Latest / I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth / I Hate Soccer #131 - Caitlin Young, Utah Celtic Technical Director and USYNT Assistant Coach

Transcript

I Hate Soccer #131 - Caitlin Young, Utah Celtic Technical Director and USYNT Assistant Coach · I Hate Soccer with Jason Collinsworth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Caitlin Young is the technical director of the Utah Celtic, and she's also an assistant coach with the US youth national team on the girls' side with the U16s and the U17s.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: I'm watching this back because I always just watch the episode back and figure out what I'm gonna clip.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: This one might have a hundred clips.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: I don't there is so much that we unpack the GA versus the ECL with the youth national teams, with the country as a whole, obviously player development, club development.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody asks me who's your favorite guest?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: Who what's your favorite episode?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: This ranks near the top.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is up near Renee Muellenstein, which is to this point my favorite episode.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's unbelievable.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: So enjoy getting to know Caitlin.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Also, we're about to hit 100,000 downloads on audio.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: We're also about to hit, or we just hit, 37,000 followers on Instagram.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's insane.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: Make sure you follow us on Instagram.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: I think my goal by Christmas is like to hit 40,000.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, on YouTube, I usually give updates about like, okay, this amount of people are unsubscribed or not subscribed, and it was like 70%.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: We're inside of 60% now.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's like 58%.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: Goal 50%.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: Can we get underneath 50%?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: That everybody that watches this is subscribed.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: That helps the show, that helps these tours.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: I just I just uh signed with Ohio Premier, and I'm about to go and go into that beast.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: So please like, subscribe, follow, share everywhere.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: And thank you guys so much for the support.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: Enjoy this one.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: You'll you will enjoy this one.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: I hate soccer.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't understand how the scouting network works.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Great question.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_03: And like, do they want to be represented by ECNL and GA?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: They have to.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: They have to.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: They have to.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the scouting network has one job.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Get the best players in the country.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_03: Are there enough scouts though?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not like super active in the scouting world anymore.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, because you're coaching.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but they did just do that.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I keep seeing it on social media where people are posting about like I'm a talent network.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Scout network.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like, I mean, I I'm just seeing it on social media, but it sounds like they're like trying to like get more people involved with scouting.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and then it's like a bee license.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta have a bee license.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Come on in, yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hi.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: Much easier.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: I guess you are.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: I love for the podcast.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're great.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're awesome.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: How are you?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Good to see you.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Good.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Just picking up our stuff.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry to interrupt you all.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: No, you're good.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're good.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: He just told me he can edit everything out.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, not edit, I'm not gonna edit everyone out.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, I just I mean, but they have to represent everyone equally.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_03: But are they?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know what it's like at ECNL.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I can say in the Girls' Academy, I think they do a really good job.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: You don't think there's anybody missed?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Of course there's people missed.
• 3:25
  unknown: Right.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but but I actually think people being missed could also be part of the ecosystem.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's really talented players that are that they can't afford it, they can't do ECNL, they can't do GA that are playing in local state leagues that don't get the opportunity.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And how hey, see you, but so how do we find that?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: How do we find those players?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've had a couple of those nuggets where we feel like we have a really good poll, so like the top kids in the country or the state, and then all of a sudden, like we find a girl who's been playing in a men's Sunday league.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we ask her, like, why are you not playing?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can't afford it.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: And that needs to change.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so does the does the talent network hit that?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way they can.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd say from like the GA perspective, I mean, all top events, there's plenty of national team scouts.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like they're readily available even at our home events.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: If we get them to come to our home events, right, they do a decent job.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think about like okay, completely different side, the boys' side, yeah, and it's all MLS next academies.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: Or European academies.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: So how do you because that stigma or what that looks like or the optics of it looks awful.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_03: And it looks like, hey, you want to play at this level, and then everybody shits on it.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, guys, what US soccer is basically doing is allowing the MLS academies to do the scouting for them, and then they just scout the top 100%.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I think with the connection, I mean you look at the difference between the boys and the girl side, right?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: The connection with an MLS actual pro team and a true academy sister system, all the top boys are gonna go there.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: The women don't have that.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, like all the talent is somewhat consolidated in the men's on the boys side.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: I agree.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_03: Where on the girl side, it's just everywhere, but people don't want to admit that.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_03: They're like, oh well, I've seen them, they lost to my son's team.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that doesn't mean anything to me.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because you beat a team doesn't mean that they still don't have one of the top players in the country.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and Jason, I mean you beat a team.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe they like a couple of their top players had bad lunch, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, it's it's kids like they have they have a bad lunch and they don't perform well and you beat a team, but you have to look at like the results consistently, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: You'd still probably put your money on those MLS next teams, yeah, the academy teams, and then yeah, it's shoved down everybody's throats.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: You have the ECNL history, or 18 out of 22 girls are ECNL, and then four are GA.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's real.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_03: And when you say it's real, go into that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what do you mean?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, I mean, I just got back from the U60 national camp, right?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there were four GA girls, right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the rest were ECNL.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I think we could look at why.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: One, I think ECNL is a lot bigger than the GA.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it's more established, it's been around since 09.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, the GA is four or five years old.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I 09, I feel like it's even before that.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because I graduated high school in 08, and it seems like the teams I was playing against uh were just leaving the ECNL.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I could be wrong there.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it was 09, but club side US Club kind of, I mean, it has been around since 02 or 01.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: But and the reason why the ECNL was born is because freaking U.S.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: soccer said, no, we're not our girls are the best.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_03: Our girls are the best in the world.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: We don't need to do the DA on the girls' side.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: And then the and then ECNL is looking around, or well, U.S.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Club Soccer's like, we gotta still pay attention to the girls.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: But since 09, we've only won one women's youth national uh or world cup.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: World cup, 100%.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And our our first team is even declining to an extent.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is that causation correlation?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: What is that?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: We have to, we have to say yes.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for me, let me let me start here.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that the leagues are the most important thing.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: I agree with that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's about your coach and the environment that you're in.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: Then it's club, is club almost obsolete if it becomes with coach?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_03: Because I hear that a lot.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_03: And like, well, just go to uh the coach.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_03: Well, you might have a really good coach at a club one year, and then you get moved to another coach that isn't as good.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm always worried about just chasing coaches.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have to look at the coach and say what's best for my kid.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a mom.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had to have coaches.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you're not what's best for my kid.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I coached my kid and I was a terrible coach for him.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you have to look like what's the best setting for my kid.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But then I do think you have to look at the infrastructure of the club.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are their core values?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: What do they believe in?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: What is their educational system for their coach?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if the coach changes, am I getting a consistent message with the new coach?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Am I getting a consistent standard with the new coach?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think it's the league.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So to even like wrap this back around to like the national team and all these things.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: One, I think that all the women's talent is to disperse across the country.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: The GA has really good players.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: They have really good teams.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And they do have some really, really good clubs, but they just don't have as many as ECNL.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we go to the national teams, there's a lot more depth in ECNL than there is the GA.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we could say it's because they've been around a lot longer.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I think they're they're significantly bigger.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: They've been around a lot longer.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a lot of stuff that ties into that.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also think that because they have more better talent, maybe their competitive infrastructure is a little bit more solid than the GA's.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'll I'll put it out there, I love the GA, but like our conference, we we have to try and find meaningful games.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where I think in the ECNL, they're probably getting more meaningful games.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_03: But isn't that regionally based?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, is the ECNL conference here all that great?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean that's a great point.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe there's a bigger question like, are these club-to-club leagues flawed?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: You asked before, is like, okay, is Utah a GA state or an ECNL state, or which is better in this state?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I learned when I went to Wisconsin.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: There's four GA clubs, there's one ECNL club.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Weird.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then here we so I every state, this is why I want to do this.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: This is why I want to just travel and find out what is going on in all these different states because it is to be broken down to people, yeah, because people just I'll have Crossfire parents bitch uh on the boy side bitching about how like overrated MLS academies are.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, wait a minute, Crossfire sends most of their players to MLS academies, and then they'll shit on the MLS next.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, hold on.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: Why just because your area is ECNL, that doesn't mean that Florida is or Michigan is, and people don't realize how big this freaking country is.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: And people and everything.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's so many players, and there's so many different ways to do it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: How many are there, like three million players?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Gotta be.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's gotta be.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: I just I don't know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then like we and me especially, I'm like sh like bitching about soccer all the time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, podcast.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I hate soccer.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, I hate it too, but it's there's a lot of good things going on too.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: And that's what I I get out of this most is that we're in a way better position than I thought before I started this podcast.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: I was negative.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: I was negative, Nancy.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: I was I blamed it on youth uh soccer coaches like when the men didn't uh qualify for 2018.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was like, we should all take this personally.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, yeah, yeah, I didn't have anything to do with it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I used to believe that okay, if I coach a kid that eventually plays against Kevin uh Kevin Sullivan or uh former like Christian Polisic.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I want to make that player that I'm working with as good as possible to push him.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: So then that's how I looked at it is like, okay, we're all responsible for this.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: But then I don't know.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what like and then I start this and I'm like, dude, there's so much good going on.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much good going on.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much good.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's not all wars.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that it's I think there's so many layers to this.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it at some point, like the highest level layer, like we all kind of we're competitors, but the game naturally is going to bring competition, right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you and I play against each other.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like we can sit here and have a great conversation.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: You and I play against each other.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe tomorrow our conversation's a little bit, a little bit more tenuous, right?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: But that's natural.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: The game of soccer is going to bring rivalries.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think rivalries are bad.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think there's this like weird layer of like, we don't want to scrimmage each other because we don't want to lose our kids.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to, if I lose to you, my kids are gonna leave.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really, really high-level layer.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd actually love to see like any data on how often that actually happens.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think deep down within like our own walls and within our own meetings, people aren't like we're not sitting here having meetings as directors talking about how we want to take down the other club.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're having meetings as directors and meetings within the walls of our club of like, how do we develop the kid in front of us?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: What what do we need to do?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: What are we good at?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do we need to be better at?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we develop the kid in front of us?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's I think that the heart, that's what most, that's what all soccer directors really want to do.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's funny.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've learned, like, I've been a soccer director here in Utah now for 15 years.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: The rumors I've heard about myself is crazy, which is true, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think, I mean, I think about other directors, and I you get kind of these negative like thoughts of them and who they are.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then you actually go sit down with them, you're like, oh, you're actually a really cool person that just wants to develop soccer players, right?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the competitive realm of like the competition, you're trying to take my kids, we just played you on Saturday, da-da-da.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: I hate you.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: But then you sit down with them, you go to lunch, you're like, oh wow.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're actually trying to do the same thing.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Is Utah like cordial in that aspect, or not really?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because in Michigan, we call it the Michigan Mafia.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like when we would go to the convention, yeah, it was we'd all hang out.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like it didn't matter what clubs, yeah.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't matter what club you were, all the Michigan folks hung out together.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_03: And not every state is like that.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_03: There are states where like you see another coach in the grocery store, you are hiding, or you will leave until they let me I don't think that's the case.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that everybody's gonna have some at least one or two personal conflicts.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think is natural.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say for the most part, it's fairly cordial.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a handful of clubs.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: If I ran into their directors, I'd give them a big hug and ask them how their job's going.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'd complain a little bit about how hard our job is.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then we'd hug again, and then we'd go back to our go back to our life.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: But then there are probably some other clubs that'd be a little bit more uncomfortable.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we wouldn't hug.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: He'd be like, oh hey, how are you?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: But is there like a like undercutting or like you say about the rumors?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm getting sick of the social media posts.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It it's a dog eat dog world.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's usually the like the smaller clubs that are posting the stats.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's smaller clubs that are like new to the platforms that are like posting it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so let me share this.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Is a great story, and I actually think it ties into this pretty well.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just had I was talking with a parent on my team, and I said, Hey, like you are getting pretty heavily recruited by this club.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why didn't you go there?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, because I talked to that coach, and for an hour, all she did was talk about how much you suck and how much Celtic sucks.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: I then talked to you, and you talked for an hour about how you're going to develop my kid to be the best that she can be.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think parents catch on to that.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think when it's it's a a political ad about what they're bad at, people don't people aren't calling it valid anymore.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Where I think opposite parents are like, hey, how are you going to develop my kid?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And what are you going to do for my kid?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's when the clubs are successful.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: When we're just looking internally at how do we be our best version of ourself, like what's our identity?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's the strongest thing that we hold.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we really optimize our identity?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's when clubs thrive.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's when we've thrived.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: The times that we've gone wayward as a club is where we're looking too much externally.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we're looking at what they're doing.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we, how do we make sure that people think we're better than them?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how are we when we're focused on the outside world?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's when we've struggled.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: How do you build that?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_03: How do you build like a bulletproof club, regardless of platform?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do you because I joke that if there was somebody that just threw all the episodes in that I've done into like Chat GPT, they could build like the perfect club?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: How you need to do that and sell it.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: It'll make a lot of money.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: Oh god.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I mean, how do you how do you do that?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's all it's obviously like focus.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: You have to focus on what you are doing.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: A hundred percent.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_03: But did that take you time?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: Weren't you always worried?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: See, I came from a smaller club that were constantly losing players, yeah, to the platform.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, been there, done that.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Before I was at Celtic, I was at a club that did that, and it was exhausting.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's exhausting because you're constantly saying, like, please stay.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've invested in you for three years and I've turned you into a good player.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Please don't leave.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: But but go ahead.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: No, because I was I was I think we're about to say the exact same thing.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: Go ahead.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's eventually a part of whatever they had a moment where it was like, okay, they have to go.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh 100%.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that goes back to my idea of identity, right?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was at this this smaller club before, and I feel like I would develop really good players and they would leave.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: They'd actually come here to Celtic.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I would be so mad at first, and then I'd like have to simmer off and reflect and be like, it's exactly what they need to be doing.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is it our job?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: But isn't it our job?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: No matter what team we're on, no matter what, no matter what situation we're in, our job as a coach is to promote people to the next level.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Whether you're on a second team, it's to get them to the first team.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're on a lower level club, it's to get them to a higher club.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a top team, it's to get them into college.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like our job is to promote kids.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: So then it goes back to this like, how do you build a bulletproof club?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's your identity.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let me go back to the club I was with.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: They they don't exist anymore.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Their name was Arsenal.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we'd have like this internal conflict of like, we're losing our best players to Celtic, we're losing our best players, we're losing our best players.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we become that?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was also kind of this like part of me, I'm like, wait a second, can't we just be us?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can't we just be comfortable being a second-tier club and developing these kids that want to be here?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's a reason there's a Walmart target, and uh yeah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants to admit they're going to be the Walmart when they want to be the higher end.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: I do you think there's some of that going on?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, do you ever think Pepsi looks at Coke and meant, man, if we were just as good as Coke or something like that?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: They'll never be as good as Coke.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think oh well, I agree with that, but like, do a hundred percent.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that GA ever says you need to go to ECNL to players?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 20:05
  unknown: No.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: They could never.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_03: You don't think that happens anywhere in the country?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: You don't think that like one club would be like, you know what, you need to go to Hawks.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're talking within a team.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you were talking like within a league.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like you imagine the chain commissioner comes saying going to ECL.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: No way.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking middle tier GA club.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Saying, you know what, you need to go to slammers.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that'd be cheaper.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: Or one of the top or solar or something like that.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's say I'm taking a U-16 team and I'm hitting middle of the pack.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we're gonna get a lot of college attention, and I do have one really, really good player.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I know the ECNL team is gonna get a lot of college attention.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do I, as a coach, owe it to her to say, hey, you need to go there?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_03: We have a girl at Michigan Tigers.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: They're in the GA.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_03: She flies and plays with slammers.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's common.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's kind of the way that I would do it.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_03: If I was that unhappy with or think just find another opportunity.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Be a discovery player.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Amalia, Philoryal.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, she obviously at Texas, she played for the Michigan Jaguars, and then in when COVID was happening, nobody was playing up in Michigan.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: So her parents drove her down and started playing with solar.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's wild.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how she got recruited.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's crazy, but it makes sense.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: And it's crazy that what some parents do.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe in this too.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that we have to be, I don't think that development's linear.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think so often as coaches and as club directors, we look at a player and say, all right, you get on a team and you're going to stay with this team and we're going to develop you.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a like it's a cookie cutter approach for everyone.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in that.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have to look at individual players and say, all right, what's best for you?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe you're uh like physically a little bit more mature.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we need to play you up a year.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe we need to give you opportunities on a first team and second team.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that development's linear.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have to be really thoughtful in our approach on how we develop players.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: Or go play with boys.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, like you're really physically dominant.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to go play with boys.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I want you to get better here.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think as I think as club directors and coaches, we have to look at individual players and make that a non-linear approach on development.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard, but you just have to think outside the box.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we're so rigid in what we believe that you're on a team and you just have to stay on that team forever.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, like you're on a team, go train with boys, go practice, go go playing games with boys, go on an older team, go on a younger team for training.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like do what you need to do to figure out the skill set you need to develop.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have to be creative in creating, we have to be creative in creating environments for individual players and what they need.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_03: Chloe Ricketts, that's how that was another like COVID story.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: She would just go play pickup with boys.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then that's kind of how she started really, really playing with boys, and then development changed.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting, I would say, like those top, top players, they probably have something like that in their story.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: That they've either played up or they've played with boys, or they do one-off like pickup type stuff.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_03: With the national team.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_03: With the youth national team.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost like if you're if you're if you make a pool or a roster at U15, it's almost like you're a made woman.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like you've you're going to play top D1.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's fair.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think all the D1 schools are super, super aware of national team kids.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: But what I but I feel that there's some girls that are like, how is this girl getting this opportunity?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm not, uh, at the same club, maybe, or have been a better player.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_03: How often is it like, hey, also just go tear it up in college and we'll take notice.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because not everybody is not everybody on the national team was on it at U15.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Jason, I I mean, I've actually, I mean, if you look at this, I've had some conversations with people in the national team staff.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing it more now, but if you flash back two, three years ago, the number of kids that were in our first, like the first team that played in the youth national team was very minimal.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because they go into college, right?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: They go into college, they have a standout career in college, they develop a ton, then they make their first team.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: But how many players in our youth national team actually make it into the first team?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's improving.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing more and more players come out of it.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of players that make it into the first team weren't youth national team kids.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think we have to realize that as even directors, right?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: That whole idea that development is like this really individualized continuum.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: The kid might be brilliant when they're 10 and they might not be when they're 14.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or vice versa, right?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: They might be really good in 14 and they were terrible when they were 10.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that whole prediction process, I don't think we can predict.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: People try to, but I don't think we can't.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: If we can't do it in our first team from youth national teams, there's no way we can do it in the youth world.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: How again, I'm fascinated with like how you are able to do this, be a director, coach two GA teams, and then do youth, the youth national team without ever feeling uh biased.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: Because I remember like when we way back in the day when I uh was coaching just ODP, yeah, we were like very careful about pushing our players that we personally coached into that.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we would make sure that, like, hey, this kid is not my decision.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: You two gotta you you two gotta take a look.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, luckily with me, like in the you when I coach with youth national teams, like I have zero process in the scouting.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have zero, zero say in what what players get in there.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: But like when I'm a club coach and I'm working and talking with national team scouts, right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's really nice because I know the level.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've been in camps before, so I know the level that has to be.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I also understand if I recommend players that don't belong in there, uh huh, that doesn't look very good for me.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't look good for me.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: But then there have also been times where I've been at events and I'm like, this player, one of my players, is unbelievable.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how are you guys not in there?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I I and I will push, like, if I have a player that I believe deserves an opportunity and I know the standard, I will make sure that I do everything in my power to help them get that opportunity.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: How okay, when you're in in like the team pool, how many, how many players are usually there?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: 30, 40.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how so like you're let's say it's a youth national team training camp.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: And you it's before a big event and the full roster is not made.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: There's like 30, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've never been to those.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've only been into camps where there's finalized rosters.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's what, 24?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: 22?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 27:35
  unknown: Okay.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 22 players.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: So like I know they'll have like their regional ID centers where they invite like 40 kids from Utah.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've been a part of those when I was a national team scout and running those.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: But then I believe they take it from there and then they do dwindle it down into 22 kids that are at camp.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: How how many of those events or how many teams have you been a part of at the youth national team level?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Two.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've been with I've only been at the U 16s and U17s.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: So how but how how long have you been doing that?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've only been into two camps.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because I have a girl who is a freshman at Wisconsin.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: I've trained her since she was like eight or nine.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: She was on, she went on, I think she went to Spain with the U 16s.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Never got a call back.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: But now she's at Wisconsin.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_03: And she's a freshman and she's playing 90 minutes.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: She's playing every single minute, which is unheard of for most freshmen.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm wondering, I was like, maybe she gets back in because maybe she didn't she was out of position.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: She's she was positionless.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: When she was in the camp?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: She was an outside.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: She's so I always thought this girl could be a top, top, top center back.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: But they were adamant uh about putting her at the six.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: National team camp in Spain, she's playing like left back.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: Left or right.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: She's playing every single minute for Wisconsin at the six.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, hmm.
• 29:18
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I would say like my belief in it is that I really do believe in the system, and I think that the players will that deserve opportunities get opportunities.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that the National Team Scout Network does a good job at finding those top kids.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for sure, there's going to be some that fall through the cracks.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: But when I work with like the talent ID managers, I'm shook at the knowledge that they have in their brain.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can rattle off players and they can tell me everything about them.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I will say that my experience within working in camps and working at the national team network, like I do think that they're really sharp and they do a good job.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_03: What do you mean by knowing everything about a are you talking like personal level too, or just like if she's in this situation, she does this?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_03: If she's in this situation, yeah, they do that.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say both.
• 30:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll be in conversations with people, like national team managers or scouts, and and I'll say, hey, tell me, you know, I think this player could do this, this, and this.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the amount of information, well, we've got this player in this club, and then this player over on the other side of the country, and this player here.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they can like almost articulate this puzzle piece that they're trying to piece together.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then I've been in situations I'll be like, oh, well, this player did that, that, and that.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say, Well, you didn't know this about their personal life.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you about it.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I've been so impressed with all the talent managers and the amount of information they know.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like to the point where I'll come in with a little bit of an ego, like, guys, what's wrong with you?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this player needs this opportunity.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then they like very quickly like put me back in my chair and like, well, you don't know this, you don't know this, you don't know this, or you didn't know that.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, I stand corrected.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: I also think that they do a decent job at getting enough players in there to give opportunities to.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And on that, are you trying, are are they trying to get as many kids in at the U15, U16, as many different kids?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_03: So that they like make sure that they don't miss anybody.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: So that's why the 15-year-old doesn't make it every single year.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was just in camp and there was a great player that I know is one of their better players that I've had the opportunity to work with and coach, and she wasn't there.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, hey, why is she why is she not here?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, it's because we're we know her, we know everything about her.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to test out some more players and give them an opportunity.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't you work with Marley Skalski from uh Western New York Flash?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_03: Or was that?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: I thought we talked about her.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: She just committed to Florida State.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: She's awesome.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she was in the last camp.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was there.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Way good.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Really smart player, really good.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: She just reclassified.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's common.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_03: So so she went from being a 2029.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a 2029.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: And now she's graduating 2028.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a wild.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Which is everybody is worried about because when all the stupid berthier stuff was going on, yeah.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, why don't we just do graduation year?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then everybody's like, because everybody's gonna be classified, repeat grades.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh really?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually gonna be the opposite.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be the opposite.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna no longer, they don't want to be a gap player.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_03: And or uh not a gap player, but a uh a trapped player.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: There you go.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like that's what's gonna happen, guys.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: They're gonna skip grades, they're gonna leave early.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's crazy.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: I get it from a soccer perspective, from like a personal holistic perspective, uh-huh.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: And as a mom, yeah, no, like stay in high school one more year.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Unpopular opinion from a soccer professional.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I'm like, you're going to get into college, that freshman year sucks.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the hardest year of your career.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_03: How important is it to leave early?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: As in graduate early, just not reclassify and skip a year of high school, but graduate in January.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_03: Because the girl at Wisconsin and one of my girls at Nebraska, they both graduated early and got there early.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: They are a little step ahead.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_03: From a soccer perspective, you think about it because you go into the spring season, you're missing prom, you're missing graduation, you're missing spring break, you're missing what's the trade-off?
• 33:30
  unknown: Right.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because yeah, you look at it, they go into their spring season.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not as intensive a season as the fall.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in that spring season, they get to figure out how to live on their own.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: They get to figure out how to go to college college and be a college student.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: They get to then figure out how to manage college life and soccer life.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they get figured out without the high intensity of a small season.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: So for sure.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then you look over over the what now could even be five years of playing soccer.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Is that six months make that big of a difference?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: And is that big of a difference worth giving up prom, giving up your graduation, giving up everything core memories?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think about the I think it's calmed down a little bit.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_03: All these teenagers going into NWSL.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_03: How has that worked?
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Can I tell you what I think?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a future.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: So you think we're gonna be more like Europe?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a future.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think until US soccer.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, like we talked about, US soccer's figured out somewhat on the men's side with MLS Next Academies.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: All the top kids are there, they're doing the scouting, they're putting them in a pool, and then US soccer gets to come pull from it.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: The girls is completely spread out between ECL and the GA.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Until US soccer fixes this, I personally believe that's gonna happen in NWSL Academies.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_03: You think there's gonna be NWSL academies everywhere?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: Are they gonna be free?
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's a tricky thing around funding.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a real good social push right now to support and fund women's sports.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: Now, hold on though.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: But are MLS next are MLS academies free?
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: Not all of them.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: Not all of them, but they they have pay-to-play teams.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: Like RSL has pay-to-play teams.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_03: Excuse me.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_03: But um they a lot of them are free.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: The MLS Academies, not the MLS Next Academy.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the MLS Academies.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: But but still, some of these kids still do have to pay.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Some.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: But will it be free?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, but even if it's subsidized, I think that the future if US soccer wants to fix their women's side and get us back on top, see you we have to consolidate the talent.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad that you think I'm glad that you know that we're not on top right now.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_03: No, we're not, but we act like we are.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, I mean if I hear what if I see one more comment, but our women are the best.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're crazy.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm what you want to know for me, the X Factor, who the X Factor always was?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Abby Wombeck.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because she was massive, she scored a ton of goals with her head.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody could stop her.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: She retired.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: And now our identity of of playing big and physical and being able to finish the ball.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's gone.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's gone.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now what?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's always been just fast.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: And now we have to look and say, like, I mean, we've watched the women in Spain play.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're unbelievable.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: And we never And we're not that.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_03: And we never look like that.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're not that.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: Ever.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do think America has their special qualities.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're the best in the world at transition.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we'll always be one of the best in the world at transition.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: But we also thrived in transition, athleticism, and in the year with Abby Wombeck.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: Abby Wombeck's gone.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Carly Lloyd's gone.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And now we've kind of lost our identity.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so until so and for us to get back to 100%.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: So for us to get back on top in the women's game, like there has to be consolidation of talent.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: US soccer's not going to do it.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: ECNL's never going to go to the GA.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: J's never going to go to ECNL.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be the NWSO.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_03: So what is the NWSL gonna do?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that they'll just join the ECNL, join the GA, or just have their own thing and just play each other?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's that's what I've always wanted the MLS to do.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: But it's so expensive.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you just want to play each other, you can't because you're traveling around like exactly you can't.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: So how I mean if I if I were the ECNL or a GA, I would start prepping myself to host a a top, top, top tier with NW So Academies and then your top ECNL or GA clubs.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Huh.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: We have to.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: In the women's game, we have to consolidate the talent.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: This whole battle between ECNL and GA is exhausting, and it's hurting our country.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: How it's wild.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Jason, like I like I when I'm in when I'm in when I'm working for FIFA and I'm traveling around the world, yeah, I am shocked at people's faces when I tell them how our ecosystem works.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_03: How there's different competing national bodies.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: People are shook.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, wait, what?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, wait, you don't like here in Utah, you don't play the other top teams in Utah?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: We drive past them.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: We fly past we fly over them.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we rob our parents' wallets while we're doing it.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: While there, you know, they're like, oh, like our kids.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was in Sweden last week and they're they're paying like$300 a year.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: I still don't understand how it's like free over there.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like who's paying?
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: Because taxes.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's subsidized.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's subsidized.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's subsidized by the government.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_03: And we'll never have that.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: But they see it as like preventative health care.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good point.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good that's a really good point.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think that whole underlying idea of like preventative health care is pretty common.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: But people are absolutely shook at the way our fun our country functions.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then it goes back, it's like, where did we go wrong and how do we solve it?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: And will we ever solve it?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think we ever will.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you where we went wrong.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_03: And you're US soccer.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so corrupt in there.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: You look at the people on boards that are crossing across leagues on boards and who's voting people in and the and the conflict of interest that are in there.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: I've been on this kick.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_03: It's shocking.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_03: I've been on this kick for about at least 15 years.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_03: US soccer.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_03: Why isn't the timer going off?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: U.S.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: soccer um was founded in 1913.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: They waited to get into youth soccer until 2007.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's wild.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: When they started the DA.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_03: It is wild they contracted and have contracted it out.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: They contracted it to USYSA.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody thinks that US soccer and USYSA is the exact same thing.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not, and it never has been.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: And they've always been separate entities, but they just contracted it out and they've put them in charge.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: They did it for about 30 years, and the state maybe say what you will.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_03: Very made some archaic rules, and U.S.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: club soccer comes in and says, These are dumb rules.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: They're dumb rules.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_03: And they were right.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_03: And then they start, and then U.S.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: soccer starts the DA, and then US Club creates the ECNL.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: And now US soccer is like, well, what about us?
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, you cause this.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have a seat at the table.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have a seat at the table, totally.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: You think that the English FA just contracts out their youth program?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's crazy.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you bring that into light and you think that's what U.S.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: soccer has done to youth soccer is crazy.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is your this is your livelihood.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: This is your pathway.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is where you need to put your time and money into is the youth.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you want your first teams to perform, it has to happen to the youth.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: Tom Bayer always the guy that's in Japan.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_03: He always said that a lot of youth clubs would look at um like the ages like four, five, six, yeah, as an obligation that they had to work with them versus an opportunity to work with them.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I say US soccer has looked at youth soccer as an obligation, not something as an opportunity to actually make us better.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've I think I shared this with you before.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's always been one of my biggest things being in the U.S.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: soccer's education department, too.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then, I mean, especially a couple years ago when I was heavy into the the scouting department.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was also I've always been really heavy in the education department.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, they have nothing to do with each other.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm watching for this specific type of player on the scouting network, right?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking for these key qualities, these are the attributes I'm looking for.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is the U.S.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: soccer player I'm trying to find.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then I go into the next week and I teach a course and I'm not freaking talking about that player.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wait a second, I have I have 36 coaches in front of me that are going to go influence hundreds of kids.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't I be teaching them the exact type of player that we want in our new national team?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: That we want in our first national team?
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: No correlation.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was shocking to me.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: They are doing better.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: They've now like rolled out the new US way and they are having a little bit more collaboration and it's more unified.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: But for the longest time, Jason, until really this year, there's been no connection between them.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like US soccer has the key quality of players.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Those weren't talked about before.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: We don't talk about those in licensing.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: Is it because coaching education is more about the art of coaching and not the art of development?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, coaching what?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, are we are people coming to pay to coach?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_03: I I know.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: To coach football, to coach basketball?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's so crazy.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I will say, like, I've watched the evolutions and I've watched the leaders in US soccer.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: I watched them really closely, and they're recognizing that we don't talk about enough soccer.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, even now, like to get into courses, like you have to show soccer.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like one of my jobs is an educator developer.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm developing the educators.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like part of the application process is they have to send us in a send us in a session.
• 43:59
  unknown: It's
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, good.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: At least we know our educators, our future educators in the country, have a foundation of soccer.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're bringing soccer to life.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's been reflection, they've been growing, which I can appreciate.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I do feel like one of the things that US soccer is realizing is that we need to talk about soccer more.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: In our education, we need to talk about soccer.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: We need to talk about the type of soccer.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: We need to talk about the attributes of the players for the soccer in every single course.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: But for the longest time, dude, it wasn't happening.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's more about like it's more like, can you coach our way?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, can you ask questions?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_03: But it's so team focused.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oof, don't get me started there.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the biggest issue in the country.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Everything.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I I go out and and we're not pure perfect here at Celtic because I still see it.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: I go out to 7v7 to 9v9, and I mean let's go 7v7, and coaches are working on possession.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: What are we doing?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like your kids can't.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's all like my belief in the game right now, it's individual brilliant players within a team structure.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Individual brilliant players.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: But not, we're so focused on tactics.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I I often think I'm like, why?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is it because we're a football country?
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we're like focused on like plays and what a team has to do.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I mean, Jason, there have been coaches at the highest level here where I'm like, your players aren't good enough to do what you're trying to do.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can't be successful because your players aren't good enough.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: We're reverse that and get your players brilliant.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can do whatever you want.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: And we're you could say that at the highest level.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_03: Who's changed the world?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_03: Pep Guardiola.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: But guess what?
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_03: Pep Guardiola also coached teams that would have a thousand passes and not a single shot on net.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_03: Not a single shot sometimes.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: But then it took one moment of brilliance where one little guy gets through, gets through, takes on six people and slots a ball in.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then we talked about how he's an alien.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: But then at the same point, we were like, we gotta copy his tactics.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, wait a minute, why are we trying to develop the tactics when when we should be trying to develop Messi?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_03: But then people think, and this, I cannot stand this.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: And any athlete, oh, he's an alien, he's a freak.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's unbelievable.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_03: That can't be taught.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_03: That kid when Messi, when he was 13, totally, when he was seven, he was trying all this stuff.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_03: He developed.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: And he wasn't, he wasn't just born with that.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: But he had a coach that said, go on, buddy, take on six.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and that's something I've struggled with.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have a player right now on my U14 team who I think is going to be extremely, extremely special.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, she'll take on five, six players and turn the ball over.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: And naturally, we want to be like, get rid of it, pass it.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Of course.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: She's a nine.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're going to tell her to take on as many players as she can.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: When she's 16 and 17, then we'll start correcting that behavior.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: But we're going to make sure that she is confident and that she's capable and she feels safe that I can go take on five or six players.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's going to be that one moment in a big game that she's going to take on three players and score and it's going to help us win.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_03: How do you how do you battle against that with parents though?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because they're going to see, they're going to see, oh, why does she get to do whatever she wants, but my kid can't?
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, well, because your kid isn't that kid.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and your kid's a center back.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's attributes of of positions.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I actually think if we as a country could teach our coaches to work better with parents, oh yeah.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: The world would change.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm gonna put my one brag here.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: In 15 years, I'll I won't go all the way back to 15 years.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: In the time that I've been here at Celtic, which has been a long time, I've never once lost a player.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe I don't lose players because parents know that I love their daughter and I want to improve her as a soccer player.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll do whatever it takes.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I have so much communication with them.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, your kid's this position, here's what we're gonna expect.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Or, like, uh, you know, maybe I have to put them in a different position to change their behavior, right?
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had a player who was brilliant, good at going 1v1, terrible passer.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we were getting to the age where she had to be better at passing, so I put her at center back.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it like made everyone squirm.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, give her a couple games and she's gonna turn the ball over and concede some goals and she'll be a better passer.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: So when I did that though, I had full upfront communication.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm gonna do this, it's gonna be really weird and she's gonna suck for a little bit, but I promise you it's the right thing for development.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think as coaches we have enough honest conversations with parents, right?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: We almost like put this wall up against parents.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like, oh, they're trying to talk to me about their kid.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, thank you.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Please talk to me about your kid.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I also think we get this like often as coaches, we look at like at the worst players on our team, we're like, oh, we just need to write them off.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're not good enough.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, that's what coaching's for.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: We have to develop these kids.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like every kid develop like deserves a developmental plan.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: Every kid deserves a pathway on how they can reach their best ability.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: And as coaches, that's the lens we have to have is individual player development for individual player brilliance, opposed to my structure, my tactics, she doesn't fit in.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Develop the kid, developer, developer, developer, develop him, develop, and then they'll be able to fit in.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: I get a kick of watching watching a team or watching a coach and how they treat the bottom player versus the top player, so sad.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_03: And how they are like coaching, right?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes you can tell everything is coached towards the top, sometimes everything is coached towards the bottom, and it's like, can't you just do both?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Shouldn't just be coaching individuals, yeah.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: Can't you just just go?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, 100% and keep everybody accountable, yeah.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Like, so like if there's a mistake being made multiple times by your best player, call them out like it would be the worst player, right?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: And all you have to do is talk about the standards now.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_03: Now, this player's standard is different than this player's standard.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_03: Can you make sure that she stays at her standard?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: Because then when I yell at her for her standard and her dropping below her standard, it's not like, well, he has favorites.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, it it's just it's just the individual coaching.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: But I think with that, it's I'm gonna give you high standards for who you are, yeah, and then I'm gonna give you a ton of high support.
• 50:51
  unknown: Right.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna raise you to your optimal ability as much as I can, but I'm also gonna raise this player to her ability the best I can.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: High standards, high support.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: But as often, again, I don't think we look at it individually, we're just looking at the team.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: How do you how do you make sure that your coaches are or developing that relationship with the parents to s talk to them, to talk to them?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because I when I started coaching, I was one of the ones that like I wanted to intimidate them.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: Or I wanted to be you know scary.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like that was so dumb.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's like soft front, hard back.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a Brene Brown quote quote, right?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I I know who I am and I know what I'm doing.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have confidence what I'm doing, but I'm gonna have a lot of conversations out of love with you.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let's talk about it, let's talk about your kid.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you, like, as a mom, I want to know what my kid needs to do to be the best he can be.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: And let me help you.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, let me help you develop my son.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not adversarial.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_03: Parents are treated like they're adversaries.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, parents aren't crazy.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, whenever I post something about coaches burnout or something like that, it's like, yeah, but it's all because of the parents.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like is it?
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's because you don't talk to the parents.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's your behavior towards parents.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's your fault.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, an interesting thing that I do is when I go watch a lot of games, I specifically watch to see if the coach walks in front of the team, the team parents, or if they walk behind them.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're leaving the game.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: Parents are all standing there picking up their chairs.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Does the coach walk behind them because he doesn't want to look at them or he doesn't want to talk to them?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or will the coach walk in front of them?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the time they walk behind him.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a red flag to me.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, guys, we need to be able to have relationships with our parents.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Win or lose.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like we lose a game, we should still be able to go talk to our parents if it wasn't the best day, it wasn't our day.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or hey, like, yeah, your your kid, they kind of struggled today.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's have a phone call about it.
• 52:57
  unknown: Right.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine a phone of a parent getting a phone call from a coach saying, Hey, I noticed your kid was off today.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: Any advice you have for me.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: If we were the ones as coaches calling parents opposed to parents calling us, it would change the world.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: And as a mom, like if someone called and said, Hey, I noticed Jax was off today, is everything all right?
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Oh my gosh, let's have a conversation.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for caring about my kid.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: How also how do you make sure that you don't get too close to parents?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_03: And it has to be hard from like when you're a parent in coaching, and let's say the kid is your kid is on the team.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, never do that.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: That is so hard.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because you all because uh some of people's best lifelong friends were soccer parents or teammate parents on so how do you manage that?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: How do you make sure that that doesn't happen?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really close boundaries or very firm boundaries.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like one big thing, and I've and I I encounter this a decent amount, is people want to talk to me about other people's kids.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: And immediately, hey, I'm here about your kid.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna talk to you about any other kid.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I think that's a big one.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm also like, I have very strong beliefs.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I never stay at the same hotel as my families or my players.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: Bingo.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Ever, ever, ever.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_03: I used to work with somebody at Vardar that was that was like that.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_03: And then when he said the reasoning, I'm like, oh my god, that just blew my mind.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I never stayed at another hotel with my with my teams.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: I am even pretty like conservative when I go to team parties.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I I don't want to be buddy buddies with parents.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll give you respect, I'll love your kid, I'll develop your kid, we'll have a great relationship around your kid, and that's it.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I won't stay in hotels with them, I won't engage a lot during team parties.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that I don't want to be kind, I just don't I don't want to cross boundaries.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want people to think that their relationship with me will change their kids' trajectory.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_03: Now, does Celtic have that as a rule for all of your coaches, or is that just a personal rule?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um for sure, more of a personal rule.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um most of our coaches abide by it.
• 55:22
  unknown: Yeah.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: We do have a lot of people.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: Have you thought about making that a like a club sweeping declaration?
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: We do have some pretty strict policies around travel and coaching.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we have anything about coaches not staying in the same hotel.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: We should.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm saying it out loud.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, 100% we should.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: Coaches don't need to stay in the same hotel with their kids.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I get it.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: There is convenience around team meetings or this and that.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: I get it.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Just drive the drive.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_03: Just drive and go and we'll meet there.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: You're in for an hour and out.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: The team has a hotel, have your admin, ask if you can have a meeting room, drive in what, 10, maybe 20 minutes, have your meeting, drive out.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's also it's good for the kids.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like kids are gonna act different when their coach isn't there.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, there is a team or a club in Rochester, New York, that they do all of the travel built into their club dues.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: So they all they always take a bus.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_03: They um they cover the meals and the hotel.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: It reminds me of like a state old ODP system.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: I guess not old, but it's like ODP.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_03: What are your thoughts on that?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: ODP?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: Oh that kind of system because then they because then they give the option of like, hey, parents, you don't have to go.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: Now their club dues are six thousand dollars, but that's it.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they don't have to do the flights, they don't have to do anything else.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's a little sad.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think I mean I get it.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: So so we require our top four age groups to travel together for a lot of reasons.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's really fun for the athletes.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, as a as a former athlete, I can't tell you very many games and scores, but I can tell you so many nights in hotel rooms with my teammates.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: So like I think it's fun.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's memories, it's camaraderie, like it's it's experiences.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's super fun.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's really good from a soccer perspective, too.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because we could control your schedule, we can control what you eat, we get to control a lot of the environment that will help you perform.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: But on the same, I understand, and uh there it's a double-edged sword because for families that maybe can't afford it, it's a lot cheaper.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, hop in with it, uh, someone else driving.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: And now your hotel's split in fourths.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's gonna be a lot cheaper.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: But then in the same light, I'm like, but then parents want to come, now they're paying even more for that.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_03: And staying at a different hotel.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's one of their rules, too.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_03: I go ahead.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: So our balance is the youngest two teams.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: So are you 13s?
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_03: 13s and 14s.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: 13s and 14s is family travel.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Fifteens and up is team travel.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: And that's flights too.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_03: But that's not included in the dues.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's in so we have our club fees and we have our team fees.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: But so our our teams will have like travel coordinators that then go and book the flights and book the hotels for the teams.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Is that like a like a like a professional team coordinator or is it a parent?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a parent.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of work.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: It is a lot of work.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's usually the the team volunteer that's a good thing.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_03: I can barely coordinate my own travel, let alone 18.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there's and I know of companies out there that do it, and there's opportunities to do stuff like that.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I I I do think the travel, I think it's part of the experience still.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: I had somebody push back on that, and I actually kind of agree with him.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, wait a minute.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: You're talking about 17 and 18-year-olds who are looking to go to college.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: Wouldn't that be a great opportunity that if you're at an event somewhere or you're playing a team in Colorado, wouldn't that be a cool opportunity to go and check out some campuses?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: And know like where you're gonna try to go to school.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: And when he said that, I was like, that's a really good point.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're already out there.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we we've done that, like we'll take kids on on like campus tours while we're out in places.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: You do that on your own?
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, like we'll have like activities, and that's what a lot of teams will do in terms of activities.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: What time do we you have to end?
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: 11:30?
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, so go into that.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: Go into what you guys do for college recruiting and everything.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that I think college recruiting goes back again where I said I think the most important thing in terms of your kids' development is the coach.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we put a lot of earnest on the coaches.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: We do, like as a club director, and I'm like technically the GA director, I do talk with a lot of college coaches outside of my team.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: But most of the conversations I have, Jason, like I talk to college coaches about a player.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, why don't you call that coach?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: That coach knows their training habits, they know the way they are with their teammates, they know much more about them than I do.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: So why don't you work with a coach?
• 1:00:08
  unknown: Right.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: So as a club, like we have a massive database of college coaches and their emails.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: And we we do training, we do um for for the kids on, hey, hey, here's the process that you need to follow.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: We do um like Zoom meetings with college coaches and kind of do some informative stuff, but then we put a lot on the college or on the coaches.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, it's your job to help get these kids recruited.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: So the process we do is is we ask players to email a college coach, CC, your club coach on it.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: Your club coach will then take you off and then start a dialogue with that college coach.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been way successful.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: So now, because they can't communicate with a kid on there, it's hey, I want to talk to you about this kid.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I've had hundreds and hundreds of calls with college coaches.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they all want to know the same thing.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: What are their training habits like and what are they like as a teammate?
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: So kid will email, I'll take them off, I'll send an email, hey, I'd love to have a conversation.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: This kid would be a great fit for your program.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: Usually get on a call in the next couple days and we have a really good conversation about this kid.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Build a relationship with that college coach and then send them the event schedule, or we ask the kids to send the event schedule.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, as college coaches and club coaches, we're just having a very, very fluid dialogue.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's been really successful.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't really thought about that.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: What do you care?
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: How are how do other people do it?
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think they CC their coach.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's dude, it's the best thing.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because then you know, because then the coach knows who's emailing the co coaches and who's not.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_03: Rather than a coach just coming at, so who have you talked to?
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: Who have you emailed?
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: But then I also like I've challenged some of our club coaches.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, if you're not responding back to that CC, shame on you.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's our job because the kids can't communicate, it's your job to advocate for them.
• 1:01:57
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then you build amazing, I mean, some of my best friends are college coaches that I've had spent years having conversations with about players.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_03: Do you worry ever about pushing a player that could just not pan out at that school?
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very honest.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've had call I've had I've had players reach out to schools and I'm like, this is way out of your league.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll have coaches reach out to me and say, hey, so-and-so keeps emailing us.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's she's not tier level.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I will never push a kid because it's it's win it's lose-lose for everyone.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:02:41
  unknown: Right?
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_02: One heartbroken, right?
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: The coach isn't gonna respect me for pushing them.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say some crazy thing happens, they end up at that school and they have a terrible experience, right, and they underperform.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's on me.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: I guess not fully on me, but it's lose-lose.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_03: Has it ever happened to where you sent a player somewhere or you helped them get there, they had a terrible experience, and you're listening to the player, and it's almost like I kind of am on the side of the player here.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I might not send anybody that way anymore.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: I've thought about that.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had experiences with college coaches, especially in the recruiting process where they almost like ghost my players.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we want you, we want you, we're going to send you an offer.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: I've had this a couple times.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then they end up just like ghosting them.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: Never tell them they're not interested, just absolutely ghost them.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what, Jason, those are the schools I have a hard time talking to my players about.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like people like reach out, hey, like I've had I've had a a couple schools.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say the worst one ever.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: I hope my name is 11:30.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like I've spent time with uh TCU.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll just call it for what it's worth.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they've drugged players along, like to the point, hey, we're calling you on Sunday at 10 a.m.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: to give you an offer.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_01: Never heard from them again.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's happened multiple times.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: My guys just have a conversation.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, we went a different way.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just sorry, it didn't work out.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so now if I have players that are like, oh, what do you think about the school?
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm not having a conversation with them.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have I don't have respect for their coaches.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: Check your phone.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's wild.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's sad.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: The whole process is sad.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're good.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's 11 30.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it's sad.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, dude, it's such a hard process for these athletes.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the recruiting process is hell.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_03: That's the reason why I started this podcast.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_03: I just want to talk to my players that went to some big schools.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, just tell me your story so that my younger players and parents can get a glimpse.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not this like big, beautiful, sexy thing like you think it's going to be.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: You think you're going to wake up on June 15th and have a ton of offers from all the top schools.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's and you're going to come in on June 16th.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the case.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_03: And when it's not, and it happens to like one of your teammates, you're freaking out.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_03: And then your parents are not going to be able to do that.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's not going to happen for me.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_03: I wish, and I've talked to who did I talk to?
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_03: Katie?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_03: Katie Edelman at Xavier.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of college coaches that I've talked to, they're like, we should push it back.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: June 15th.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: It should be January 15th.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm intrigued with the new NCAA rule changes, though, if it's going to change because they don't make sense.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to change the whole recruiting process.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_03: Dogs are just like chilling, huh?
• 1:05:48
  unknown: I know.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: I do too.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: But uh they need a haircut.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_03: But uh it's like they're making Sweeping declarations on all sports.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like you can't do what for tennis, what you're gonna do for water polar.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: But they are.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think with the new rules though that we'll see uh the pace of recruiting slow down?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think the college recruiting process is going to go significantly longer?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it has to because because the transfer portal.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the that's one thing.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and money.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: This whole NIL money is it's wild.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: This world is crazy.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_03: What people don't realize is that there's money in women's soccer.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have players that are making some decent money.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:06:37
  SPEAKER_01: So this goes back to what you asked me 10 minutes about the NWSL.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's going to turn into the wild, wild west.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think the NWSL is going to be on the rise.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think more and more kids may go to college for one or two years, make a little bit of money.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's what Linda.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_03: Linda Olmar.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_03: She won a national title and she's peaced out.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think the trend we're going to follow.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's what Michelle Cooper did.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: She's a Michigan kid.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of kids are going to start doing that.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think they'll be in for a year or two and then they'll plan on leaving going pro.
• 1:07:10
  SPEAKER_03: But then what do you hear from the pushback of like, well, what about their education?
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's like they're making real money now.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's not six.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_03: When Taylor was at the Royals with me, yeah.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_03: When well, when Taylor was at uh the Western Europe Flash with me.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: She well, one, she was just a practice player.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_03: She wasn't making any money.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_03: And Sabrina, her like lifelong best friend, Sabs, those rookies, some of them were making like six thousand dollars.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, when I was in the NWSL, I think it was$12,000.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_03: Who'd you play for?
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, I coached there.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_03: You coached?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_03: Who'd you coach for?
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: The Royals.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, you coached for Royals.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: What was it?
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think the players were making around$12,000 a year.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's probably what, 16, 17, 18?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: So back then it was like, yeah, you have to go get a college degree because you can't make a living off of this.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the case anymore, though.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_01: And endorsements.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm shook at how many youth, like I'm in the national team and I'm shook at how many of these girls have boot deals.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: I've had players here at Celtic that have boot deals.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like endorsements and deals.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_03: How do they go about that?
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_03: Just reach out to Adidas or Nike and they or do they just have enough following that Adidas contacts them?
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_03: Where the hell is Adidas on my like socials?
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, come on.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're in Duse.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, Adidas, sponsor him, sponsor him.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I want to talk here.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because I want to travel all over.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think like money is there and opportunities are there in the women's game that we've never had before.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_01: So why go get a college education that you might not use when you can just go play pro now?
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I mean, are we in the last generation of college really, really, really mattering in terms of your future?
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, I want my doctors and lawyers to have a college education.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: But then in that same breath, I'm like, college is such a transformative time of these kids' lives.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just gonna go away.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that breaks my heart.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel very similar about how when kids are graduating early.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, don't graduate early.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: Go be a senior, go be a kid.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the same thing with college, like, no, don't go to pros early.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: Go go enjoy your go enjoy your career.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_01: Go enjoy a college career.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_03: What about a senior that now has a fifth year coming or available for her next year?
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like, nah, I'm gonna go in WSL.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe at that point.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that point.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you've had the experiences, your life's been transformed, go on.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I've coached kids though that are like this so driven to be in the pros.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, she's gonna go play two years in co in college, then she's gonna go pro.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's innately who she is, and that's what makes her special.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: But for a lot of these kids, I'm like, guys, enjoy college.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: Your coach is going to transform your life.
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_01: This environment can transform your life.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Go enjoy college.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_03: Does it seem like more young players are going right into the NWSL and they're not doing the tailor path where like going to Sweden for a couple years or going to Norway and then back in the NWSL?
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_03: Is it as common?
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think so either.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_01: Where it seems like when I was in the NWSL, it was a we had a handful of players like that.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: But no, it doesn't seem like that's the case anymore.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I could stand corrected, I don't know a ton.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know the whole ins and outs of every roster.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't either.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_03: But I just look at the outliers like Michelle Cooper, Linda Almark, girls that are in the youth s youth national team system, and obviously the full now with Michelle.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it's just interesting to me how it's do you think how the pathways are constantly changing, right?
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the thing.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we can sit here and predict what it's going to be like, but can we really?
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows?
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that the NW I think the NWSL is way healthier than when I was in it, probably when you were in it.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_03: But is it helping our national team?
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would say the NWSL is probably helping our national team more than college soccer.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think college soccer is a different has a different outcome, a different desire.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_01: College soccer is it's quick and it's winning.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: There is for sure development, right?
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: But that is a big focus.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_03: But do you think that's a that gets pushed down?
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that I mean it's interesting.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about how many kids are in our youth national team go into college and never make our first team.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is college changing their developmental trajectory trajectory?
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_03: So do you know Luis Robas at all?
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_03: He's the director of MLS next.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_03: He put on a presentation about how from 12, 13 to 17, we can compete on the boys' side.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_03: We can compete with every country in the nation.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then 23 and up, we're also pretty uh we could be pretty competitive.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_03: But something happens between 17 and 23 that is mystery.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: What is that?
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where are the kids?
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_03: They're in college.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Is it the same argument on the women's side?
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's I haven't really heard.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I also think there's this interesting thing coming out with players.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, five years ago you look at players and like their end goal is just to play in college.
• 1:12:46
  unknown: Right?
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: You look at some of our elite players now and they're very bold of saying, no, I want to play in college, I want to go to pro, and I want to go on the national team.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think the kids are going to give us a different pathway.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think college coaches are gonna have to start adapting.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think college coaches to start getting and keeping the best players, they have to start developing professionals and national team kids.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So as a college coach, to get some of these top players, I'm gonna have to show you look at how many kids I've put into the pros.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Look at how many kids I've put into the national team.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: If not, the kids are gonna go somewhere else.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think college is the end game for a lot of our elite athletes anymore.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_03: For the elite ones.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think about the ones that are just sometimes I feel like that is the end goal.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, I recruit or I committed, I'm done.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Fair.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_03: I've arrived.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Fair.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that's probably a majority, but I think the elite want more now.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think college coaches are gonna have to start adapting.
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And start developing and producing more individual, brilliant players going back to developing individuals.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think the methodologies are going to start changing in the game.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're gonna see a lot more IDP-based sessions.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're already seeing it where a lot of coaches and schools are bringing in IDP coaches.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think individual development is going to have to start coming to the foreground of college soccer.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think that's what clubs are going to have to do is more individually focused.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Jason, it's the future.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is the future.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's what Japan has been doing for 10 or 15 years.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_03: And what do we always say about them?
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_03: They're so technical, and yes, and and their decision making is so good, but it their decision making is so good because they're so technical.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's related.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Again, and it and we could harp on this for the next hour.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's like one thing that I've learned as a youth soccer coach that's done this for a long time, I've put a ton of kids in national teams, I put a ton of kids in top schools.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest thing that I've learned, it's about individual players.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is about creating the most dominant individual players that then tactically you can do whatever you want, and it's easy.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Too many times we're like fighting the tactics.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to get the tactics to work.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason we can't do it is because our kids aren't good enough.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Reverse your thought process.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Develop the kids, and then the tactics should be the easiest session of your week.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's working on timing and cues, and that's it.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you could change tactics at halftime.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent with good players.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: You can't exactly change their technical ability at halftime.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_01: So don't focus your training session on tactics.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_03: I hate soccer.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's rollback because it's like I hate it too.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's like it's so simple, but we complicate it.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, I have been at fields, and I know I already said this where let me share with this.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I could like I had this 08 girls team that was brilliant.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: They were really good.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we tactically, Jason, were doing things that no one else was doing.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason I could do that is because these players were so good.
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd be at the field, and there would be, you know, their community park.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a ton of other clubs, and I'm watching, you know, maybe 10, 15 sessions around me.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got one of the best teams in the country right here in front of me.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we are running 3v3, 5v5, 2v2 to bumpers, like small stuff, never bigger than 5v5, for 90 minutes every single day.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm looking at the fields next to me, and you're a mediocre team, and you're running 9v9 the whole time.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that's not going to develop your kids.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_01: My team, who's the best in one of the best in the country, they just got 3,000 touches while your girls got 700.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a problem.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_03: Huge problem.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's a problem.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_03: I get a I get sick, and a club that I used to work for, I could tell you.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_03: I would have parents come in and they would they would complain about the sessions of their of their club team.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I go, let me guess.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: Got you got your dynamic warm-up, a little bit of possession, maybe a passing sequence, play a 9v9, 11v11.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh yeah, how did you know?
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_03: It's because there's a lot of lazy freaking coaches out there that don't know what they're doing.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I can tell whether we're stealing a living.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_03: They're stealing a living.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're not being thoughtful enough about the game moment and how do we recreate an environment with the individual player at the forefront of our of our thought process.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_03: And like looking at your facility, your futsal facility, 5v5.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's the that's mostly that's the max that you're doing.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, 5v5 on a futsal court.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's unbelievable.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_03: And then these parents complain about, well, we only get a quarter of the field.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_03: How much do you need?
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_03: We suck as a country in tight spaces.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well, solving problems in tight spaces.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Individual brilliant players.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have them.
• 1:17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_03: Because we're too busy training on 11v11 field, trying to play 11v11.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas what do we hear about every other country?
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, street soccer, street soccer.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I don't think street soccer is 11v11.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we might not ever get street soccer here.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we ever will.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: We can't.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our speed limit is 80 here.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if we ever will, but it's like as coaches, how do we create those environments?
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's to your point.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's just lazy.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's a passing pattern, it's possession, it's big.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_03: But it's also like, what are they doing outside of your three days or whatever you're offering, your four days together?
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_03: Are they really soccer junkies and in on the sport and stuff?
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because how do you how do you foster that?
• 1:18:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's an interesting thing.
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like I I get really busy with like FIFA and youth national teams.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been challenged around it.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why do you do all this?
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, tell me an another way as a coach I can grow.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I took my license 11 years ago.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any more formal education I can go get.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something I ask coaches all the time.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_01: How are you growing?
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_01: How are you learning?
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: How are you growing?
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a continu a ton of CED in our country.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's not a lot of coaches that are eager enough to go out and do learning.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people don't want to go spend money to do learning.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's very expensive.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you look at a lot of our coaches, they go through licensing, whatever their endpoint may be, C, B, or A, possibly even the D, which is unfortunate.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Jason, they stop.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And there are no learning environments.
• 1:19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's another thing I think we have to start figuring out.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I would hope that coaches have enough self-reflection and dedication to the game and dedication to the kids that they can help themselves grow and they want to self-learn and they want to get better.
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Most of our coaches stop.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Their growth stops.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_03: What were you doing in Sweden with FIFA?
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I work in their coach education department as a as a mentor.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_03: For FIFA.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I I go travel around the world and I essentially help educators be the best version of themselves per FIFA's criteria.
• 1:19:52
  SPEAKER_03: How are we looked at in the world on the women's side?
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_03: Are we still looked at like the best?
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Because I know that on the men's side, nobody would listen.
• 1:20:03
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody would listen.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_01: For sure.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_03: If I went over there, nobody would listen to me.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_01: People still, there's a lot of respect for us on the women's side.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_01: I get a lot of like, tell me how you guys do it.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, guys, we're not reinventing the wheel.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_01: But then I tell them about our ecosystem.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, oh, that's why we've caught you so quickly.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_01: A hundred percent.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_01: But for sure on the women's side, it is like, so how do you guys do it?
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also like always an undertone of like, you guys are really athletic.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, we're really athletic.
• 1:20:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I I was coaching at the GA Cup for the Is that a slap in the face, though?
• 1:20:45
  SPEAKER_01: So Generations Adidas Cup, I was coaching there.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we were playing, let's see, it was Bayern Munich was there, Real Madrid was there, Club America was there.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then Japan team was there.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it was amazing to watch how culture is influencing it.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_01: But Jason, from day one, I was like, we're gonna win.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because we're so much more athletic than everyone.
• 1:21:05
  SPEAKER_01: From a young age, we're just so athletic.
• 1:21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it ties into the first team.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I think we're the best country in the world at transition because we're athletic.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we have to start forming a different identity.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because Spain has a much different identity.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Japan has a different identity.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these other countries are bringing a different, more thoughtful way of the game that's better.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking of like, how would that happen?
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_03: We have the kind of like what Coyde did with Barcelona.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_03: We would need somebody like Martha to just come in and just revamp everything.
• 1:21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, Marta.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or U.S.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Soccer comes in, or then WSL comes in.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna come from failure though.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like we don't wake up until we lose.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Haven't we lost?
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody acts like oh, we're the best in the world.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, guys, we went what?
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_03: We went 16 years, we went four World Cups without without winning a World Cup on the girl side.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, obviously we won 15 and 19, but then we don't we don't.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_03: Stop stop talking to me about the winning the Olympics.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_01: 100%.
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's a 12-team tournament.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_03: The the the standards to get in for some of the like the European nations were was ridiculous because it was dictated on how you did in the world cup, right?
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_03: So there was one Olympics, I think we won it when when France wasn't in it, Germany wasn't in it, and Sweden wasn't in it.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_03: And you guys are flexing that we won an Olympics.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's like we know it's hard, our men can't even qualify, but you know we're here for World Cups, totally.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we failed, like we haven't been winning.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_01: You would think, and I I do like this generation hasn't won anything.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean the Olympics, but it's still Yeah.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, I mean I'm I am with my integration with US soccer in a lot of different departments, I do feel like they're coming along.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm hopeful.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: At least I know that the scouting department is now working with the education department.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully we can start at least teaching the type of player we want to develop.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_03: Have you noticed that like there isn't maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like there's not the world-class foreign players in the NWSL anymore.
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're not, dude.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, they're because they have their own leagues.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Our players are going there.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_03: We don't have Bomadi.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way they're coming to us.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Our top players for a trend were going there.
• 1:24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Lindsay Haran went there, Rose Lavelle, I think, did Rose go there.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the SART players were leaving.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's another really good thing that's happened with NWSL's growth, is that they're not pigeonholding people to stay anymore.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Fair.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_03: Because they were they threatened international cards.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_03: Back in the back in the day when I was with The Flash.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wild.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I knew that.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_03: They were like, if you go to Europe, screw it.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_03: Amber Brooks, right?
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_03: Amber Brooks, she was making really good money for uh, I think she was Bayern Munich.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_03: And uh she came back to NWSL and she's like, I got threatened by US soccer.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_03: That if because that's when they were paying the the you know the allocated players fifty thousand dollars or whatever.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like, Yeah, they they threaten to s take my international card if I don't come back to NWSL.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's wild, and I'm like, huh.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_03: And that's her lifelong goal is to play for the national team.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_03: It never worked out for her, but but that was what she said.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_03: She'd she was like, I had to come back, yeah, and then the pigeon holding of like there's other uh players that flirted with going over there, and then all of a sudden they weren't really like like Lindsay Haran for a little time.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_03: She couldn't make the the the roster, yeah.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_03: She wasn't like invited.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_03: Part of it is because she chose to go over there at the at the when she was younger.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_03: Now they've opened up a little bit, but yeah, that's the stuff that's the type of stuff that's going on.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, which to me or Mike, let them go overseas, let them develop.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna develop better there than they are right now in the NWSL.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know the solution.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean US soccer, please.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_01: US soccer if US soccer come in and merge leagues and consolidate the players, we would be on a good path.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Our college system would be better.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_01: If they could if the US soccer could work a little bit more with college systems, and W Cell, then W sell will rise, better players will stay.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think like the GA or the ECNL's like goal should be?
• 1:26:17
  SPEAKER_03: Is it to just because you could tell like which platform cares more about which college you're going to than what player you're actually developing, you know?
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It should be about development.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_03: So 100% should it be about developing pros?
• 1:26:30
  SPEAKER_03: But then everybody's like, well, it should be about the Western New York Flash said we don't care about uh developing pros, we just want to develop college at players.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_03: They said that about 10 years ago when the fight of getting into the DA or ECNL or whatever.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, we don't care about pros.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's what we're talking about.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, like, I think our job is to get our players their best opportunity they can be.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's the pros, we should get them to the pros.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a college, we should get them to college.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So with the leagues, I don't know.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, is it the league's job?
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's the league's job to support clubs that can support coaches to develop players to their best ability.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that leagues, and I share this with the GA all the time, like stop just being an organization that runs a league.
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Figure out a way to develop soccer players.
• 1:27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you can do that by supporting clubs, club directors, standardization within club directors to be a member of the GA and see how this the clubs are influencing coaches to influence players.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I believe leagues could have much more impact on players than they think they do.
• 1:27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I think ECNL and the GA are they're just companies that run leagues.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a missed opportunity.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think leagues could do significantly more in influencing the players' development.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_01: It'd have to come through standards.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_01: So high standards, high support, which then those standards.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Standards should hold coaches to a certain standard, which then we know would directly impact the player development.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Standards are hard to be are hard to hold because you don't want to piss someone off and have them jump to the next league.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever Okay, you said that you haven't lost a player in like 15 years.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Since I've been at Celtic.
• 1:28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was at my feeder club.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, when you stop coaching them, when you how long do you usually stay with the group?
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've gone for a couple years, like two to three years, but I also took like my awaits.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I had them for eight years.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so think about it.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_03: Bitter sweet.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_03: So do you usually take them at 16, 17, and 18?
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, like my expertise, I would say, is probably like 13 through 16 or 17.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so when then maybe those last years.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do they ever leave?
• 1:29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've had it.
• 1:29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've had it.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it maybe goes back to what I said.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that your coach is the most important thing in terms of developing your kid.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think that I've had the opportunity to traft and keep a lot of players because of the way I've developed kids.
• 1:29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so all of a sudden, oh Caitlin's not our coach.
• 1:29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe this coach fits me better.
• 1:29:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's happened.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_01: I know that's a challenge.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_02: It is a challenge.
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean how and that's like a big challenge I have as a club director.
• 1:29:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, how do I standardize coaches?
• 1:29:36
  SPEAKER_01: How do I standardize coaching?
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_01: How do we keep how do I keep our 90 teams not feel like a franchisee model?
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_01: That we're all just wearing the same uniform.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh you start by having a place like this.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you don't have a place like this, a place to call home, I think that's what you are.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_03: You're just a collection of teams.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_03: Because you're not on the same page.
• 1:30:01
  SPEAKER_01: You're not you have to have a home base and you have to have a really good team that believes in the vision.
• 1:30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So when I say team, a director team.
• 1:30:10
  SPEAKER_03: You're talking about the yeah, directors and coaches.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:30:13
  SPEAKER_01: That believe in the vision and that have standards and that they abide to and that they believe in.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And standards aren't like this negative thing.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Standards are just this way of operating that we believe in that will help us develop soccer players.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's an identity.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was what you were talking about.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_03: Identity.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_03: What is your club identity?
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have an identity?
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_01: Do we?
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, we do.
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like I've shared with you before, like, we have our core values that we believe in to every cell in our body.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And those are a big part of our driving decisions.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like, does it align with our core values?
• 1:30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, does this match who we are?
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, identity on the soccer field is a very challenging thing.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like we we have our game model, but we also have to understand that every team makeup is going to look different based off of the individual attributes of the kids.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So then our methodology goes back to what we've been harping on individual brilliant players.
• 1:31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then the game model and the tactics should be easier.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that's your real identity?
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Just developing individual brilliant players.
• 1:31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Individual brilliant players, 100%.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because how many pe how many clubs out there are just identified by what platform they're in?
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's what everyone talks about.
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, okay, and then that when that one fails, like the DA did.
• 1:31:34
  SPEAKER_03: And Jason, like what are you gonna do then?
• 1:31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's why I'll stand here and I'll I'll I'll I put it out on social media and got some lip from it.
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, does the league matter?
• 1:31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is ECNL better than GA?
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_01: You have to look at your coach.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have to look at your coach, and can your coach develop individual brilliant players and get them to the next level?
• 1:31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 1:31:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've re I've placed more kids than at one in one year than both ECNL clubs in Utah did combine.
• 1:32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me ECNL is better.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me that you need to ride the coattail of your platform.
• 1:32:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's not about the platform, and it is, and it is about like the club, because so many times so many times when I hear complaints about the ECNL, I go, that's not an ECNL issue.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's not that's not their doing.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_03: 100%.
• 1:32:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's your club's doing, it's your club's doing hundred percent.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_03: But then when we talk about success of the ECNL, we think it's the ECNL.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's the club, it's the club, and and the coaches, a hundred percent.
• 1:32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that what an interesting thing.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about like what ECNL or the GA are doing right now.
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them are really great at organizing leagues.
• 1:32:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's about the clubs and it's about the coaches, and some are better at marketing, yeah.
• 1:32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so when people like I shared that story, when like a coach all she did was rip on me and the GA, it's not gonna attract people, doesn't matter about that.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about to coaches, but I will stand here like I'm the biggest believer in coaches, right?
• 1:33:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's all about coaches.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for doing this.
• 1:33:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's so fun.
• 1:33:13
  SPEAKER_01: I could talk soccer forever for forever if you I know that was way fun.
• 1:33:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but thanks.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much, and then I can't wait.
• 1:33:24
  SPEAKER_03: Cheers to soccer.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_03: I can't wait to see, yeah.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_03: I can't wait to see how this goes.
• 1:33:28
  SPEAKER_01: That'll be good.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:33:29
  SPEAKER_03: Cheers, see ya.
• 1:33:31
  SPEAKER_03: I hate soccer.