Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #306: A first-hand account of a Sargent goal, plus the cost of USSF coaching licenses

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

Jake Landau from the It's Called Soccer Youtube channel joins the pod with a first-hand account from Norwich City's EFL Cup victory over Birmingham City, which featured three Americans. He also spoke about his experience getting coaching licenses from both USSF and UEFA, the topic of one of his recent videos.Subscribe to Jake's channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ItsCalledSoccerHere's the video on coaching licenses, cost, difference in emphasis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qysgY_yAs_sJoin the Scuffed Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the SCuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Our guest today is Jake Landau, a YouTuber whose channel concerns American soccer. Jake's from Pennsylvania. He lives in London. And he took the train up to East Anglia yesterday to attend the cup tie between Birmingham City and Norwich City. So we have, believe it or not, an eyewitness account of a Josh Sergeant goal today on the SCuff podcast. Jake, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Thank you. I must be one of few to have seen a goal in England from Josh Sargent's foot or head. That's right. Before we get into it, check out Jake's YouTube channel. It's called Soccer. The channel is named It's Called Soccer. And subscribe if you can. The link is in the show notes.

So first of all, what's the landscape in East Anglia like? Is it just flat all the way up to North? It's quite flat. Yeah. Like sometimes you'll take trains down to South Hampton. or up to Liverpool and maybe you'll go through a few tunnels, but for the most part, up to East Anglia, it's flat, a lot of villages with thatched roofs that you pass along.

You pass through Ipswich is one of the towns that you go through and can stop at. But yeah, for the most part, it's beautiful scenery, but it doesn't have a lot of varied heights and things in the distance to look at. Yeah, thatched roof. They're still doing that, huh? Oh, yeah. So what's Norwich like? Is it more Wilkesbury or more Hershey?

Good question. I would say I was surprised personally by Norwich. I hadn't been there until going to this game. And I will also say that I left work in London at 5 o'clock, took a train up, got about an hour before the game started, and then had to leave right away. but nor truly surprised me in the sense that it almost looks preserved in time a little bit from like 17th, 18th century. You'll walk around and you'll see these plaques on the walls that have the pictures or paintings of what this street looked like 200 years ago. And you'll find that not much has changed when you open up your eyes and take a look above and see almost the same exact street. But it's a really cool city.

I didn't really expect it to have the character of what I saw. And while I didn't get to go around and really dig deep into the Norwich Markets and the city hall is a popular destination as well, it was just really nice to see. These cities in England, if people haven't been around to, I'm talking about your baths, your Windsors, all of those little towns, they're perfectly sized to spend a day or spend a weekend there because they're about a mile and a half to two miles in diameter. You can really see everything that you need to in that time. But in terms of Norwich outside of the city, like all of these towns, right, in England

that are becoming population centers or have been population centers for a long time are along rivers because that's how civilization, ended up having to do transport and moving things around the world. And you'll find that Norwich is no different. There's a river running through it. And what's cool about Carrow Road, the stadium for Norwich City, is that it's a little bit tucked away on the other side of the river, but that's also where the train station is.

There's a bunch of restaurants around there that it's almost like a very hip area of Norwich, I would say. So it was really nice to get down there. It surprised me with its character, and I would definitely recommend even if you aren't able to see a match or go for a game, it seemed like a great place to be for a weekend. Were there a bunch of fans going up from London for the game or not really? Yeah, I mean, for a cup tie, and then Birmingham is north of London and west of Norwich. So they're coming in on a totally different train, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So I didn't see a ton, but yeah, as soon as you step off. And I will say what also surprised me with this match is it's the first round of the EFL Cup. There are some ties that weren't really tasty, I would say, but North City versus Birmingham was one of the better cup ties. I was expecting for a first round cup match to have like 30 to 50% capacity in the stadium, even for a popular club like Norch. And there was, yeah, maybe like 60 to 80% capacity was. the actual amount of people in the stadium. And the stand behind the goal where the penalties were taken at the end, that was chock full.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you'll find that with, like, not even Norwich City, but a lot of clubs that have a very local following. It doesn't matter what match it is. There's going to be fans that are in the more ultra areas. That's not really a term you would use anything. But I'll just say, like, the stronger-headed fans are almost always going to be sold out

in those areas. Yeah. Okay. The stadium does look lovely from on TV to me, and there's sort of a brightness to it, thanks to all those canary yellow jerseys. Tell us about the game day experience. And maybe you should say,

I assume you've been to other games at different stadiums, gives us a sense of how it compares to some of the other places you've taken in a game. Sure. Yeah. I mean, relatively, I've tried to take advantage of being in England as much as possible. I've been to Stanford Bridge to see a Chelsea match.

I've been to Craven Cottage to see a Fulham match. We've really just tried to take in as many. Went to the West Brom, which Albion versus QPR match last season where Darrell Dike made his debut for West Brom and also probably injured his hamstring in that same match. Yeah, poor guy. I would say, like, yeah, as relative as it goes, Carroll Road is as good as it gets.

If you're looking for a really personal feel, to the match. The thing I would say is in London, right, you have eight teams that play in the Premier League, you have 12 teams that go into Premier League and championship level. So there is a myriad of neighborhoods and people within London that support those teams. And I would even say the people that I work with in London that aren't from the city are still fans of Liverpool, pool of Manchester United. So being ingrained in a city in England, there are still a lot of variations on who people support. You're not going to necessarily find, like, unless you're completely ingrained in one specific neighborhood of London, that there's still going to be a

lot of people that support many different teams. What I really love about clubs like Norwich is that there is really only one team in that area. And even within the broader county of Norfolk, there's really one team that people will support, and that's Norwich City. So I think that's why the match day experience was special, because everyone is ingrained in that area, really cares deeply about the team, is probably a fan from generations and generations of supporting the club, and I really love those experiences. I won't say, like, Fulham and QPR were special because they were in the championship at the

time. QPR still is, but Fulham has been promoted. So there's almost like a rowdiness that comes with being in the championship and a hope and dream type aspect to when you're in the crowd and watching the clubs like that. So for Norwich City, it was really interesting if I can just kind of talk through like the game as well and the way that it flowed. The first 40 minutes was very flat from both clubs. It wasn't necessarily the most entertaining game to watch. And while Norwich had the front foot for most of it, there weren't really great opportunities. And you could tell Birmingham City was just kind of choosing the time that they would move forward. And for the most part, seemed to be almost saving energy and just sapping the energy out of the crowd. Once Norch got the two

goals at the end of the first half, they scored both goals in extra time in the 45 minutes. And that really gave a buzz and an optimism to the crowd. Before that happened, there was definitely like I wouldn't say booze or whistling, but there was definitely a sense of pessimism and dread kind of covering the stadium a little bit, just because it really didn't look like either team was really trying to go for the win. So the two goals at the end of the first half really help to energize the rest of the stadium. And it really flowed from there. Like it was a really interesting game. Birmingham City then came out. They scored two goals in the second half. Again, that like hush and pessimism came over the crowd as we went into penalties. I could hear people,

you know, this is tough to say, but like when Dean Smith substitutes Josh Sargent onto the pitch, there's kind of like, oh, here we go. Or like, can you tell Birmingham City scored when Josh Sargent got on the field? So I would say for our American boys, wait, wait, wait. Wait, I don't understand that. So people were like, people around you were connecting the goal to the fact that Sargent was on the field? There was another person that was substituted on with Josh Sargent at the same time. I forget who it was, but there was kind of like, oh, of course this happens when these players are like when Dean Smith has made a substitution. The second goal was right after that. And I was reading the Reddit posts and the game threads on my way back home. And I could kind

of see the same things playing out. So I hope he built himself some credit after he scored the winning penalty in the penalty kicks. There wasn't. no extra time for this cup match. So it went straight to penalties after. Right. Yeah, I was curious about that. How did you get any sense from the fans in the stadium about how they felt about Sergeant? Sounds like not great.

Yeah, I mean, before the match, I tried to mingle with the people around me and get a sense for how they felt about them. And for the most part, it was not horrible, but it definitely was. wasn't singing his praises. I think he came in with very high expectations, if we remember back to when Farca bought him. It was quite a big price tag for a team like Norwich City to pay. And Farca at the beginning of the Premier League season, last season, said that Josh Sargent would be essentially a diamond in the rough. He would validate his purchase price. And he didn't necessarily have the most productive season last year. He did not validate his purchase price. Yeah, so that's kind of the sense from the fan base is like we want to see more from him,

but they're not cutting their losses immediately right now. I don't know how much you listen to scuff by, I guess, but I catch up on a lot of games using Wy Scout. Why Scout has not dropped the footage from this game yet. So I have no idea how any of the Americans involved played. How, let's work through him. Big night for Jonathan Tompkinson, his first, I think his first start for the first team. for Norwich.

Yeah, debut. Okay. First minutes. And he did score an own goal. I saw the footage of that. It looked pretty unlucky. Like, I don't know, that he's going to get dinked too much for it. How did he play outside of the own goal?

Yeah. I mean, it wasn't perfect. It was, I would say, confident for a 20-year-old making his debut in a cup match. He had some nice kind of low-line drive cross-field. passes, there wasn't necessarily anything that you could see that would make you think he doesn't deserve to be on the pitch. Obviously, the own goal isn't great for him in the first start, but at the same time, I did chat with him after online, and he just kind of said shit happens.

And for the most part, he felt like he did a good job throughout the game. So I was happy to see him. I think he captained Norwich's U-23 team last season when he was 19 years old. he's 20 years old now. So I personally see a lot of maturity from Jonathan Tomkinson, and I don't think the own goal is going to hold him back, but obviously that's definitely a red mark on your first debut minutes. But for the most part, he held himself well, made a few good passes,

didn't really make any huge mistakes on any of Birmingham City's goals. I will say the one that was scored, Birmingham's first goal, they probably could have pressured the goal score a little bit, Norwich City midfielder lost the ball in the middle of the pitch. Birmingham City attacker basically took it from the halfway yard line to the top of the box without being pressured and slotted at home. So I would say like, yeah, Jonathan Tomkinson and the other central defender probably need

to work on their communication a little bit more, see if he needs to step up. But at the same time, I'm not going to fault a 20-year-old that's making his debut that didn't look out of place on the field. That's good to hear. It's good to hear. Hopefully he keeps getting chances. What about Austin Trustee? He's sort of come out of nowhere a little bit. Plan regularly for Birmingham City. Yeah, really interesting game from Austin Trustee because the two goals from Norwich City, the second one was freakishly good. Oh, what a hit. Yeah, no matter what anyone did, defenders goalie, anything, that ball was going in the top corner.

So we can't fall Austin Trustee for that. The first goal wasn't a high. his fault either. The goal came from the other side of the pitch. It hit off him in a deflection, I think, to get to the center of the box. But again, like he did his part to close down the defender. What I thought was interesting is Birmingham City plays a three in the back system where Austin Trustee is the left-sided centerback. But at times, they would shift to this almost like pseudo two in the back system where Austin Trustee could get way higher up the pitch than I would expect any centerback in a three in the back formation to get. So it felt nice to feel like he had a lot of value to the way that the team was trying

to play. And also the fact that he's played in, I think every minute of the championship season so far and he was played in the cup match, whereas Norwich City substitute, I think they made 10 changes to their weekend game for this cup match. So it was nice to see. I think like he played well. I like to see him. It was great that he's almost making a name for himself with the Birmingham City fans.

You can look on their social media where they're thanking Arsenal for the loan, which none of us as USM&T fans really expected. But it was good to see. Three Americans on the pitch in one night. And, you know, in Norwich, England. Let's just go straight to the penalties. The game ended 2-2. Like you said, they went straight to penalties.

No extra time. I like that personally. Yeah. Penalties ended four to two in Norwich's favor. Both of the first penalties for both teams were missed. One was just completely missed the goal. The other was a weak shot to the left side of the keeper. Josh Sargent stepped up. The score at the time was three to two. He just needed to slot it away for the game to end. And he was the fifth penalty taker. So again, to me, that is a little bit of a sign of trust, whereas we might not think that if he's not getting the starts. He didn't get the start over the weekend. He didn't get the start in this cup match, but he came on for minutes. So to see him take the fifth penalty kick, he slotted at home. I think

it was into the left corner. The goalie guessed right, but it was just tucked away into the side netting, so it was a really nice penalty from him. Yeah. And how did he play otherwise before we talk about his muted celebration? He was Josh Sargent. Like, he was active. He was pressing a lot. He was trying to do everything for his team to win. I don't necessarily know if like the amount of time that he was on the pitch was enough for me to get a read of like his confidence level or how he's playing. But to me, he looked like Josh Sargent. He was still making the presses that he needed to.

He was getting into good positions. But he wasn't necessarily like he wasn't playing a striker again, which I don't know how many U.S. fans feel about that. But his time at Narch has been mostly as almost like a right wing. inside forward on the right side. Right. I'm less and less frustrated by it all the time because he seems like he's not in the picture for the national team at the moment.

Maybe someday. But then his celebration of the penalty seemed kind of muted. I mean, he did sort of, he sort of did his like salute thing, but kind of half-heartedly. And what was going on? The fans were going wild. he scored it in the end where the Norwich fans were seated. And it was like he was jogging back at half speed back to his team. Remember, this is how I saw it.

He like kind of remembered that, oh, my home fans are in this section. I should give them a little bit. So he turns around and, yeah, I agree. He didn't really do a salute. It was kind of like a come on or, yeah, fist pump all combined into one. But then you saw his teammates celebrate with him, Jonathan Tompkinson, the other American, was one the first to celebrate with him. And then, yeah, I had the high-tailed out of there because the last train to London was 17 minutes after the game it ended.

Okay. So you didn't stick around and watch them clap at the fans and stuff like that. No. Well, I think that's a good report from Norwich. Anything else? Anything else from your notebook? I would just recommend everyone to go there. It seemed like a great city to be for a day or four.

for a weekend. The train from London is about an hour and a half, hour 45 minutes, super easy from Liverpool Street. So yeah, definitely recommend. Awesome. All right. Well, before you got to go pretty soon, but before you go, let's talk about a couple other things. You had a video recently talking about your license. You have, can you remind me what licenses you have? You have coaching licenses in UEFA and in USSF. Yeah. So when I lived in the U.S. I got up to. the old D license, which was kind of like grassroots, one in person, and then the next level. And then since I've lived in London, I've gotten the FAA level one, which is like the intro, and then the UEFA level C, which is equivalent now to the U.S. Soccer Federation level C.

Okay. But you don't have the U.S. Soccer Federation level C because it costs a billion dollars, basically, right? Yes. How much do you want to get into that? Well, I do want to talk about, I mean, there's some big differences, and the main one, I guess, is cost. And there's also a difference in emphasis in these coaching classes, coaching courses. But let's talk about the cost first.

What's the gap between a UEFA and a USSFC? Yeah, so, I mean, it ran me about $400 in London to get my UAFA license. and that is for classes across a year, as well as people coming to your training sessions to offer you feedback and kind of check in that you're implementing what you're learning in those coaching courses. And after that, you have validated everything.

You pass the course, you get your UIFSC level license. The equivalent license in the U.S. is, I think it was about $1,500 somewhere there, about $1,600 and required multiple in-person classes as well as all of these other prerequisites licenses that also cost a little bit more than their counterparts in Europe. That really surprised me because I was expecting it to be way more for the UEFA licenses, honestly, just the amount that the amount of resources that the US Soccer Federation has at their disposal to help maybe reduce some of those costs. It also seems to be

dependent on location. Like I was doing mine in southeastern Pennsylvania, the people that were running it. So it's kind of like U.S. Soccer Federation sanctioned, but it's someone in a local federation that's doing the training. So it's really dependent on that and where you are. I think for me, just being able to take advantage of it, being here in England, getting the teaching and the education from people that have been around what they will call football for a long time. That's actually something that I found to be a positive for the U.S. Soccer Federation training is that everyone that I took education or training from was genuinely an amazing coach with a lot to give and a lot to provide.

And it's probably not their fault that it costs a lot of money. but for me, it just seems prohibitive in time and energy and money. Like there's kind of like three levels to this where if you're a really passionate coach and you're really passionate about moving up levels for a university coach, for example, or maybe an assistant coach at a semi-pro level, you need, you are required to have some of these U.S. Soccer Federation licenses that are higher up. So just in terms of like the diversity of experiences that we're bringing from our coaching core, I have to think that people with smaller levels of resource and money,

maybe they need to work a little bit more and don't have the time to put towards these. Or maybe like you're trying to get these because you have young kids and you want to be coach of their teams. You probably don't have as much time as someone that at the moment doesn't have children and has a little. little bit more time over the weekend to do these. The way you put it in your video was, you know, we talk about pay to play a lot, but there's also this like pay to coach barrier. And I can't remember what exactly the license requirement is to be an academy coach. You know, at one of these, I guess the U.S. soccer development academy is no longer,

but what it used to be was I think you had to have higher than a C license to coach in an academy. Did you have to have an A license to be like a U-17 coach? or something. Exactly. And the weird thing is, you mentioned the Bradenton Academy to get some of your coaching licenses that are higher than a level C, not only do they cost us a few thousand dollars, but you also have to now travel to either Bradenton or Chicago to do these. And that travel, the accommodation, none of that is reimbursed to the coaches doing these trainings. So again, it's like you need to spend time and effort and resources to actually get to these coaching places

that are in person, probably not close to you. And again, I just feel like there's so many blockers on the U.S. Soccer Federation side to getting people through the coaching pipeline to be really effective. And I just have to think that there are a lot of passionate people that could be great coaches that don't necessarily get to that next level because there are just too many things stopping them. Yeah. I mean, definitely. I will say I think the, I take the grass, I've taken some of the grassroots courses like 4V4.

and 7V7. I do think they're quite good and they're not, you know, these are like online classes. They're not going to get you a job at a MLS Academy, but they are, I think, pretty good.

And they've helped me sort of think about how to coach my little U8 or U6 teams. But you, one thing that is important in those courses is, you know, making it fun. You're supposed to guide the children in how they explore the game rather than just be like yelling instructions at them all the time,

which is very tempting to do, by the way. But you mentioned some things about the difference in emphasis between the two licensing programs where I think, did you say UEFA had a greater emphasis on instilling a love for the game than USSF? So before I just touch on that, I also want to caveat that like the people that were doing the training and educating in the U.S. Soccer Federation side, the training is genuinely good.

If you're interested and you have the means to do so, I would highly recommend doing these, even if you're on the U.S. Soccer Federation side. Like you said, for the grassroots courses, if you have a young kid that you're looking to do 4B4, 5B5, 7V7 games, or just like coach a rec team, those are amazing resources to just understand, like how to set up a practice,

how to talk to young people to keep them engaged, things like that. The main difference that I saw at the, level of license that I was taking was that the U.S. courses were more defined around how to administer yourself as a coach, like how to use the practice play practice model that they've built into basically like how to run a practice, first making it, you know, touches, get players touches, keep the game small-sided, move them to medium-sized games and then play 11 v-11 all in one practice and all aligned towards a specific skill set so that you're reinstilling something

that they can use in a game. And it's simple for them to move from 1V1 to 3V3, etc. Nowhere did I find that instruction to be like, how do I actually get kids to fall in love with the sport? It really like dove right into, okay, how can I be a good coach, like on the day? I run a good practice? How can I think about talking to young kids when there's something going on around me? Like, how can I keep their engagement on me? With the UEFA courses, the first course in that was all about how to help and maintain a love for the game within the teams that you're coaching. And that revolved around like making sure that kids enjoyed practice, making sure that the parents were involved so that when the kids went home, they could talk about what they were learning

because on a learning path, that can really be a huge growth aspect of just being able to retain information and get them excited to come back to practice and get them excited to play a game. The second course was more about how to administer the practice, how to get them involved. Then the third course was, again, like friendship in soccer, I think was the course name. There was just like a lot more ethereal things within the UEFA licenses around making sure that your players had an absolute passion for what they were doing so that the rest of their life outside of practice and outside of games could include and involve what they were learning on the soccer field. Very cool. You got to go here, right? Yes. It's been fun. Yeah, well, I think I'm going to come on your show sometime in the next few weeks.

and maybe we can talk more about the US MNT on that occasion. Thanks for doing this, Jake. Good luck with the rest of the season. I assume you'll be seeing some other games. And good luck with the YouTube channel. Check it out, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, fellas.

We'll see you.