Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #443: Tactical Manager joins the pod to talk grassroots

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

Pickup culture? Better rec soccer coaching? Who will do it? How? Filippo Silva, the Brazilian-American who started Tactical Manager TV on YouTube, joins the pod to discuss this stuff with Belz after we had a small disagreement on Twitter a few weeks back. We get into much more in the patron-only portion of the episode. Link below.Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! You get exclusive episodes twice a week, full versions of all our interviews with players, coaches and media figures, access to the Discord server and live call-in shows, plus occasional video content. Here's the link: 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 Felipe Silva, based in Orlando, and you know him as tactical manager. 50,000 followers on Twitter, 42,000 subscribers on YouTube, an unqualified success in the bootstrapped U.S. men's national team media landscape. Felipe, thank you for your time. Thanks, Adam. You're kind of almost over-hyping me there, like the English media does. all those English players in the Premier League, but I'm glad to be here. I mean, we've met in person.

We've talked a few times. And for the first time, I'm here at SCOFT and happy to have you a tactical manager TV very soon. Yes, tomorrow, indeed, right? Well, we record tomorrow, right? Yeah. So, I mean, just real quick, you started in August of 2020 on Twitter, right? Was that about when you started the YouTube channel? Yeah, like I probably started the YouTube channel in July, like the month before, roughly the same amount of time, or end of July, yeah. We're going to get it. I want to get into more of that, a lot of that at the end of the episode. But the main reason we're here talking today, what we agreed to talk about initially was

grassroots soccer, growing the game in America, something we both care about. We had a slight disagreement on Twitter about this a couple weeks ago, and maybe we should start with that as like the starting point. I said in a kind of, admittedly, kind of provocative way that people should get out there and help coach rec soccer if they want to grow the game in America. And you said, nah, nah, we need pickup culture. So let's start with that. Why, tell me where you're coming from on that. I mean, I'm going to say right off the bat, I love, I want pickup culture too. I love it. But tell me where you're coming from with that. First, I love the provocative way. When you put it provocative on Twitter,

I think people don't do that enough. That's how you get people to talk. And that's how, like, we're talking about it right now, right? If you didn't put it, in a provocative way, maybe I would have just said, okay, cool, Adam. But then I was like, no, let's reply, let's talk about it, let's get your opinion, my opinion. And I think when we talk about this topic, you're going to see a lot of the things I say are true. They make sense. And when you elaborate on it, it's going to make more sense to me because that's one of the things with Twitter.

You can't. You can't develop your full idea into a tweet. Yeah, you can't. So what I meant about pickup culture is I've worked. We'll get to that later coaching kids at a young age. I worked with Orlando City when they started the youth network here in Orlando setting up. So I've talked to Oscar Pareja a few times about youth development. I'm going to get to some things he said.

I worked with Brazilian players that played in Brazil for the national team clinics that they did here in Orlando too. And one thing many of them preach, at least, is in the United States, specifically, at very young ages, a lot of the kids quit, a good amount of kids quit due to over-concern. coaching or just poor coaching. And a lot of the times it's people with very good intentions, very good intention. It's a guy that played baseball his whole life and he's like, I don't know, soccer's getting popular or soccer might be a bit easier to learn when you're younger kids, it's a lot easier to kick a ball than it is to play certain sports. You're not going to teach them hockey early on. It's much tougher at age five or four. So they go try to teach it,

don't know how to do proper drills. Even if you teach them, they don't know when exactly to stop the game or they stop it too much. They don't let it flow. The kids don't have fun. And all of sudden they fall out of love with the sport of no fault of anyone, right? It's no one's fault, but it's just that lack of understanding of what the sport actually is. Now, if you played soccer, not in a competitive level, if you just played in high school, if you just played the game for a few years, you do understand what you like about it, how to conduct basic training. That is fine. And if you want to do some basic drills so the kid can understand and like you said, master the ball, technical ability, and that's fine. That's totally fine. My fear was, I remember,

remember when I was in a meeting, it was like, it was a meeting with Orlando City's like youth network and Paredo was there, but he was just sitting down. He wasn't really talking. It was more of like the head of the academy. I can't remember the guy's name. It's a bald guy. And then one of the soccer schools that had just opened talked about how they were struggling to hire coaches and how it just really wasn't working because he was getting parents that were volunteering. They were like baseball coaches, football coaches, and they're not really soccer coaches and things weren't working well. And then eventually Pareja interrupted when he was listening.

And what I was saying, there was what he said. A lot of the things I say is based on what I learned from these people, not just pulling out of my head. It's more of what I pick from people that have done it. And he pretty much just said, it's like, just let the kids play. Just let them play. Put the ball on the field. Let them play.

And then the guy was like, yeah, but how are you teaching them? And he's like, you are teaching them? because they're playing. Like, certain things when you talk about soccer, like for you, if you played soccer, anyone listening to this that played soccer, you might ask, how did you learn how to, I don't know, do the right turn, make a pass. Sometimes someone didn't teach you that. You just played, you got the hang of it.

You kept playing. And from a cultural standpoint, which I think we're going to dive into this at one point about Brazil, very often Brazil, a lot of the things the kids learn is from unorganized pickup play. But we're going to talk about that soon because it's not that easy to implement it. the United States. There are cultural differences that I don't even, it's nowhere near as close. So we can't do what Brazil does. I'm 100% aware of that. But I think we can motivate kids to play, pick up, have fun. And just kind of like be the adult that organizes it. Just like, hey, don't just kind of like refing. Don't do throwings. The ball goes out of bounds. Throw it back in. Keep them playing.

I understand some kids never played before. And if you do that, it's going to be a mess. That is true. That is 100% true. And we'll dive into that a bit more, but I'll let you elaborate on your point. But that's more or less where I was coming from. I see. Yeah. You know, there's an organization called Joy of the People in St. Paul, Minnesota, started by this guy named Ted Creighton.

I had him on the podcast a long time ago. I'm going to have him again because he hates when I talk about coaching, you know, because he spent some time in Brazil when he was like 20 or something. And I remember he told me about how people will have like a barbecue. They have a barbecue, and then they have like a little soccer field, and they have a swimming pool. At like the finca, I mean the, you know, at like the ranch house, you know, out in the country. And then they play, they swim, they eat, they play, they swim, they eat all day long. And I was like, man, that's beautiful.

I don't know. I don't know if that's still true in Brazilian culture, but is it? It is, it is. And I can from the, I was in Brazil this summer, but going back to like 12. 2013 and 2014, I went to Brazil both years during the summer because of the Confederations Cup and World Cup. And I stayed at a friend's house, a very big house there in Rio de Janeiro. And we had barbecues all the time.

You get two sandals. You put it on the street or at the grass you have in the backyard. And it's just a bunch of people playing all levels. And there's always that drunk uncle playing soccer. It's a cultural thing. And I went to middle school in Brazil. So I did a good part of elementary here in the U.S., high school in the U.S., obviously learned how to write and talk in English even before Portuguese, but I went to middle

school in Brazil and I lived there for a good amount of my life. I think it was from 2001 all the way to like 2010. And what's funny is, for example, if you go to school in middle school, at least the boys, right? Because soccer is very much a boy sport in Brazil. Like mostly guys, girls don't play as much soccer in Brazil as they do in the United States. But as a boy, you would go to school and you would go wearing cleats. You literally go to school wearing cleats. Not with large spikes, more like futsal, because futsal is pretty big in Brazil, even though we'd go to fields after. But you would go with cleats and recess, no one would go eat, no one would go talk. The boys would sprint to the futsal court to play. And if you lose, you're done because you got those 30 minutes.

And there's so many people trying to play. The culture there is just soccer, soccer, soccer. And obviously, I think people need to understand it. In Brazil, there are other sports. Surfing is very popular in Brazil. Martial arts is very popular in Brazil. Volleyball, beach volleyball, regular volleyball. But of course, the popularity of soccer and the soccer culture and how much people live and breathe that, it's something that makes it much harder for the United States to replicate at the youth level, the same thing.

Because you can replicate what Brazil does in the academy, but you're still going to be missing that whole pickup culture, the development in the streets, the kids from the favela that are just playing soccer 24-7. We don't have this year. which is which is a again some things are good right because a lot of it is because of poverty and issue social issues in Brazil which lucky for us we don't have the same in the United States so some of that I'm not praising as a as a good thing right no I get you yeah and I I I really admire what this guy Ted is doing in St. Paul like he he has created a like a free play

sort of center at this old this old rec center they like they run it and And kids just come and play soccer. There's no, there's no coaching. There's maybe a little bit of like, hey, here's a penny for you or like, you know, breaking up a fight here or there. But it's mostly just, it's mostly just pick up all day long. And the kids there are ballers. Like I remember, I've told this story in the podcast a lot, but Jimmy Conrad likes to do,

or at least used to like to do pickup wherever he went, you know, and he'd take like a video. And he'd be like, his bit would be like he'd take the video with nobody behind him. He was like, I came to play pickup soccer. But nobody showed up. and then he would turn around and then he had the whole crowd behind him and then everybody, so he did that there. But he got megged by some kid while we were playing

who was just all he was doing was trying to meg Jimmy Conrad. And as people who listen to the podcast regularly know, Jimmy was very upset about that. So anyway, I love that pick of culture that Ted has created in St. Paul. But like, I guess my issue with it is, is it practical to scale that, up in any way. Like, how do you scale something like that up? How do you, where I coach, which is kind of like a soccer, I guess you could call it a soccer desert, you know, there's like baseball football

are much more popular here. There isn't even a local high school soccer team. Kids that are good at soccer where I live, they go play for Chattanooga FC in town. The parents who sign their kids up for rec soccer, they do it, you know, in mass. There's always plenty of kids playing rec soccer. A lot of them are like you said baseball coaches or whatever or baseball like baseball players when they were younger the kids the kids the parents who sign their kids up they they signed them up expecting games uniforms referees uh practices and coaching like right or wrong that's the that's the reality that's hard to pin down the numbers but like hundreds of thousands of kids who are like five six seven that's the reality that they're signed up for rec soccer in and it would be difficult for me

to say hey yo let's let's do pick up soccer on Friday and um and get a lot of people to come because it's just not like their mindset you know and I wonder how how how do we overcome that do you think it's complicated you are right it's 100% comp especially the US uh I'll give you an example here in Orlando, but again, I'm using Brazilians in the U.S. as example, but the good news is, a lot of Americans are involved now. A lot of Americans are playing there.

What Brazilians did most specifically in Celebration, Florida, which many people might have heard of. It's like the neighborhood that Disney built here in Orlando. They don't own it anymore, but it's a very nice neighborhood. And that's where the first Orlando City Soccer School was built, the soccer school, not the academy. And that's where

I work, too. So what they do there, and this was usually on those fields, which are wonderful fields, you would have pick up soccer from Brazilians that I would play before I got my third knee surgery would be Sundays, I think Mondays and Thursdays, and sometimes on Wednesdays too. So three to four times a week. That was mostly adults, but Brazilians have this habit of the father goes to play soccer. He brings his son, and his son is just playing outside with the other kids, and they're just playing. That's just a very Brazilian thing. When my dad used to play in Brazil, he would bring me, he would be playing with the adult. He would be playing with the

adults and I'll be outside playing soccer with kids that were there with sandals or whatever. That's a ball. Just off the sideline. Yes. Yeah. Or a small field next to it. Or even in the parking lot sometimes, even though that's not overly safe, in Brazil, we would do it. Safety.

Yeah. Who needs safety? I'm just not trying to advocate for that here. We don't want to get scuff podcast canceled for that. But Adam, we then the Brazilian started to do that. And then the soccer school from Orlando came up, Orlando City. And then obviously, like you said, a lot of American parents registered because the soccer school is not really wreck, but it's not academy, right? You're trying to, it's a few times a week.

It's pay to play. Unfortunately, that is something that the United States has in mass. Pay to play exists in Brazil too, but it's much different. The whole structure, we can get into that later. But the whole thing with it was Americans started to show up. And the Brazilians started to invite the American parents to go play pickup with them. It's like after the kids finish practice at seven, they started to invite the American parents. And because the American parents were there and the kids were already there, the kids started to stay too.

And when you go there, it's Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, you go there and you see what I just described. You see kids that are Brazilian, American, many different places. They're playing and the parents are also playing pickup. So I guess it's more of like, it's very hard to change the culture from that standpoint. and it's like everyone taking little steps, but it's more about motivating parents. Maybe go out to the park for like a picnic, tell the kids,

like bring your kids, set up two goals or two sandals. You don't even need a goal. Put a soccer ball. The family can have a picnic. The kids can play. It's the little things. And it's not something that will change in a year or two years.

It takes a long time. And the thing is, I don't know if it'll ever change also. There's that. I don't know if it will ever change. I don't think I have the power to change. I don't think you have the power to change it. I think we have the power to do little things.

But the whole thing with it and what I've been complaining about quite a bit, especially in Major League Soccer, is I think U.S. soccer's development from ages 14 and above, or even 13 above, they have the U-13 academies. I think it's fine. The problem is how the players get there. They don't get there as developed as other countries. So Major League Soccer, U.S.L., U.S. soccer, they have to find a way to fill that gap from other countries, because they don't have the cultural benefits that Europe and South America has

that the kid just arrives in your academy at 13 doing rainbow flicks and with technical ability. That's not how it works because of the culture. So they have to figure out how to do that. We can do whatever we want. We can try to help as much as we can. And we will. And I think we've all been trying. But at the end of the day, they have to learn how to fill that gap in development.

And that will naturally make the sport more popular over time. Even though I think the best thing to make the soccer popular or the U.S. national team popular is winning. That's something that goes out of our control. Winning is what we'll make it popular. But did I make sense what I was saying, sort of? Yeah. No, I mean, it makes me think a couple of things. Like maybe we should hire Brazilian missionaries to land all over the country, you know, and start these kinds of these kind of pickup culture. Because it sounds like it really started with some Brazilians there, you know? Here, yes. There's a big Brazilian community in Orlando nowadays. Very big. We even have little Brazil in the international drive there with a lot of Brazilian

restaurants. But I don't know if it will be a fix. But the thing is we all like pickup soccer. One thing that really shocked me when I came back to the U.S. in 2010, right, was Brazil, United States, back to Brazil and then back to the U.S. in 2010 was when I was living in New York in Long Island, we had the high school team. And we made a Facebook group at the time with, what, 26 or 30 players, something like that. And we had this beautiful field to play 11 beat 11 turf. So it was just like very, I know turf has its issues, but it's very good to play on turf because it's flat. It's good. Yeah, exactly. So in Brazil, when we try to schedule pickup games, middle school when I was there, the problem of scheduling pickup games was there's too many people.

So if you lose a game on the court or the field, whatever, you kind of like are almost done. You're just like, what am I going to do? Wait for an hour and a half to play again. I'm going home. Well, here, with a team, it was a high school team. So everyone played soccer. We really struggled to get a pickup going. I know some people are going to say, no, people play soccer in the U.S.

Yeah, they do play soccer. But what I'm trying to say is anyone that experienced, and you talked about the guy from St. Louis, right? The guy that was in Brazil for a while. What's his name again? Oh, yeah, St. Paul. His name's Ted Creighton. Yeah.

St. Paul. Sorry. I thought St. It was the soccer capital. No, no, not the soccer cap. I'm sorry, St. Paul. The thing with it is, too, once you actually experience soccer coach, I'm talking about, like, I went to Mexico, too. You see it in Mexico.

You see it in Latin American general. You'll see that we don't have it. That's my whole point. Like, yes, people play soccer in the U.S. That is true. It's not a dead sport by any means. People play it. A lot of people play it.

But the pickup culture is just, it's just different. And it's very hard for me to put it into words, but I'm sure anyone that has been to any of these countries, and experienced it in one way, shape, or form, 100% understands what I'm saying. And the guy you said it from St. Paul, he gets it. He saw it. So he's like, that's what it is. Yeah.

No, and I think I get it too. But I guess I still think, like, rec soccer, again, hard to pinpoint the exact numbers, but it's probably maybe two and a half million kids playing rec soccer, something like that in the country. It exists. it's there. And I don't know how much time you've spent

in that world, but the coaching is bad in a way that could easily be fixed. You know, if they had, I'm not talking that they're going to be the ones who create elite soccer players that can't be a replacement for a robust pickup culture,

but you could take six-year-olds and teach them to be comfortable with the ball by the time they're 10 if they're playing every year. If the coaching is just a little bit better, and then by the time they're 10, then you can start, you know, let's say 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there,

you can start teaching them how to Rondo. And dude, if you know how to Rondo by the time you're 12 or 13 and you can like sort of enjoy it, mission accomplished. That's a lifelong soccer fan right there. You know, somebody who loves the game of soccer. And so I'm thinking like, man, there's got to be a way. I don't know if U.S. soccer is the way to do it

or some way to like do better on the grassroots front, get the volunteer coaches a little bit more resources, get them a little bit of training, because these are busy people. They're not soccer people, I think more or less. Like most of them are not experts on soccer or soccer development at all. So if we could just get something, make a marginal improvement for those volunteer rec soccer coaches who already exist, that would be, I think, a huge step forward. I mean, if you get 100,000 lifelong lovers of the game of soccer, some understanding of the game, the beauty of it, that's a huge success.

And I don't see that the way things currently are, a lot of kids are going to flame out like you were talking about at the top. You know, they're going to get bored. I was, you know, I've seen coaches do like red light green light with U8s, but without a ball. Just red light green light. or they're doing like drills where three, fours of the team is standing in a line the whole time, you know? If you just like put a ball on every kid's foot, chased them around the field for 20 minutes, that would be, that would be an improvement, you know what I mean? Yeah.

So I don't know. What do you think of that? No, and to your point, I think it's about that that's where I think U.S. soccer does have to play a role. We can do whatever we, everything we know we can implement. and you don't need to be a soccer expert to provide that for kids, get kids to play soccer and teach the basics. You don't have to be a pep guardiola to do that. Like if you have a basic understanding of the game,

it should be all right. And as long as you understand that you shouldn't overcoach. The kids, at young ages, they need to have fun, fall in love with the sport. Once they fall in love, like you said, lifelong fan. They'll be a fan of the sport forever, probably. They'll play it and they'll probably pass that on to their kids. and their kids will know more than their parents because they're going to keep getting better.

So it's something that takes time. But again, to your point, maybe U.S. soccer should do a bit better in educating coaches, like people that want to be volunteer coaches, free simple courses or videos on YouTube just talking about what you should do, not necessarily drills.

You could show some basic drills that are, like you said, not putting kids in line or not playing green light or red light. Just remind me of squid games right there. but just i mean red like just to be clear red light green light with a ball for a five year old it's not the worst thing you know you know if as long as they're as long as they got a ball on their foot but without a ball we're you know now we're just pea class so giving giving the kid a soccer ball at

home parents i know you don't want your kids to destroy your house but giving them a soccer ball i had an interview with tom buyer that i just recorded and it's kind of crazy because a lot of the things he said resonated with um what i just kind of lived there through in Brazil, but like not conscious of what I live, but he was explaining it from almost like a scientific standpoint of like everything about it. And it was quite fascinating what he was saying because when you go to an American soccer fan, like to you, Adam, if I go, when did you fall in love with the game? And I don't know about you. Maybe you can answer that if you have an answer to that. But a lot of the times Americans have a specific game. It's like when

London scored that goal against Algeria, I was like, I fell in love with this. Or that Champions League final. I don't know a friend of mine brought me in to watch it. Or the United States in the 2014 World Cup when Brooks scored against Ghana. That was crazy. Or I guess 2002 was one World Cup that drove a lot of people in 1994. They always have a moment. And Tom Byer was talking to me about this. And because my dad and my mom, they're Brazilian. They spend 50 years of their life in Brazil. They're as Brazilians as it gets. So when you ask me, how did I fall in love of soccer? I don't know how to answer to you because my dad I was born and he's already giving me a soccer jersey and giving me a small soccer ball and watching soccer games with me. So that influence is probably what will happen if things happen the way

you said of like you become a lifelong soccer fan. All of a sudden you have a baby boy or a baby girl and you're like the first gift is like, oh, I want my boy to be a soccer player. Like is he going to be a soccer player? Who knows? But you're going to give him a soccer ball early on. It's going to fall in love to sport. And the kid's just going to keep playing and practicing. And there's talent involved. There's genetics. There's other things that come into play that we can't control. But I think it's that. And if you do that in a large scale, eventually you get five world class players here and there that are going to develop. It has to be in scale because people don't think about this, but Brazil has a ton of flops.

So many players go to Europe and Brazil and flop. We just don't notice it like the Americans, because it's like two Americans flop, that's like 10% of our team flopping right there. And then Brazil, 10 of them flop, and no one noticed. Because there's so many. Because there's 50 other ones, yeah. Exactly. That's the main thing. That's why even injuries for the U.S.

men's national team, it's blown out of proportion. Like, why are we all so injury prone? It's like it happens to every national team. It's just that we don't have that much depth as much as much as in Argentina, France and Brazil. So we feel it more. We lose Polisic. We're screwed.

Brazil loses Namar. You still have Vinissus, Rodriguez, this guy, that guy. France lost Benzima, Conte, Pugba, and Kunku before the World Cup. and no one cared. No one noticed. Right. Right. I mean, they cared a little bit, but yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I agree with your point. I guess that it's the generational, it's like the generational sort of future strategy that I think makes sense because it's because like we're talking about, it's not going to happen in 10 years. It's really not. It's not going to happen in 20 years. We need like, we need a soccer culture in our country and that's going to take some time. And I guess the two things, you know, the two things that I really, that I sort of take for granted in all this is number one, we're not going to win the World Cup in 2026 or anytime soon after that.

I agree. I mean, it's mathematically possible, of course, but like probably not going to happen. What we need is like to win a World Cup is a major cultural shift. I think that's what it comes down to. And then number two, another reason I, another reason I'm interested in. like the rec soccer five year old and six year old is because club soccer pay to play i think i would love to hear your thoughts on this but for me the weekend travel system pay to play totally broken bleak counterproductive we need more local free free or really low cost you know i think in my rec

people pay 100 bucks for the season which i think that's basically free right and merit based soccer and we got to find a way to democratize the sport because this club's this club soccer stuff it's not that meaningful to kids it's not really doing that great of a job of development and we gotta we gotta build something else that takes its place now is that rec soccer is it pick up soccer I hope it's both

but um that's kind of I guess those are my baseline sort of assumptions here so yeah you have a lot of experience with pay to play right yes I have a lot of thoughts on that here and in South America First, just to make one thing clear, there's pay to play in South America, too.

There's soccer schools that you pay to play. But the thing is, you have also an open pyramid that Brazil, for example, has so many clubs that are just competing for youth talent to sell it to elite clubs. And the way they attract talent is by making their academies free. So they attract that talent. I don't know, most people should probably know this by now, but there's this thing called FIFA Solidarity Payments, that if you develop a player in a non,

it has to be a recognized club, I believe, but it has to be in a non-paid-to-play environment from ages like 13 to 21. Every single transfer fee the player has in the future, you get a cut of it. It's a small cut, but still, it's like 100,000, 200,000. Like, these fees are crazy nowadays,

so you get the point. I think educating clubs in regards to that is one thing. We do have, I don't want to get into promotion relegation here because it's not going to happen with Major League Soccer. But since it's not going to happen, And U.S. Soccer has to find a way to massify the amount of academies. How do you motivate that? How do you get these academies to understand?

It's like when you're putting a free academy, you're not doing charity. It's not charity. You're investing on a player that will bring you benefits in the future, whether it is playing professionally, scoring goals for you selling jerseys, winning trophies and sponsors, or you'll sell them to Europe. Or if it's a lower league team like U.S.L, you'll sell them to Major League Soccer for $3 million. And there you go. You paid for your entire academy right there.

it's more about understanding that, educating them on that. I know a lot of them do, but I don't know how to tell you what pieces have to go where. It's something that would require a ton of research talking to a ton of people in positions of power that I personally don't have the connections. A little bit also don't have the time to do it. You know, we're both busy. We have other things. It's a huge topic, yeah. Exactly.

But you get the point of what I'm saying. It's like motivating that because what you said is 100% accurate. The pay-to-play system structure that is in the United States are now the travel teams, in terms of player development, it's useless, completely, it's fun. The kids will have fun. They'll play. And I'm all for that. Kids should have fun. Exercising is good, good for our country, people will stay healthy. But if you're focusing on how to make the sport more popular, how to make the national team more competitive, the domestic league more competitive, and how to develop professional soccer players in this country, that structure is terrible. useless, to say the least. It doesn't help at all. If anything, it hurts it more than anything else. So I'll give you the question, I'll give the question back to you is how do we get all these USL teams, which there's plenty, or maybe MLS, how do we get to them for all of them to cooperate? Because MLS, we can get into whether they're doing a good job or bad job. I think for the most part, they've done a good job in certain things, bad job and other things. But even if MLS,

does a fantastic job. How many cities are they in? That doesn't reach the entire country. There's, why limit ourselves to what? MLS is now with 30 franchises. Maybe they'll keep expanding to what, 32. Let's say they expand to 40. That's 40 cities in the United States.

That's not a lot. So that'll be 40 locations. Because think about it, if you don't live near an MLS city these days, it's pretty damn hard to become a professional soccer player. with the exception of a few USL academies, right? A few. So how many, and even if you live near it, you might still live in a part of the city. That's like an hour and a half or two hours away from the academy.

And you're like, I'm sorry, I can't drive my kid there. He can't go. You go to a city like Houston. Depending on where you live, you can be like two hours away. Right. So I don't think we have enough. It's not really even talent identification. It's just, it's not that we don't know how to do.

It's just there isn't enough. There's not enough academies. And the pay to play structure is useless. But how does U.S. soccer do that, Adam? That's the question. I don't know the answer. Yeah, I mean, without pro rel, you know, I mean, I'm not, I'm, I like promotion relegation. I wish we had it.

I could see the incentives from that being what helps fix the problem. You know, you have, if you have, if your goal as a club is to develop talent and you can get solidarity payments from it and then you can sell to sell to another club then there's going to be more you know genuinely good academies but like you're like you said it's not going to happen and um i don't know i don't know so so that's why i don't know so that's why i'm thinking about rec soccer and i'm i'm also thinking about high school soccer which is i know i have a episode that's about you just talked to tom byers i just talked to this guy who started the uh the high school champions League. It's this thing in Tampa where high school soccer teams, which is everybody thinks of

high school soccer as like pretty crappy, right? But high school soccer teams, the 12, I think it's the 14 district champions in Tampa automatically qualify for the next year. It's a midweek, it's a midweek tournament just like normal Champions League. And then they get two at large bids based on the max prep rankings, I think. And so they got four groups of four. They play a round Robin and then they have a semifinals and a group winners go on semifinals final and this is all happening in Tampa. I think St. Louis is about to start one and so is Dave Broward County.

I like that. Yeah, it's cool because he made the point that yes, club soccer can be fun for kids. Of course it is. But it's not as fun for most kids as it is to play against your high school's rival in a game full of people like in a stadium full of people. And the other advantage of it is it's free and it's local. And, you know, it taps into something that already exists in American culture. How that, you know, how the high school champions league fits into like a sort of elite talent development pipeline?

I don't know, man. I don't know. But I can see how it fits into like the culture building side. Which leads to the elite development at some point. I think improving the culture popularity of the, like if you make the sport more. popular in the U.S. And what he's doing right there is fantastic work because that is helping increase the popular.

If you help organize pickup soccer, if you help organize any type of tournament, you're helping make the sport more popular. You're making, you're creating more fans. Naturally, that eventually trekkles down to development and everything because there's more money coming in, more interest. So I didn't know about what you just said, but that is actually a very good idea. And more people should do it. And to your question from earlier about what can we do, I think one thing that, at least me and you,

I'm going to talk about me and you specifically right now. We create content related to soccer. I think continuing to bring guests like the guy you just mentioned that had a good idea and is organized that, that might give an idea to a guy in California to do something similar. I bring in Tom Beyer and Tom Beyer can talk about what works and was. And some parents will watch that, listen and like, okay, I'm going to implement that with my kid, or I'm going to tell. So it's more about, I think like, like you put the provocative one, like trolling aside, I'm always going to troll. You're not going to, no one's going to get that

away from me. I like to have fun. No one can stop you. Yeah. It's a very Brazilian like thing. We troll too much at times. That's the problem sometimes. And then we don't take things too seriously in life. But I think life has to be fun and you have to troll. You have to have fun on Twitter and all that or X, whatever the heck that's called these days. But if we can help educate fans, not with my or your knowledge, but bring guests that know what they're talking about. And we can provide entertainment with hot takes, controversial takes and discussions. But if we can bring these guests that will give good ideas, these people that are far more competent than myself.

And, well, I'm not going to speak about you, but then myself. We can say that they're more competent than me too. Yeah. Yeah. More competent. Like Tom Byer, there's no doubt in my mind. Far more accomplished than any of us here in what he does. Brilliant ideas like the guy from Tampa, that will give, that will.

That will help people across the country try different things. So it's a slow process. I think that's one thing me and you can do right now. And what I'll say to anyone listening to this is, it's get kids to play. If you don't know how to coach and you don't feel comfortable coaching, put two freaking sandals, give them a ball, kick it with them, play with them, have fun with them. If you do that, you might not develop the new messy. You probably won't develop the new messy. Yeah, almost certainly not.

Probably not, but you're going to get a new soccer fan in this country. And he will pass that to his kids or she, whoever you're playing soccer with. And it just keeps going. And that's how it grows. You've got to make it essentially at the end of day, make it more popular and don't hurt the sport. Don't overcoach. Don't make kids fall out of love. Make it more popular.

That's what we can do. We're not the elite developers, right? That's something U.S. soccer. We can have these conversations to maybe get people talking and then U.S. soccer can do better. But at the end of the day, what we can do and a lot of people listening to this is make it more popular. If everyone does a little bit, it becomes a lot. If it's just like five people doing it, it's irrelevant. Right.

And I want to put one last plug in for rec soccer coaching because they are desperate for coaches. You know, these recs, the first year I coached, I moved to this town. And I got a call from the commissioner of the league the night before the season, you know, the season was supposed to start. He said, is there any way you can coach? And I went into it thinking like, yeah, I love soccer. I have this soccer podcast. I don't want to be like the know-it-all who comes in and signs up to coach the first season he's living in town.

So I was like, all right, fine. And then I realized, yeah, they need people. Like somebody who watches your YouTube channel watches like, you know, a game of soccer a week, even that much, they're going to be a fantastic rec soccer coach. and they need, you know, they need those people. And one last thing, one last thing. I don't know if you've ever taken the grassroots license, grassroots licenses from USSF, but they are, I don't think they're bad or anything,

but they're too much. They're too much for a busy parent, you know, like a blue collar, I live in a pretty working class community. These people are working hard all day. They just make it in time for practice. They do practice. I'm assuming they just, they go home, eat dinner, and go to bed.

and then do it all over again. They don't have time to take a 90-minute sexual abuse safety course just to take the $25 grassroots course. They don't have time to sit there and learn about the practice play methods. Like, just give them a little bit, like three exercises that they can do. And then let's go, you know? Yeah, or maybe like a five-minute video of a professional coach is telling them it's like, hey, don't overcoach, don't do this, don't do that.

And show very quick, like a five-minute video. like a five-minute video for free on YouTube on U.S. Soccer Channel to help people. That's what I, that's what we keep trying to do when we bring all these people to have these conversations. Tom Beyer talked a lot about this with me about how in the U.S., one of the biggest issues is overcoaching. The guy comes in, doesn't know much of what he's talking about and then just tries to overcoach and make up drills or just do a lot of boring. You kind of mentioned that too, like the, not the green light, red light, that's fun for kids,

but this like non-effective drills that have nothing to do with soccer, no soccer ball, anything. U.S. soccer could probably do better in that. I did one of the license. I don't remember which one was whatever Orlando City required to do. It was like four years ago. So I don't even remember what it was. I thought it was useless. Didn't really learn much from it.

Maybe it was the D license. It took some time and it didn't really, I didn't think it was helpful at all. But I just needed it. They just said, you need to have this. And the guy there paid for it. So I was like, okay, there's also that. You have to pay. I know 25 bucks or 50 bucks or 100 bucks.

It's not that much, but it can be to some people. You should have some very basic stuff for free that maybe, I remember when I was in high school here in the U.S., the PE coach didn't know crap about soccer. He only knew the rules. That's it. But if you had maybe a little bit of a course so he could at least talk about it, maybe if it was free for 10 minutes, he would watch that before the soccer season in high school and he would know something.

But it was so bad. And I was just watching at the time. And I was, what, 16 or so? But the problem is he's talking to that. and then teenagers that never played the sport before, they're going to what he's saying. Right. So things like that,

but maybe you can offer like some basic courses. U.S. soccer, I'll put it this way. I know this is not a topic, but the Federation can and has to do better. Yeah, I think especially on this, I mean, probably in lots of ways, but on this rec soccer front,

there's just not, the courses that they do have, those are for people who are like, really invested in the sport already. And there's a lot of people who aren't who could just use a little bit of a help to not overcoach, like you say, to just focus on ball mastery and fun. And that would do a lot of good. I don't know exactly the right way to deliver the message.

You know, I've been struggling with that in my own rec soccer association, but there's got to be a way. I agree. You think we've covered it? Yeah, I think that's... Anything else? I think that's pretty much everything in regards to youth soccer here, yeah. Might be some ideas here and there on YouTube will dive a bit more into those problems.

I think we did more like a skim through it, but more or less, yeah. One day, you know, 100 years from now, when you and I are both dead and the U.S. has a pickup culture that... And three World Cup. Yeah, three World Cup. And a pickup culture that is at least a little bit resembling Brazil's. we can be up there and haven't taken credit for it, you know? A little bit, yeah. We're going to come back in a minute and talk with Tack about how he got started.

Greg Burhalter. Let's talk about Greg Burrhalter a little bit. Oh boy. You want that. That part of the episode will be for patrons only if you would like to join the scuff Patreon and get two exclusive episodes most weeks, as well as the full catalog of historic recaps and in-depth interviews and access to the Discord among other things.

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