually it's in the morning, uh usually not super early, so we can get at least a little bit of sleep.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: But uh for this one, we are leaving a little bit later than usual.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Is that like your normal travel?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like get there, get a full day in.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: If if we're going to an Eastern Conference away team, then yeah.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: If we're going Western Conference, then we will usually we'll train at our facility on the Friday, travel afterward, and we get there Friday evening, Friday night for a Saturday game.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that's you know, most West Coast teams we play, it's uh maybe an hour and a half, maybe a two-hour flight.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So coming here, you know, three and a half, four hour flight, plus we had a flight delay yesterday.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anytime we go to the east coast, it's you account for a little bit of extra travel time.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: So you always just yeah, just give that extra day.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh Lexington is also in the Western Conference, even though they are farther east than some of the Eastern Conference teams.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another one where we will go an extra day early instead of going the day before.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do you guys ever like do you guys ever like double dip on the east coast?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like let's say you come here and then you go to uh like Massachusetts?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there have been so last year when I was in Oakland, we did a trip.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually two West Coast teams, but we played on the Wednesday.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, sorry, we played on the Saturday in Phoenix and then on the Wednesday in El Paso, so we went straight to El Paso.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if there's a schedule, if the schedule's like that, then then typically teams will do that.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if there's a full week in between, it's very rare that you do two eastern or opposite coast away games in a row.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually, I mean, it's a little different in Vegas because in July nobody wants to be there.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we um you know we'll we have three games in a row on the road, you know, and it's rather than playing in hundred degree weather.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but usually it'll it's usually home away, home away.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have two away games, then at least one of them will be close.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: What?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you were with the roots?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was with the roots last year.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh go into your like your background.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like when did when when did you get into the USL?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and where were you before the USL?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been in the USL.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So last year was my first season coaching in the USL, USL championship.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: In June, I went into Oakland um with Benny Fellhaber when he took over there.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, he brought me with him.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I've lived in Seattle for the last 15 years or so.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I was in Oakland last season, in Vegas this season.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Before that, I was coaching um ECNL.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: I coached USL League Two as a head coach, um, college as an assistant, division three, community college, that sort of thing.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I've been yeah, I've been a head coach at uh lower levels and and an assistant now.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I also was a video analyst in MLS for one season with the Columbus crew back in 2020 uh when we won MLS Cup during the the COVID year.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Was Ben Cross there when you were there?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Ben Ben was one of the assistant coaches, good friend of mine.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I still keep in touch with him.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Ben Cross is at Rochester now, correct.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I've spent the last I'm in Michigan or back in Michigan now.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's where I was a player and I started out my coaching, but then I went out to Buffalo to coach with the Western New York Flash when they were in the NWSL.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he he was at RYFC, and then by that time, right as I'm getting to Buffalo, he kind of went to Columbia.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: He went to Columbus to to be in the academy, and then from there got promoted to the first team, was an assistant with the first team for I want to say three seasons, and then went to FC Dallas for a couple of years as well, and then got the job back home as a Rochester head coach, which I think he's very happy being back home now.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and his wife is from there, yeah, yeah.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it just it's home.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he played there, yeah, didn't he?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: He did, he played at Rochester, yeah.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, small world.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but uh then I started my own training company uh out there because Buffalo is so far behind.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you've talked to him, but it's just on the boy side, on the girls' side, it's a little bit stronger, and I think that's because of because NWSL and the Flash, and they're so strong on the girl side, but on the boy side, a little bit isolated, a little bit out of the way.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, look, I grew up in Alaska, so I understand uh I understand what that's like.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, very, very isolated, very sort of um on your own.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was uh I was a goalkeeper, so I always say growing up, like I was my own goalkeeper coach.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would watch videos and be like, okay, so technically here's how he here's where he pushes off of this foot, and here's how he positions his hands.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, next time I go to training, I'm gonna try that.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or, you know, this was right when when YouTube was becoming big, so I would look up, you know, training exercises for goalkeepers, and I'd go to camps and or go to ODP or whatever, and um, then I'd come home and I'd say, Okay, well, we did this drill and I really liked it.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd I had my best friend was a striker on my team, so it was perfect.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: We'd go out and train, he would get to work on his finishing, I get to work on the goalkeeping.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so yeah, it was it was cool.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm 41, a little older than you, but the exact same.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I my first intro to watching soccer on TV was the 94 World Cup.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And what I would do, that USA versus Columbia game when we beat him, I just watched that on loop, and that was how I studied goalkeeping.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I had the Oscar Cordoba, who was the Columbia Colombian goalkeeper, and he was just awful that game, and then Tony Miola was like the hero of that game, and so I just watched like Tony's positioning and just taught myself over and over and over because we didn't have keeper trainers.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there wasn't any.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I I did have uh, I think the the brother-in-law of my club coach for a while was a goalkeeper older.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: He was like 17, so he was still a kid, but he was a little bit older, and he would come and he would train me basically as a goalkeeper.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I got that once or twice a week uh in the summer when we were training outside.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: But other than that, you know, it was a lot of lot of individual training.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I'd go with my best friend, we'd go out to the field, and we like, all right, hey, um, take 10 shots from this angle.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm trying to want to work on this, whatever.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, maybe he'd hit some crosses for me and I would help him out with his touches, like, hey, pass the ball here and here, and I need to work on this turn or whatever.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we would sort of help each other out.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I guess in hindsight, that's that's almost where my coaching sort of started because I started to think of the game a little bit differently.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just as a player where I only care about myself.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was how do I help him out?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, after games, we would have, we would drive home, we'd have these big debriefs in the car, I'd go, How do you think you played today?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do I, and we'd have give honest feedback.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I I think this you could do this better, or this was really not the best, or whatever.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that was um, like I said, I think that's really when my my coaching journey sort of started.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I started thinking about the game a little bit differently.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, even when I was 14, 15, 16 years old, I would help out with the U11, U12 teams in my club.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, just give them an older player, an example to kind of look up to.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was it did start because of that, that goalkeeper coach that I had who was older, he was in the club.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, well, I could do that, I could maybe help these kids who were younger.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so yeah, I've I've sort of always coached in some ways.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know Stan Anderson from Camp Shutout at all?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: That name's not familiar, no.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: I I had him on, and he has the biggest camp in the world for goalkeepers.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: He it's going on right now, and it has like 600 goalkeepers this week, and then the junior camp has like 400, and it's in Wisconsin.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: But I asked him, I go, Do you think goalkeepers make the best goalkeeper uh make the best coaches?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting because if if you uh there are some uh very high-level coaches in the world who were goalkeepers.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Mourinho is one of them, famously, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I also, again, speaking of Benny Fellhaber, he he insists, he goes, a goalkeeper will never be a good head coach.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like he he's got this.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's I feel like there's two schools of thought on it where I thought it, I mean it makes sense, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because you you read the game, you you see a lot of things standing in the back.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to, you know, I thought of myself almost like a coach on the field.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'd try to help the back line organize.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'd ask the coaches about different things about like, well, we're playing four in the back, or we're we're playing three in the back.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you want me to position this guy?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you want me to so I think it is possible uh for goalkeepers to be good coaches?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's not necessarily a fact, but I think also a lot of people uh not discredit, but maybe we'll will minimize the goalkeeper as a coach a little bit because they it's not quite the same, right?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're not playing on the field, you don't have to.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest advantage I think we have in our in terms of our positioning is everything comes from in front of you.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's 180 degrees.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas you start, you know, you go and you play as a six, everything's 360.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: You got to check your shoulders, you gotta be aware of everything that's around you.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think there are definitely ways and and in in analyzing the game and reading the game where being a goalkeeper helps you because you're a little bit more detached, you can see things from a different perspective, but there are also things that we will never quite be able to grasp because we didn't play on the field.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it's like when you've got pressure coming from this side and you gotta take a touch under pressure and and get it, you know, get the ball to a teammate or try not to give the ball away or any of that stuff.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so I think I can see it both ways.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do you okay?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: What is your role with Vegas?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a goalkeeper assistant coach?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right, assistant coach.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: How long did that take you to so that's how I cut my teeth was goalkeeper training?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I got into a DA in ECNL club with Vardar in Michigan.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I got Division I University of Detroit coaching and uh through uh when back when ODP mattered, yeah, like that's when I got to work with like some of the highest level players, and that got me in the door uh professionally.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: But then I kind of got burnt out of it and I wanted to move into more of the technical training because uh a lot of my mentors were all about technical individual technical development, and so that's when I started.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: But it takes a while for us to or for me at least to get rid of that.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, he's just a goalkeeper coach stigma.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Did that did you go through that at all?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that how you cut your teeth?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I I was a so I stopped playing.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was a goalkeeper coach at a community college for a couple of years, um, goalkeeper coach at a USL2 team, and there was definitely some of that at the beginning where like always just the just the goalkeeper coach, and pretty quickly I realized that I was gonna get bored.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna get bored with just working with the goalkeepers.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not like this necessarily anymore.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: For me as a head coach, I I like to integrate my goalkeepers in everything.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So they'll be in the possession as a as a target player, they'll be in the rondos, they'll be in everything because you got a 70% of what you do as a goalkeeper is with your feet now.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I put a big emphasis on that.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, back when we were playing, certainly, and then even now, to a lot of a lot of an extent, it's like, okay, you have 45 minutes, go over there and we'll call you when we need you, type of thing.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew as a coach, I was gonna get really bored with that really fast.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I started looking for ways to branch out.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I took on a couple of club teams so I could actually coach a whole team, not just the goalkeepers.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I coach the field players, I could work, you know, on different things.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of how it started.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I always had this idea that I wanted to do more than just be the guy who kicks the ball at the goalkeepers.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so then I started doing, you know, I started coaching club teams and and from there sort of grew into to learning a little bit more about how to not just coach the goalkeepers, but how to manage a group, how to manage a performance environment, all that kind of stuff.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So um there was there probably was a little bit of that sort of stigma at the beginning where like, well, you're a goalkeeper, how much do you really know?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but now I mean a lot of people don't even know that I was a goalkeeper.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times I'll mention even even some of the players here, I'll mention it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was a goalkeeper.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, really?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So um thankfully that has, I think, gone out the window a little bit.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: How'd you get out of Alaska?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I tried very hard.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Were you born there?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Were you born there?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in Alaska.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: My mom was Romanian, so I spent uh good two, three years kind of growing up there as well.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it was kind of back and forth.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: We would go back at Christmas time and things like that.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um I uh I was born in Alaska, grew up playing there.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: The only real avenue to get out as a player is to try to go to college.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, you know, I wanted to play in college, and this was my senior year, it was the first year that the DA existed.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just finally getting off the ground, it was finally a thing.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: But could before that, I could have, you know, tried to go to like the Sounders Academy or the Timbers or wherever, but that just didn't exist when I was younger.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I you know it's impossible to get recruited out of Alaska.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I tried, I tried emailing all these D1 coaches, all these D2, whatever.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: When I went to ODP regional camp one year, um the one of the the I can't remember who it was exactly, but big Division I coaches was the regional head coach.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, cool, maybe I'll get to impress him and and whatever.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the goalkeeper coach basically pulled me aside and was like, look, do you think it's realistic that a kid from Alaska is gonna go to like Oregon State or University of Washington or UCLA or one of these big schools?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I guess when you put it like that, no, it's not.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: So what should I do?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so then I started broadening my search a little bit to the community colleges and things like that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to a community college in the Seattle area, it's called Highline College.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um I looked specifically for a school that had a good track record of moving players on to four-year schools, and at the time they had two guys who had just gone to University of Washington, and I was like, okay, this is where I want to be.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be in a place where not only am I gonna play and go to school and all that, but I have a chance to then move up.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So got to to Highline, started, was a starter for two years there, played almost every minute, um, ended up at Seattle Pacific University after that, where I didn't play very much.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was, you know, obviously it was a great experience.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh, you know, just basically stayed in the Seattle area ever since.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, met my my wife um while we were both at SPU and we sort of stayed in the area, bought a house, had a kid, etc.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So uh been based there ever since.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we went to Columbus for a year when I was working with a crew.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Oakland last season by myself from June through October, so through the end of the season.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then now this year I'm in Las Vegas by myself.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're still living in Seattle.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh um it's probably the toughest part of the, especially at this level of of pro soccer.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a lot of jobs where it's like, okay, here's a four-year contract, here's uh, you know, enough money, you can move your family, you can do all this stuff.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh my story is not unique, you know, of living in one city where my family lives in another city.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's sort of um, I mean, it's it's just one of those things that we do at this level.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it is that's definitely the hardest part of it.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's uh you know something that if you want to work at this level is is unfortunately a reality of of it.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: One of uh somebody I had on uh is with Midwest United.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_02: His family, his wife and his uh newborn is in Chicago, and he just drives home on like the weekend and only sees him, and that's the life.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and think about if you're a college coach, how many times you're moving or you want to move up so you take a job somewhere else, or you get fired and you have to take an assistant job or something else somewhere else.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's just the life.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it is, and and it's unique in this country, especially because you hear about this in in the lower levels in England all the time, where oh, this guy, I got a job here, it didn't work out, I got a job at this other club, didn't work out.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm commuting 45 minutes, whatever.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Here, it's like you know, you could be you could be based in Florida and your family lives in Minnesota or Michigan or you know, on the west coast, or you know, for a while when I went to Columbus, my family stayed in Seattle, and then we all ended up moving out there together.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, for the first few months I was in Ohio by myself.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's three-hour time difference.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, it's not exactly a a close, not an easy trip.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, I mean, in this country where the distances are massive, that's uh it's another part of the reality of what we do, is that it's um, I mean, you you get some of these guys come into the USL and they're used to travel and in other countries, and here it's like, oh yeah, we're gonna we're gonna fly five hours this weekend for one game and then fly all the way back five hours and then the next weekend we've got another, you know, it's it's it's an interesting reality of of American soccer for sure.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: And that figures into the cost of everything.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, is like how much money you actually have to make as a club to be able to fly uh how many people to Detroit for uh you know for one game.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and okay, how is it in Alaska now?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like you know, 20 years later, is it easier to get out of there?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because I always think everybody talks about the kids that slip through the cracks, and they think it's in areas like this in downtown Detroit.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: In reality, I think the more kids that slip through the cracks, they're in Alaska, they're in Idaho, they're in North Dakota and South Dakota that don't have the platform clubs.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it is easier now.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a little bit of incentive for MLS teams.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's been some really good examples like Hunter Salty, who's from Anchorage, he went to the Timbers Academy, he's playing for the Timbers first team now, was on loan in the USL for a couple of years.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's kids who who do make make it out of there a little bit more regularly.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's you know, the world is smaller now, it's it's not as big of a deal to fly three and a half hours from Alaska to Seattle and whatever, like it's you know, you sort of live your live your life on a plane, but it's it's part of the reality.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are still definitely kids who do fall through the cracks, and there are kids who could be better than they are, but they don't have the access to training because it's so again, Alaska is so remote, it's you know who's gonna go up there and look for players or look to help develop players.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it does still definitely happen.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, in this country, I think there are there are the inner city kids who also fall through the cracks, so it's a little bit of everything.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Again, because our country's so big, it's a little bit of everything where you get kids here and in other big cities who are too poor to be able to afford, you know, what we're talking about in terms of all the money for club soccer.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there's kids who live in remote areas like Alaska, Hawaii, Rochester, Buffalo, that kind of area, uh, Maine, you know, if we're thinking about uh, you know, probably even like uh in the in the south, like in Mississippi, Alabama, places like that that aren't necessarily populated with with massive clubs in the ECNL or MLS next, um, that will, you know, also unfortunately continue to fall through the cracks until we find a way to identify them with a little bit more regularity.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Where did you live in Alaska?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Fairbanks.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: Were you military?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, my my dad was uh an English professor at the university.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so there that's the the two uh big ways that you well, three really big ways you end up in a town like Fairbanks are the university or the military, or uh you're in some sort of like geology or you know, some sort of science that uh requires living in in a place where there's rocks and snow and ice and and a lot of wilderness.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: The reason why I asked that is because my dad lived in Fairbanks.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, his dad was part of the Air Force.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Isleson Air Force Base, yeah, yeah.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, and Mount McKinley, like you can see it from his like living room window and everything.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh man.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: So there are so many ways that I can like go from this.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: When you coached ECNL in Washington, were you with Crossfire?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: No, I coached at a club called Washington Premier, which is in Pew Allop.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's about a 45-minute drive from where I live in Kitsap County, which is on the other side of the water from Seattle.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I coached at Seattle United for two years.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's another big ECNL club there.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was before my daughter was born, commuting by ferry every day and that sort of thing.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: But then um, you know, my kid was born.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a little closer to home.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: The ferries became a little bit more unreliable in terms of the schedules, delays, and all that stuff.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: So now uh, you know, the the club that I coached at was a 45-minute drive from my house and it's highway drive, easy 50-mile drive.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so it was not not as big of a deal to commute there.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because again, I mean, honestly, where I live in in Washington is another area where there's there's kids who fall through the cracks, you know, there's kids who have to, if they want to go to uh, and there are kids who drive 45 minutes to 90 minutes each way to go play for a club that has one of these big platforms because there's really nothing in the on the Olympic Peninsula part of the state that's uh that's that kind of high level player development platform.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Were you on the boy side with the EC?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, or a girl side?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Coach both.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Nice.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And do you like lean more one way?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I probably identify a little bit better with the boys' players just because of the the way that I coach is a little bit more direct.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a little bit more, you know.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I always say, like parents, I always say, you can come talk to me whenever you want, but just understand that you're gonna hear the truth and it's not always gonna be pretty.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it doesn't really always go over well with the girls.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: But also at the same time, I appreciated a lot of the girls' players because they, you know, they think about the game a little bit on a little bit of a deeper level.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: The boys are all action and and you know, hormones and testosterone, and let's go and let's I'm gonna kick this guy and whatever.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the girls are like, okay, so I understand, like, I know you want me to do that.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you want me to do that?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's the thinking behind that?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Why, why not this?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why so you really you can explain, you can get into the a little bit of a deeper level with them.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I found that with the girls, if if they understand and they and they buy in, then um they will they'll they'll fight for you in in ways that boys' teams are like, oh what you know, are are I think more liable to think, well, I'm always right and I can do whatever I want.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm you know, this big, you know, the the the boys' energy versus the girls' energy.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's definitely a real thing.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_02: Back to the Alaska thing.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: I had the at the time director of Phoenix Rising, uh, it was at MLS next fest, and he actually is now in Buffalo, but there was a kid from Alaska that they fly down, live with a host family, and lives and trains there, but and then he'll like go home every now and again and play with his like home club and everything.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like but that takes money, yeah.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: And that and luck.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Luck, yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: They just he just the kid just randomly just emailed them one day.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so does Vegas have a uh club underneath like uh no, we we don't have an academy, no, it's just our first team.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: There are some a couple of local clubs that we will draw some players for like training purposes, and in the past we've had players signed to academy contracts uh who are younger, and um, you know, there we have a couple guys who are like 16, 17 years old who will come out and train with us every now and then.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Our roster's not huge, so there are times when we need, you know, we'll need players for for training, but uh we don't have ourselves, we don't have an academy, you know.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: What about the roots?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Did Oakland?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Roots do have an academy that is it's not your traditional sort of academy where you have like U12, 13, 14.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: They have a second team basically.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Project 510, um, which 510 is the area code of Oakland, and basically they play, they'll have kids from like 14 to 17, 18 years old, and they'll play in the UPSL with them, and they also play USL2.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's kind of uh it's more of a second team environment than it is an academy environment, but it's not like it's professional or anything.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're not paid.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the kids the idea is that you identify them, bring them in at 14 years old, and then by the time they're 17, 18, maybe they're ready to sign an academy contract, maybe make some appearances.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we had a kid last year, uh his name's Ali El Masnawi, who was a Project 510 kid, came through, um, signed an academy contract, did pretty well, and then signed his first professional contract last year.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: So now he's a pro player.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, just got alone to Spokane Velocity, actually.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but yeah, there's so that's kind of the the idea, the model behind their again.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I struggle to call it an academy behind their second team model, which is basically what it is.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do you so your roster's small?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: How big is it?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, if everybody's healthy, we have 20 field players and three goalkeepers.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: That is thin.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: And how many games do you guys play?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Six thirty.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thirty?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't even realize it was that many.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Do you play it's not uh everybody home and away or anything like that?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Home and away in your conference, and it's uneven because uh one conference has one more team.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think the East has 13 and the West has 12.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually play Lexington three times, twice at home and once there.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you will play eight teams, so eight out of the 12 or 13 in the other conference, but you will play them either home or away.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: So our home games in the Eastern Conference this year are Brooklyn, Charleston, Hartford, and uh one more that's slipping my mind at the moment.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then our away games are Detroit, Birmingham, which we already did.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we go to Miami in a couple of weeks, and again, there's one more that I is again is slipping my mind right now.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: How many games do you guys have left?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like 12?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say 15.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: 15?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:45
  unknown: Wow.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize it was that many games.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you add on top of that, we have the USL Cup now, which is all the USL championship and USL 1 teams.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: They group you geographically and you play uh four group games, two at home, two away.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: You don't play the same team twice, um, but it's two home, two away, and then from there they generate kind of group standings.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: The uh seven group winners go into the next round, and the best second place team go into like a quarter final.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: How do you guys qualify for open?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think make the playoffs, basically.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's traditionally what it is.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: It well, this year it was make the playoffs.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Traditionally, everybody gets in, all the pro clubs will play, but this year because they they shortened it due to the World Cup, so this year it was a smaller field than usual.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was basically make the playoffs or finish top top nine or something like that in your conference last season to get in.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: So um, but I think if they go back to the way it was, then all the all the teams will be in again.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Do you guys like well you just said it, you loan players out, and do you get players that are loaned to you?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: We do, yeah.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we had this year for a few games, we had a uh loan uh goalkeeper from Real Salt Lake from their MLS team.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there are other, you know, players who go on loan from championship to league one, or even sometimes championship to championship, a lot of times from MLS to championship to kind of get minutes or you know that sort of thing.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there are loan deals that that happen quite often.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Where do most of your players come from?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's a good question.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: All over the world, everywhere.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have a lot of guys who have played in the USL.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: We have a couple guys who are just college graduates.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: We have one kid who uh was playing for the FC Cincinnati Academy, they didn't sign him to a second team deal, came in on trial at the start of preseason, and then a couple weeks later, we're like, we need to sign this kid.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we get players from from all over the place, all different avenues.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: And how many okay?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I I was actually earlier today, I was with uh Peoria City FC's um vice president because they're playing against Flint City Bucks tonight.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: And my question and I last oh sorry, and then last week I had Steel Cities uh head coach and I asked him and it was like what is the age uh difference?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: So from for Steel 17 and 31.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for Peoria, it was uh 17 and 23.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: What's yours?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: 18 to 32.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: 18 to 32, okay.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: So very similar.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: When I was when I was coaching USL2, um, I would say the majority of my guys were you know 20 to 23, but you I would have you'd have a kid who's like 18, 19.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there was one kid who uh is playing University of Washington now, but he played for me basically after his junior year of high school.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: He was still in high school, and I think he was 16 when we signed him, and then we had a guy who was like a former pro veteran player, etc., who was like 28.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's uh it's always cool.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things I love about these higher levels.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, you know, you 16 where you know everybody's the same age.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: You might have a kid who plays up, but there's nobody who's over that age.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: But some of these open teams where you get teenagers and you get older guys and you get guys who are just out of high school or maybe still in high school, and guys who have a family and a mortgage and all that stuff.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's really, I don't know.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the things I love about our sport.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's so diverse.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you get guys from all over the world, you know.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: On this team, we have guys from Venezuela, Ghana, US, Canada, you know, St.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Vincent, um, all over the place.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: So it's how what is your recruiting network like?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: How do you guys find these guys?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we have uh we do have a a director of of scouting and and our our sporting director, um, also they're both kind of in charge of helping put the roster together.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's uh like our our goalkeeper right now, he just won USL Save of the Week.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: He played for me in USL too, and I knew that you know we needed a goalkeeper this year.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we brought him in on trial as well, and he impressed us, and we signed him with the idea that he was gonna be, you know, our our our number two, but also now has ended up playing a good like seven, eight games.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I think um you know it's a little bit of everything where you'll look for players, agents will contact the club or contact us and say, I've got this guy who's looking for a place, um all sorts of different avenues.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: How old is that keeper?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's just out of college, so I think he's 23.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and then the kid that was at Washington, was he there last year for the championship?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, was he on the field?
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: He was he on the field.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't remember.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've coached a good number of those guys in USL 2 um that were on the field for them, uh either coached them or coached against them.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I can't remember if he was one of the guys who was on the field during that game.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think he was, but I'm not 100%.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: So with the with the guys being able to play USL too and be able they're good enough to play USL, the difference isn't that large.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's really not.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I was first starting out coaching at that level, I was a goalkeeper coach for a club called the Kitsap Pumas.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um back in the we, you know, we started in 2009.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: I started out, it was kind of a cool full circle moment because I started out as playing for them back in 2009, um, and then you know, ended up being actually their last head coach before they folded.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of went through the the full journey with them.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we went in 2017, went uh for the third round of the open cup to Sacramento Republic away game, and we beat them there.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I mean it's not unheard of that these these USL2 teams will have players that are are definitely good enough to play at the next level.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then now there's the you know, how old is League One or Yeah, League One is only three, three, four, something like that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty pretty recent.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is that I mean, that jump has to be even less.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there are a lot of good.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so we went in the USL Cup, we played at Spokane Velocity, and they've made the final their first two years of existence, right?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: They beat us 1-0 earlier this season.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we played Boise and they they we tied them.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: I guess they they beat us in the shootout.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, a lot of League One clubs and championship clubs, it's really not a massive jump, especially if you're looking at teams that, you know, um the the best players on USL 1 rosters are championship level players for sure.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then you get guys who, you know, for one one way or another will find their way onto a championship roster that would be, you know, decent in League One, but maybe not even necessarily the top players.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so yeah, the the difference is it depends a little bit more on the club than it does on the level necessarily, right?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how it is with everything.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I get so many like messages and DMs complaining about the ECNL or complaining about NLS next.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, that's a club issue.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're complaining about a club issue, and not every club operates that way, yeah.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the same at USL 2, huh?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: And USL and U and Yeah, USL 2, I think, is a little different because obviously it's amateur and money, yeah, and you get the three-month season and all that stuff, so it's it's a little bit kind of on its own.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: But USL 1 and championship, and you know, the the difference between the two can be it can be really big, it can be really small.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it depends on the club, sometimes sometimes it depends on the day.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, if we were to play that game against Spokane again, we might win 3-0, you know.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it sort of depends on um, you know, there's a lot of different factors, but you know, uh on their day, I think uh League One clubs will will give the championship clubs a good run for sure.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: When when you're back home in in the offseason, are you coaching?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: Are you coaching anywhere doing any clubs?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I didn't last off season.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's you know, to be perfectly honest, you know, with the way that the again, a lot of uh championship contracts work and stuff, it's a lot of one-year contracts.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if the season ends in October, between October, November, whenever your season's over, and January 1st, you're trying to figure out what you're doing next year.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So am I am I going back to coaching club?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Am I gonna find another you know, pro club to go and and coach at?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Am I what's what's gonna happen?
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of that is um, or am I or am I gonna do something outside of soccer?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so there's a lot of different uh different things that happen in that time period between the end of the season and the start of the next one, unless you know you're you're fortunate enough to be in a place where you have a two or three year contract and you know you're going back, and then it's just about recharging, obviously helping with recruiting and planning and all that stuff, and and kind of looking to toward the next season, but a lot of a lot of off-seasons of uncertainty at this level for coaches and players both, because a lot of players are on short contracts as well.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Do you as a coach have an agent?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: I do, yeah, and and most, I'd say the majority do, yeah.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that just that just helps you so much in terms of making because contacts.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's all everything is relationships-based.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you you kind of double or triple your network in some ways, because I know the people I know, he knows the people he knows, and sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it always helps when when you can you can reach out to clubs, he can reach out to clubs, and then obviously when an agent is is putting his name behind you, then sometimes a little bit more weight because like, well, this guy represents X, Y, and Z, so this guy must be all right if he's saying, you know, we should look at him.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so yeah, it definitely does, definitely does help.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_02: When you first got to Vegas, like how long were you there before the players got there and before um preseason started?
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I arrived on January, I want to say it was January 19th, and we had about a week of meetings and prep, and I think we held like a short uh tryout, like a player combine type thing for guys for non-rostered players um to try to come in and either run a roster spot or at least an invite to preseason.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that took about a week, and then that second week is when the players came in and we started, you know, testing and training and and doing all that stuff.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Did you know the staff before coming?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Here I did not.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is my first uh this was my first time working with everybody on the staff.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's nobody here that I knew before.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: What about at Oakland?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: In Oakland, so I knew Benny Phil Hobber because he brought me with him.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so he and I knew each other, but everybody else was new to both of us.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it was kind of cool in that situation, just because he and I were, you know, he was the head coach, I was the first assistant, and we at least knew that we were together no matter whatever else happened.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it ended up being a good situation.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: The club was great, the the rest of the staff was great, but you know, it it is uh it's scary going into a new place and you you feel very sort of it's like starting any new job, right?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Where you don't know anybody and I think compounded by the fact that a lot of times you're moving away from home and and not only are you on your own professionally, but then also personally, like I go back to an empty apartment now.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like it can be a very uh sort of isolated sort of feeling.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_02: And how long does it take not only teams to mold and figure out what their identity is?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_02: It probably takes us uh if you're a brand new staff of four different coaches or five new coaches, yeah, that could be tough.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it always takes it takes a little bit, and I think you know, the important thing is being open-minded, making sure that you're you're receptive to to what other people want.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and this is one thing where a lot of the head coaches I've worked for, I'll give them credit, you know, the best ones, they they've they will let you do what you're good at and let you sort of run with it.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, it takes a while obviously to feel out the the process of how is this gonna work, how are our meetings gonna be run, who's who's doing the video, how are we good, who's planning training, who's got the you know, all that stuff.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then once you hit a rhythm and you figure out what works uh and who's good at what, then you know it's it's good to sort of the division of roles is obviously there, but then there's also a feeling of of support.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a feeling of um, you know, we have a conversation about, you know, what lineup we're gonna play, or or what does this opponent bring, and you know, we can have a good back and forth of of yeah, I see that, but did you have you seen this?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or yeah, I don't know, I kind of disagree because of whatever.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it's important to, but then it's also important that once you leave that room, you know, it's the decision's been made, and then we're all together.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we can have a good back and forth and a good dialogue, but you know, whenever we're presenting anything to the the players, the group in general, it's all it's all one kind of one voice.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're all united in that.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Is that how the executive offices are the front offices too?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is this like we trust our staff to develop the identity or develop the style of play, or or is the front office all soccer people and they know what they want, yeah, what they want to play?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: At this level, it really depends on the club, uh, really at all levels, not not just this level, but uh you know, there are different different ways that I I've heard of some clubs that are they that go, okay, I'm a business guy, I don't know anything about this.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're the soccer guy, I hired you, go do the soccer stuff.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are others where the like you said, the the front office people, some of them are soccer people and they they will make some decisions and they'll make some you know some recruiting, they'll they'll recruit some players and they'll be in charge of contracts and all that stuff, and they'll have maybe want to have at least a conversation about like you know, why'd you play this guy?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this work?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this not working?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Why did this happen?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it really just depends on the club.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: It depends on um, you know, every individual situation because every group is is a little bit different, and and then it also depends a little bit on what they want.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: Some owners are very hands-off and they're very like, uh, you know, you do you do your thing, I'll come and support the team.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, they'll come maybe maybe come and shake hands after the game and hey, good job, guys, great battle.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then there are others who do want to be a little bit more involved and who want to have some more intimate conversations and things like that.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it it really depends on depends on who you are as a club.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: What's your what's your guys' like weekly schedule like?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm fascinated.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, you're my first.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't even had the DCFC guys on.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is your weekly schedule like like I I've been I've been on this kick about training to game ratio, and everybody wants us to play like Spain, right?
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, hold on, let's talk about La Mina Mall, right?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: He's been at uh Barcelona since he was seven years old, right?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's probably been at a six to one training to game ratio since he was seven or eight years old.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: So how long would it take in a normal American player to get to six to one?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh uh it would take us double if it's if he's been there for 14 years or uh how old is he now?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: Twelve or 12 years, it would take us 24 years to get in as training.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm fascinated about USL and what the environment or the weekly environment, the training environment.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: For us, it's about a four to one.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we'll train four times before a game.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sometimes, so like for example, after this trip, we have a home game next Saturday.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll go home.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: We leave Sunday, travel Sunday, we'll take Monday off as a result.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'll train Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, all four days leading up to the game on Saturday.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: After that game, because that's a home game, we will take Sunday off, and then we train Monday, Tuesday, take Wednesday off, train Thursday, Friday.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: So after a home game, we break it up uh with a a midweek day off.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so in general, you end up with two days off every week, usually the day immediately after the game, whether that's at home or whether you're traveling.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you are traveling, then it's the next day, and if you're not, then it's a midweek day.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Got it.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Do you guys do uh lift as well during the season?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we do.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll be um if the guys are back in, it's usually every day except for match day minus one, and obviously the days off as well.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll do uh usually one day is upper body, one day's lower body, one day is more like a power day.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that'll be um you know three times a week, and then obviously match day minus one, there's no lift, and then um on match day, there's there's nothing.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: What it's July 24th.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: What is it in Vegas right now?
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: Is it 105 degrees?
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: 110 was the high when we when we left.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do you train indoors?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, we we just train early, so we've gone, we started in 10 a.m.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: in preseason in January.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we went away to the Dominican Republic.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, January.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which is perfect.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we went away to the Dominican Republic for a couple weeks for a preseason camp.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then when we came back, it was early March and it was already starting to get hot.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we went to 9 a.m.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then um in early June, early mid-June, um, it was hotter again, obviously.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: So now we train at 8:30.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: We could probably go earlier, we could go at 8.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I then you start to think about like, okay, when when is everybody getting in?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Are the players sleeping, et cetera?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a little bit of a balance.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I I leave my apartment at 5:45 to go to the office.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: I usually try to get there around six.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have our first coaches meeting at seven.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: When I leave at 5:45, it's 90 plus degrees outside already.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the sun makes a big difference.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, if it's cloudy or if if the sun is just coming up, it's a little bit cooler because it hasn't had time to basically cook everything all day.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, in the evenings, and you're looking at eight, nine, ten o'clock at night, it's could still be a hundred degrees and it just feels hot because the sun's just been beating down all day long.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, really, the best time of day if you're gonna do any sort of outdoor activity is as early as possible.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: How oh my god, it's unique.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've never been in this situation anywhere else I've been in my career ever.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Dude, you grew up in Alaska.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how long has it taken you to like get used to this heat?
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: Are you still not?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not used to it.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I don't I don't think you ever really get used to it.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just something you learn to live with.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think you know everybody's going through.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it, yeah.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: My uh so my wife is a physical therapist, so she knows a lot more about the human body than I do.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, look, you give it two weeks.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Once you're in it for two weeks straight, your body acclimates at least a little bit and it'll feel less oppressive.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's true.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think after two weeks, you know, it once it started to get really hot, the first bit was was miserable.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then after two weeks, I go, Okay, I can do this.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can it it's okay.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not fun, but I can do it.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, versus like you come in from wherever, let's say you're coming in from Seattle or Alaska and you go to Vegas in the middle of the summer, which I've done.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've been to Vegas in July while living in Seattle.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's 110 degrees outside, and you walk outside and you're like, I can't, like, I literally think I'm gonna die if I walk out there.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's um just like anything else, right?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: The human body's amazing, you can acclimate.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, that being said, that doesn't mean we want to train in 110 degree heat because then you get other, you know, you the intensity goes down and you can't train for as long, and and it's obviously dangerous, and you get dehydration, heat stroke, et cetera, et cetera.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we still train early.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, plus our games are at 7:30 at night, so it's not quite as hot at that time, and it's right about when the sun's about to go down.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's uh it's a little bit more bearable, but it's um yeah, the Vegas weather is it's something special for sure.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: How much of a home field advantage does that create?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's I think it's a great home field advantage.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's um there are some places in this league that have very unique, a lot of them have very unique home situations.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Detroit's one of them with the the stadium and and the turf and how small the field is, the fans are right on top of you.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Great home field advantage.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Colorado Springs, where you're at whatever, 6,000 plus feet, great home field advantage.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: You also have a massive field.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: So those guys run all day, and after 10 minutes, your players are going, I need a not only a water break, I need an oxygen break.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, you get other places like Vegas, Phoenix, even Sacramento in the summer, it gets really hot.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you get other other places that have great home field advantages for different reasons, whether it's the way that their field is or the way that um, you know, what whatever it is, uh maybe it's a little bit more remote, so travel is difficult.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe it's you know, so there's a lot of places with good home field advantages in the USL for sure.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: How is your home game atmosphere?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: We have we do have some die hard fans.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we we can we can always we can always take more.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh any anybody else who wants to come to a game, please, you know, don't be afraid.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: But the I would say the fans that we do have, a lot of them are very dedicated, a lot of them have been there since day one.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we we seem to get a we get a good young crowd because we do our club does a good job of reaching out to the community in different community events, camps, appearances, that sort of thing.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um bringing in the kids who like Vegas is starting to become a big sports market.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: You got the NHL, now you've you've got the NFL, you've got baseball coming, you've got, you know, rumors about a basketball team, all that stuff.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the WNBA team has done very well.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: So it's becoming a big sports market.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think uh, you know, we're kind of the the soccer show in town.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Which is crazy because it used to not be allowed.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: Remember that?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like when we were kids, uh Vegas wasn't allowed to have sports because of the gambling.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because of the gambling, yeah, which now obviously is also because of the internet everywhere sits everywhere.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: There are, you know, there are states where you're allowed to just place bets online.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's still states where you can't, but um, you know, it's uh yeah.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think with that understanding that it's not like you can contain the gambling to one location anymore, and it's like, okay, we can let we can let some sports leagues come in, and it's not going to it's not gonna be the end of the world.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Why pro?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like what what is it about the pro game and these athletes that is just like I want to stay in at this level and not maybe go another um I'm competitive, so that's a big part of it.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: I love winning.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing like the feeling of winning.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's nothing like uh, you know, competing with a group of like-minded people for a common goal.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I obviously the best players are at the pro level.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you could argue, are you are you missing some?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you're missing some, but generally speaking, right, the level of play and the level of player at the pro level is high.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that's it's fun to work with these guys every day.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: You do things in training that, you know, I can design sessions here that I couldn't do at the 14, 15, you know, with kids.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you you know, you know your training numbers are gonna be every day.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: We can plan a session a day in advance, and you know it's it's gonna be you you're working toward your your tactical goals and your periodization, all that, rather than just, oh, I just got five texts at the last second saying that all these players aren't coming.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now I gotta completely change what I was planning.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like youth sessions, I plan in terms of like, here's the idea, here's what I want to do.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do this kind of possession game, I'll do that.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: But at the last minute, I might have three people drop out.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I can you know, at the last minute, it might be well.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: These two teams wanted to scrimmage, so they asked, can I move on to this part of the field?
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: So now instead of half a field, I have a quarter, instead of a quarter, I have an eighth.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: So there's so many different things that um, you know, don't get me wrong, I I love solving problems.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's also part of what I enjoy about coaching youth soccer and and coaching in that sort of environment.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I do like doing that too, and I like you know helping players develop.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's a kid who I coach for three years from U uh U11 to U13, and now he's playing for the Sounders Academy, and you know, that sort of thing gives me joy as well.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think at this level it's just being able to hone in on certain details and and the attention to detail you can give to performance aspects that um you just can't do at the youth level.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's so that's probably what keeps me coming back.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: How much does game planning for the opponent and uh film review affect your periodization that you go into the season kind of planning?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Or does do not do a full year it's uh for me, so people have different philosophies on this, right?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's some pro coaches uh around the world and even very high level who will tailor every single game plan to their opponent.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is what they do, so here's the system we're gonna play because they play a you know a 4-4-2, we're gonna play a 3-5-2, or whatever it is, right?
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: So different people have different philosophies on that.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's more 70-30 the other way.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think 70% of it is about us.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: What do we want to do?
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: How do we want to play what what is best suited to our players?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: And 30% of it is all right, you gotta watch out with this right winger, he's really good 1v1, cuts in on his left foot and likes to have a shot, right?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: So you got to be aware of that.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like 30% of obviously the opponent is 50% of the equation because they have there's 11 other players on the field, and you can't just you know expect you're gonna do whatever you want because usually there's a guy in the way.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, I think most of it, what I've found that players also enjoy, and and the way that I've found that I get the best buy-in is by by kind of creating this idea that no, what we're we're the most important, we're gonna control the game, our training's about us.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna obviously know what the other team wants to do, and we're gonna be prepared for it, and we're gonna know what areas to exploit and what you know what things to watch out for, but at the same time, that doesn't necessarily change everything that we want to do.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you want yeah, you want other teams to change because of what you're doing, obviously.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah right, it's like you don't want to you don't want to be the England the you know that holds on for dear life and for going up one nothing.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think what do you think that there's a large gap between the best in the USL and the bottom?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it just so fluid because of the player movement?
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: There are any any team in this league can beat any other team.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: That that I I am 100% certain of.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: The in terms of the the gap between the best clubs and the bottom clubs, that is pretty big, but in terms that's we're talking more infrastructure, training facilities, uh investment, um, you know, uh the player contracts and and that kind of stuff.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are clubs that everybody knows pays more than other clubs.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are clubs that everybody like uh like for example, Oakland trains in the old uh Raiders facility.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean that's that's unreal.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: Their field was used as a World Cup training field.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that's on a little bit of a different level than some of these teams that train in a public park, for example.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a good field, but maybe it's it's yeah, I mean, you don't have great locker room, you don't have this, you don't have that.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it sort of depends.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it depends on the club, but I think the the biggest differences are more off the field than on the field.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: On the field, I found that regardless of the team in this league, any team can beat any team on its day.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: So it's off the field, it's the resources, it's the facilities, it's it's how you're treated, uh, the kind of hotels that you're gonna stay in.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the home teams get to set the hotels.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: There are a couple of exceptions you can opt out of two every year.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, that was part of my role when I went to NW to Flash, was I had to like do all the contacts with the the other teams and figure out the hotels and figure out the meals and stuff like that, along with the you know, when they arrive, you've got they've got bottled water, they've got all the things, like there's certain standards, yeah.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: The day like the day-to-day stuff.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just soccer coaching.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how are you guys set up?
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: Are you like any of you guys doing that, or do you guys have a staff?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have a staff that handles all of that, thankfully.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, in terms of the coaching, I you know, I have very few responsibilities that are not soccer, at least related to day-to-day operations of our team in terms of training and watching film and doing that kind of stuff.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I don't I don't book travel, I don't do any of that stuff, I don't have to worry about that.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: We have staff that thankfully takes care of all that for us.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: How many of them are away from families too?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit different in in the front office and kind of that area because those are not generally your I mean it your job is always based on performance, but it's a different kind of performance, right?
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's um, you know, those guys are generally they know that if they take if they take a job, they know that they're gonna be there for a while.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like I'm gonna go maybe next year I get fired because we lost three games in a row, or whatever it is, right?
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not you know, some some clubs are like that, others are a bit more long-term, but it's it's a lot less volatile if you're not involved in the on-field every every day, every week game day type stuff.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: What about the staff?
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, are anybody going through the street?
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we have um so our our head coach is away from his, he's not married, but he is away from his family's parents, that sort of thing.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's living out out in Vegas.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh our goalkeeper coach is there with his family, but he was in Vegas before, so we got hired basically as a local kind of, like he was already living there.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's not local, but he was living there.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, our other assistant coach, he his family, I think finally just moved to Vegas, but yeah, they're from the biggest part of the season, he was apart from them as well.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, it's and then obviously I am I'm I am away from my family, so it's our staff is pretty, and our fitness coach as well, our performance director, he's away from his family.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: His uh he's Scottish, his fiance lives in London, so uh yeah, talk about a long distance relationship.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh kidding, and I'm obviously all the players for the most part are away from theirs.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's part of the part of the the package for the USL is the clubs provide housing for the players, so you know everybody's in an apartment or whatever.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: There are some guys who will negotiate as part of that.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can opt out of the housing and they give you a stipend instead.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, well, I'm gonna move here with my my family and my one young kid.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to rent a house somewhere.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of paying for this apartment, whatever you would pay every month, yeah, can I just get that as a housing stipend?
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that is also an option in a lot a lot of places, the vast majority of them.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: Where where are you guys located in Vegas?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like, how closer to the strip are you?
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: We are so we're in Fremont, so the old oh you're in old okay.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so we play we play at uh Cashman Field, which is used to be the um they're called the I can't remember the Aviators now, the the baseball team, which is an affiliate of the Oakland A's, which will soon be a Vegas team as well.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but it's basically their old stadium.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they just moved to a new one in Summerlin, but the the stadium's owned by the city, so that's that's where we we play and train there.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: What was Oakland like?
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oakland, we played at the Coliseum, so uh again the old and then that whole drama going on.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that um that's where the and this is they also still play there, but this will be their last season there.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then, like I said, the the training facility is the old Raiders facility, which they still rent, and and it's um, you know, I mean it's unreal.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh the facility there is is on another level for sure.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you get to use that, and they just built that right before they left.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's I mean, they have every the their film room is like an amphitheater.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're uh, you know, they've got locker rooms for you know, it's a football locker room for a soccer team, so everybody's got you know, you get a locker, a couple spaces, another locker, so everyone's got plenty of space, and it's you know, offices all over the place because every you know in the NFL every coach has every position has their office, every coach has their so there's yeah, it's a little bit different.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: They have a whole performance center with a little turf thing indoors.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Raiders logo is still all over everything, but um, but it also is kind of a cool sort of ode to their culture there for sure.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: How much how much of your role is film stuff?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you guys have film staff too?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, we do so some clubs will have a video analyst, we don't.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we all watch film and break it down and and sort of uh you know come up with clips for different things.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have you know clips for certain players, maybe, or positional groups, or maybe it's for the whole team, and we all sort of collaborate on that.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very that's that's part of it where part of the job where everybody on the coaching staff sort of pitches in.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: The goalkeeper coach obviously will handle the goalkeeper stuff, um, and then the rest of us will do film with even if sometimes it's as simple as calling like, hey, come over here, watch these two clips, and let's talk about this, whatever.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so it sort of depends on what the situation calls for, but everybody on the coaching staff has a hands-on role in that.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you're dealing with pro players, they're all watching the film too, and they're watching everything.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, you you'd be surprised.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: You'd be surprised.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: Even even at the MLS level, honestly, there were a lot of players who religiously would be like, Hey, uh, can send me my clips.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want to see every touch I had, I want to see this, I want to see that.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: Can you send me this full game of our next opponent so I can watch it?
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then there were guys who just don't touch it, they just don't care, or they don't, it's not they're not used to it, or they're not, it's not something that they use to prepare or whatever for whatever their their reasoning is for basically not watching film outside of whatever we show the team.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then you as a coach just have to just be like, okay, that's how he is.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: Different players learn, it's it's what they teach you when you're coaching youth soccer, right?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Different players learn in different ways.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can reach different players in different ways.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them it is film, some of them it's a conversation, some of it, some of them it's let's go out on the field and I'll I'll show you, right?
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of depends on everybody's got their own style, and you have to find different ways to reach everybody.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_02: I can't believe like how much the staff moves, too.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I mean, like you said, it just depends on the club.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: How do you think with okay, with the goal of ProRel and with you know the premiere and championship and league one, how do you think that's gonna how how long do you think that's gonna take to really realize what that does to each club?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's a good question.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think the the biggest thing for me is there are so many unknowns around that right now in terms of how it's gonna be implemented, how some clubs will react, how some it's such a big unknown that it's I I I mean, I don't mean to dismiss it, but it's it's almost not worth thinking about in some ways.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because as a guy who is in my role, I'm like, okay, the day to day, how are we, you know, what did we do in training today?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: What are we doing tomorrow for the game?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: How are we gonna recover?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's that's what I try to focus on.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you pay attention to what happens, but at the same time, it's like it's out of your control.
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's so many things that are are are out of your control that you will I am very curious to see how it goes and how it develops and and what happens with it.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I'm like, it's not almost not worth me wasting too much brain power on it because I no matter what, it's not going to be something that I can do anything about.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is a lot of our sport.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's you know, there's a lot of noise now, social media, there's a lot of um, you know, a lot everybody's got an opinion, especially, you know, and you know what it's like as as a youth coach and just as a coach in general, it's a very unique job in that man on the street thinks he can do your job, versus I wouldn't try to go tell a plumber or a welder or uh uh an IT specialist or whatever.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't try to tell them, I don't know, man, I think you're getting this wrong.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's um it's one of those things where you control what you can control, and then beyond that, you just sort of uh, you know, you have the things that matter to you and and the things that um you care about that you know, some of them are are soccer related, some of them are not, and then beyond that, it's you know, you try to live your life because it's ultimately what else can you do?
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the noise is just worse right now because it's a World Cup year, and it's like, how do we fix this?
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, oh, let's get rid of pay-to-play.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_02: Good luck with that.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we just need pro rel and we'll have a million pro teams, okay.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I mean, I do admire big picture thinkers, and you know, I try my best to be kind of on that level as well, when possible, to sort of you have a philosophical kind of ideas about the game and how should it be, and how should how should we do this and how should we do that?
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day, uh I also know my role and my sort of um kind of what I'm good at, and I that's not necessarily my game.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I try to I I'm interested and I I do try to learn, and obviously I'm not dismissing and saying I I want to be ignorant because that's not true at all, but at the same time, I don't I don't pretend to know more than I do.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's yeah, it's part of it.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: We'll like start to wrap this up, but uh what does game day look like?
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_02: So like what time do these guys I mean I mean it's what 2 30 back home?
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: So what does tomorrow look like?
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so usually on on the road we will we'll have a breakfast is an open window, so it'll be let's say 9 to 10 30.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the end of that window, so all the players will come down and eat and at their own, whenever some of them wake up earlier, some of them wake up later.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we'll at the end of that we'll have a team meeting with some last minute film and and things like that.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: On the road, that's generally when we announce the lineup.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: Although, I mean everybody knows because of the last couple days of training who's played in the 11v11 with with who.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, so they they will basically know the lineup already, but we'll we'll kind of go through those last-minute details.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go on a walk together, um, you know, you wherever we are, usually just a short five, 10 minute sort of activation.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: From there, usually everyone's free to do whatever they want until uh the pregame meal, which is usually for a seven o'clock kickoff, will be around three, three thirty.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's also an open window.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: So some guys will come in at the beginning, some guys closer to the end, and then we will arrive at the stadium 90 minutes before the game, into the locker room, change, etc.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there it's you know, warm up game time, and then eat, eat after the game and come back to the hotel at home.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_01: The day is everybody's day is free, they do what they want, and then everyone, all the players are at the stadium 90 minutes before kickoff as staff.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, again, my family's not with me, so if we have a seven o'clock game, I will come to the stadium around 3 30 or 4 just because I don't really have anything else to do.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll do some last minute prep, uh, you know, finish the set piece, schematics, that sort of thing.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then yeah, it's it's the same kind of thing.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, from there, we'll have a meeting and last minute tactical reminders, etc.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Warm up game, eat, leave.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_02: And on home games, you probably do the Film uh the f the last film meeting the day before the day before.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll do the last the last one will be the day before, before training.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um on the road, obviously we have uh the unique ability to do some more on the day of the game, uh, and a little bit more of a captive audience because we're all in the hotel.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, versus at home, you know, it's obviously it's important that these guys are able to switch off and kind of go and do their own thing.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not um not something that it's like we're gonna have them come in in the morning and then come in again later.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's nah, you show up 90 minutes before kickoff, and that's that's enough for us.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: Tonight you guys have like curfew.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: It it's on our team, it's not really stated, but I mean, everybody's at again at this level, everyone's professional, everyone's here for a reason, and we're all here to work, and you know, so it's not like we say you have to be in by this time, but you know, and plus it's a little different.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've got we have two guys who are from the Detroit area, so some of them will they'll go and hang out with their family, go have dinner with their parents, maybe maybe even sleep at home tonight, like you know, because we don't get to see our family as often and in this job, when you get the opportunity, you go.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, there's there's guys, like I said, who might they yeah, they might sleep at home tonight, which is fine, you know, it's it's part of it.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I mean, who are the two?
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: Who are the two that are from uh Marky Barra is from Ann Arbor, played at University of Michigan.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then Ben Ofemu is I think from Detroit.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_02: Ben plays for you guys?
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I coached Ben.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, did you?
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was at Vardar.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's uh he's one of ours.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_02: Has he been in here?
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not not since you've been here.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: He was here, he left a little bit before you got here.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: I just saw Alex, his older brother, uh um not too long ago.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's coaching at uh a local high school.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_02: I saw him not too far uh not too long ago.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_02: Ben Man.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_02: One of the best, one of the best youth players I've ever been around.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: He's uh he's a big boy for sure.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's an easy nickname, but we call him Big Ben.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_01: So Big Ben.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: We also have another we have Ben Minds.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have two Bens on the team, so it's a little bit easier.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: Big Ben.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_02: That is such a small world between both Bens, Ben Cross and then Ben from Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I didn't even realize that.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_02: Wonderful.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for doing this.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not everybody wants to like do this and you know, chat and talk about themselves.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_02: And good luck.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_02: Good luck, like in the future, too.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because it's it's gotta be tough.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's um again, it's one of those things where you so many things, only so many things you can control.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: One thing that I've found is that honestly, there's a lot of really good coaches at youth level, college, whatever, who could do this job.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_01: They could do my job.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, you know, it's not like I'm some sort of you know, guru special, like on a different level.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people who do, you know, youth soccer.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of people who couldn't, but there's also a lot of people who are perfectly capable.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a lot of of this job and dealing with the pro environment is dealing with the the external factors, you know.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can't stand being away from the family.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: It sucks.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's easily the worst part of this job.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's my my daughter's eight years old, and I feel like the last year and a half I've missed so much, right?
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a big part of it.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I think dealing with the constant travel, the constant schedule changes, the constant pressure of you gotta perform, you gotta win, you gotta do like I thrive on that part of it for sure.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I have no issues with the pressure environment.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have no issues with any of that.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, there's there's people who coach youth soccer who think that they're under pressure because of parents and stuff like that.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever I coach youth soccer, I'm always like, man, this is cotton candy clouds compared to like if you lose your fired, that's pressure.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's uh it's a little bit different.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I I thrive on that part of it.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it's for me, it's the other side, the the being away from everybody and um not being able to just I need a two-week vacation, I'm gonna go do whatever.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's uh you know, your schedule is dictated, your your locations, your everything is is sort of dictated to you.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that part of it is not great.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but on the actual work side, the soccer side, yeah, there are definitely a lot of people who do ECNL, college, lower level soccer who could do this job.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm aftermath of the World Cup.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's blaming, well, everybody has their solutions, but but everybody's blaming youth coaches and good coaches in general in this country.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, this is one of my favorite things about this podcast, is that it's proving there's a lot of good people in the game.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: No, there's a lot of good coaches everywhere at every level.
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_02: I don't care if it's the the local uh uh like youth club, it's the local MLS next club, it's it's college, it's USL, it's USL2.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like I don't know.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was I was that pessimistic.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_02: I was that guy that blamed, like I took it personally.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_02: If if the USA doesn't qualify, like in 2018, right?
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: If we don't qualify, I'm we should all take this personally, and we we're all to blame.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now opening up my eyes to all these different levels through the podcast, I'm like, US is in a lot better shape than I thought it was.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is and it isn't, right?
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are a lot of people who are in positions that, I mean, let's just be honest, aren't very good at their jobs, and and that is still part of the reality.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: But the biggest thing about this, I came into this when I started coaching, thinking that it was X's and O's.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm gonna be the best coach because I know how to play 433 or 442.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_01: I know how to do this and do that.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the biggest part is it's the relationships.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's how do you how do you manage people?
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do you relate to people?
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: How do you uh how do you connect with people on a different level?
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's also one of my favorite things about this sport is you and I can sit here and talk and throw out random names and you know them, or we I can, you know, tell you the two guys who are from Michigan on our roster and you've coached one of them.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's about those relationships and about the, you know, like if I any of these guys, I see them five years from now and we're doing whatever, it'll still be like, oh hey man, what's up?
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like let's let's go get a coffee or how are things, you know.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it's um it's one of those things where it's it's the wonderful thing about our sport for sure, is is the relationships you build, you know, having good people that you that you know that you now have a lifelong connection with, and it happens not just when you play, obviously it does happen when you play.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing like playing, whether it's in college, professionally, whatever.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing replaces that feeling.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then also when you're a coach, it's a different sort of, you know, even the the people you coach against, you have a different sort of connection and bond with them because you understand it's you know, a lot of times you you shake hands with the other team's coach after the game, and it's like, hey man, you know, if you need anything, let me know.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's one of those things, and it's like, well, we just went after each other for 90 minutes, and you know, we're we're both competing, and I want to win, and you want to win, and and whatever.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And but after the game, it's it's hey man, like we're we're sort of in the same boat, we're kind of on the same team, even though we're not, you know.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_02: How is the relationship amongst different clubs?
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's it on the coaching side, a lot of it is very positive.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: There, I have a great, great relationship with a lot of coaches at other clubs, head coaches, assistant coaches, whatever.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of it is the understanding of like they know what it's like, I know what it's like, and it's you know, you bond through that kind of thing.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's right the old cliche of misery loves company, but it's you know, the the the mutual sort of respect that goes between people who do this and who understand everything that goes into it.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome, I love it.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks again, man.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it, and uh we're done and good luck, man.
• 1:14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome, and now your ears are free.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_02: See the look of the difference.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that wild?
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's crazy.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: I hate soccer.