Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #713: Brooklyn FC coach Marlon LeBlanc joins the pod

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

He was head coach at West Virginia University for 14 seasons, coached the Philadelphia Union II from its 2022 debut in MLS Next Pro through 2024, coached the U18 USMNT for a year, his son is a legitimate prospect who was signed by Philly, and now LeBlanc’s navigating Brooklyn FC through its expansion season in USL. He talked about his impressions from the World Cup, Spain’s dominance AGAINST the ball, only having 13 players on his USL roster days ahead of the season, and lots more, including the Sullivan family, American soccer coaching education, Wyscout and Fotmob. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus 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: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedCheck out our store, where you can get Scuffed hats and sweatshirts and other stuff: scuffedpodcast.com/storeAlso, 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.scuffedpodcast.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, when we talk about U.S. soccer. Our guest today is the coach of Brooklyn FC, a U.S.L expansion team in Kings County, and he has a window into all levels of soccer development in America. He was head coach at West Virginia University for 14 seasons. He coached the Philadelphia Union 2 from its 2022 debut in MLS Next Pro through 2024, influencing players like Matt Freeze, Jack McGlynn, and Paxton Aronson, along the way. He's a native of East Windsor, New Jersey, played soccer at Penn State, and he takes his team to South Carolina this weekend to face the Charleston Battery. Marlon LeBlanc, welcome to scuffed.

Thanks for having me on. It's my honor and pleasure to be able to join you. Awesome. So, first of all, let's talk about the World Cup a little bit. What takeaways did you come away with after the tournament? What did you see? Yeah, a lot, right? Yeah.

was really skeptical about the added teams, the bigger pool of teams and left feeling completely invigorated by the African selections, the extra teams that came in, you know, Cape Verdez, the players. It was remarkable to see how much more fun the World Cup was, despite maybe the thought process that the games could get ugly. I think there was only one really ugly game. So really impressed with the overall, the overall show that it was as well. The, I think that this World Cup pulled on so many different emotional strings that, you know, the love that real soccer people have for the game and the showcase that it made for the people in United States, it couldn't have been any better.

A lot of times you tell people to watch a game and it's a really terrible boring game. Yeah. And they don't understand why you love it. You get the common fan, the ones who can basically barely afford to go to the games, and they go to the games, and they see it. And they're like, oh, I get it now. You know, this is why you love it so much. The stars came to play in this World Cup more than any other World Cup

for all the big names really showed out. It was just so enjoyable and so fun. and I think for the American soccer fan who wants people to adopt this sport as one of the top sports in this country, you couldn't have asked for a better showcase and a better showpiece for the game to hopefully build off of. Yeah, I've been astonished at how many people who don't, I didn't, who weren't soccer fans have told me they just absolutely loved it and like watched almost every game. what did what did spain's dominance tell you tell you about the game at the highest level i mean yeah go ahead i think what's interesting about spain is that everybody looks at um you know spanish football in the possession the possession the possession um i think they were so good

against the ball um that it's um i think that's a forgotten part of it and you could say oh well they had the ball and they didn't have to defend no they were incredible against the ball the way they transitioned following their turnovers, the way they got numbers behind the ball. You know, I think they don't have to make a save in the final, right? That you could have literally the Premier League goalkeeper of the year and David Ryan not step on the pitch and still have that kind of defending action and that kind of a goalkeeper that, you know,

it doesn't have to do a whole lot, just shows you how good against the ball they were as a team. But then obviously with the ball, everything that we all enjoy about Spanish football, possession with purpose, not just possession for the sake of keeping it. They move the ball from side to side. They moved their opponents. They created overloads. And when they wanted to be direct, that was, I thought, the biggest adaptation that people didn't really really respect or truly recognize is that they would play passes that would break eight or nine defenders and all three lines in one ball. and they were brave enough to do that.

Whereas Aval's ability to get on the end of crosses and on the end of, you know, actions was fantastic. And they were just a team in every sense of the word. And that's the popular phrase going out about them right now is team. But their ability to adapt and to play what was required of them on any given, you know, in any given match was really, really special. Yeah, I thought there was nobody who could show the commitment as a team that Argentina was showing in this tournament until they faced Spain.

Yeah. What do you think was the problem for the U.S. and their loss to Belgium? That's a good question. Look, I think Belgium was always going to be a tough nugget to crack. And I think at the end of the day, they're still ahead of us. I think people want to think we're just going to jump ahead of Belgium because we're playing at home and we've got all these players playing in Europe. And that's not necessarily the case, you know. The elements of the attacking side of things and we could always compete with them.

But going forward, we're still don't have enough in terms of like the team connectivity going forward. We've got some individual brilliant moments. and, you know, a Christian and a Balagan and a Weston and these guys who can kind of plug and play and have these runs of counterattack and transition football. Belgium were so organized that we weren't able to transition against them. And Baligan rarely had opportunities where he was on the break. And we just ran up against a team that was on the day better than us. And we didn't play our best game.

And I think that the identity of this team right now is, still trying to find a way to grind out results whenever we don't play our best or our top guys aren't able to, aren't able to produce something like a special moment. We just didn't have any special moments in that game, and we had some of the other ones that got us through. Yeah. Okay.

One thing that was really cool before the Belgium loss was the way the fans sang at the end of the game. And we asked Sergenio Odess when he came on the pod, what he thought of country roads. And he didn't know what we were talking about. because he thought the song was called West Virginia. That's funny. You spent more than a decade in Morgantown. What did you think of the fans singing that song? What did it mean to you?

I got to tell you, that was really a nostalgic moment for me, like hearing that. And that was a song that I heard, you know, at every sporting event for 14 years. But really kind of just connecting the dots of my time at West Virginia, you know, having worn the badge in 2025 as when I coached you, us under 18s. And then kind of like this real full circle moment of hearing that song,

somewhere I spent 14 years of my life. And obviously one of the proudest years I had as my coach is under 18s. It was really, really cool to hear that song, to see that song and see how it was kind of brought in and adopted by the American fans and the American team. It was like, you know, the last, basically last 15 years of my life rolled in a one moment. hearing that song on that stage. So it was really, really cool. But yeah, country roads is, in a lot of ways, it's home because, you know, my son was born there.

My family grew up there. You know, my daughter was 13 months, I think, when we moved to the Mortonetown, West Virginia. But that song is quintessential West Virginia and in particular has a true home at West Virginia University where I spent 14 years of my life coaching. despite the fact that we ran into a team that is ahead of us in Belgium, did that feel like a step in the right direction for the, I don't know, for the nation's relationship with the national team? Because it's not a, it has not been an extremely warm relationship for the past, I don't know, ever.

In terms of that, what did you think? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it wasn't more than probably six months ago, maybe eight months ago, where Pochitino was not happy that it wasn't a home field advantage playing some of those leading games, right? But by the end of it, he's jumping up in the crowd and hugging the fans and, you know, fist pumping and everything else. So, yeah, I think that that, you know, the World Cup obviously opens up doors for the national team and their success in the group stage certainly help kind of propel it even more. but there certainly hasn't been that affinity with the national team in quite some time. And, you know, you look at, what was it, 2018, where we failed to qualify, right? And the amount of just absolute public kind of bashing the national team got that certainly did not help.

And in a lot of ways, you know, not only you would think maybe set us back a little bit by missing, but obviously set us back by the public perception that the men's national team in particular had with its fan base. So to be able to have full crowds, full football stadiums packed with a predominant American crowd was really great to see in the way that the team kind of performed in that group stage was well received by the fans. And I think it's something that we've all hoped,

you know, could be something that could happen here. In a lot of ways, I think the Americanization of the FIFA World Cup felt like an NFL game in those stadiums, right? If you were to go watch an international outside of going to, you know, in England or in Argentina or, you know, like one of those deep South American countries, you don't necessarily see that type of one-sided fandom at an international match, you know. it just felt like something very, very different. And I didn't get to see the U.S. in person. The two games I got to see were not the U.S. national team, but watching the game on television, they did a really good job of conveying what the atmosphere was like,

I thought, on TV to the people who were watching it. What were the two games you got to see? I got to see France play Iraq. and I got to see Brazil play Haiti and both in Philadelphia. Okay, cool. What was it? I forgot to follow up on this. What did you think was the ugly game at the World Cup?

That was the final? Yeah. You know what? A lot of people thought the final was ugly. I actually still found, and I guess that's probably the coaching perspective, right? When you're watching, you probably just watched the game a little bit differently. I mean, when I watch the U.S. play, I'm probably definitely not as much of a coach. I'm more fan and wanting to be entertained and a little bit more caught up than the game.

When I watch the other teams play, I'm probably watching to see what they're doing and how they're trying to expose the opponent and everything else. And, you know, it's, I didn't think it was as ugly. It wasn't as entertaining maybe as some of the other games. But, you know, Argentina clearly set up a plan that they wanted to play on the counter and they wanted to try and switch the play. And they took a lot of risk trying to do it whenever they sat that deep. and then they tried to counter it going out the other side

because a number of times they got nicked and intercepted and you were like, wow, I can't believe they're doing that. They didn't have a way to stretch the game and transition either. So it was interesting. I was looking at that and just tactically how to try to solve it. But I didn't, it, finals are always that way. They're cagey affairs. Teams are taking little risk and they're never as good as everything

as everything that led up to the final. They never are. And they typically take special moments and special goals to win them. but I think because of the way Argentina had gotten to the final, I thought it made it that much more compelling because they were such late-game heroic themes all the way up until the final minutes of each of those matches heading to get to the final right.

And so you thought that there was still a chance at something. But I think there was what one game that was like a blowout, one or two games that were blowouts that weren't great games or not a whole lot of under watch. but for me, like the games were all entertaining, and so was that game. I guess I just looked at it through a different perspective, that final. I didn't, I enjoyed it in a different way, maybe, than just the excitement of the end-to-end type of football that you saw in some of the other matches. Yeah, okay.

How did you get into soccer in the first place? Like, were your parents interested in the sport? I was a super hyperactive kid that got in a lot of trouble. So I got into football because my mother just needed something to do with me and to keep me active and keep me busy. And, you know, it ran more in football than I did in baseball and more than he did in basketball. And it was probably one of those things where I just took on to really quickly. It's really hard to be a good basketball player when you're 5'7, 5 foot 8.

and baseball was just not enough to keep being engaged. So football stuck early on, and I had a lot of friends that played, so it made it easy. My time single mother who didn't have to drive me everywhere, I could get rides going to do these things. But, yeah, just really stuck. It happened to be in New Jersey, which back in the 80s and 90s was a hotbed for youth soccer. And some really good players came out of New Jersey back in those days.

And so soccer was a big sport. That was back in the days where you could go to a Rutgers game, and there'd be 10,000 people there on a Friday night to watch Lexi Lollas or Peter Verniz or any of those guys play. And that's when college soccer really was professional soccer in this country because there was no MLS in the 80s, late 80s and early 90s. What did your mom do when you were growing up? my mother worked for Merrill Lynch for the longest time period.

I remember as a little kid, going to New York City at Christmas time because she was working in New York City. And then in Plainsborough, New Jersey, they moved like their corporate office to Plainsborough and built a huge office center there for, I think the better part of over 20 years. My mother worked for Merrill Lynch. And then Church in Dwight, which was like the parent company of Armandhammer. she ended up moving and working for it working for them and so yeah had just uh um my mom my sister myself and said grew up in east windsor new jersey went to heights down high school um which i just found out i'm going into the hall of fame in september my first ever hall of fame heights high school hall of fame um so that'll be cool but yeah uh my mom worked for merrill lynch

back in the 70s and 80s, early 90s. Tell me, tell me if you would, what kind of your youth playing career was like? Like you started in rec soccer, I assume? Started in rec soccer in Hazlitt, New Jersey, before joining the local Haslett Travel Soccer team and then moved from Haslett to East Windsor, New Jersey, started playing locally in East Washington,

Windsor before eventually ended up with some stints with G.A.K., which at the time was a big club, German-American kickers, and then finished up with Tom's River Boka through my high school years. I was alive back in the old ODP days when ODP was a thing, and New Jersey State Select team and playing for guys on the regional team like Bob Bradley was a coach then. Bruce Arena was coaching the regional team back in those days. Ray Reid, Tom Lang, all these, Mani Shell Shite, all these guys that came through the ODP system. So I get a lot of ODP coming through before, like I said, joining Boca and then made my way to Heights in high school to Penn State University. When did you go from rec to like, you know, serious club soccer?

What age were you roughly? that's a good question um by the time i started doing oDP i think i was like a you 12 so it would have been right around that time i went from probably a little bit more of a travel organized type of uh soccer environment um so at that time like it's hard to distinguish what was wreck then and you know um travel everybody had a travel team, every local kind of club had a travel team. And you would probably almost consider that to be, I would almost consider that to be recreational now because you really only played in like your local leagues, your state leagues, your regional state leagues, and maybe a couple tournaments inside the state, but we didn't do much traveling outside the state.

It's very different than what it is now, obviously. But I think what I would consider to be more like not rec would have been the first my first integration into ODP where all the best players in the state were coming together and then your regional teams were going and playing each other. It's definitely a far different landscape now. But the only way that you really, back in those days, we're playing out of state teams is if you went and traveled somewhere,

but if you made it through your state cup and you went to regionals and you could put in those kind of events is when you really started to see some of the other teams. Okay. All right. I'm interested in that because I guess I'm curious what, like, what you make of it all now? Like, was it a good pathway? Is the pathway better now?

I mean, you have a son who's coming up through the Philadelphia Union Academy, right? So you must be thinking about this stuff. Yeah. And certainly far more deliberate in thinking about it, you know, with my son's pathway, because it's not even comparable

now compared to what it was then, you know? And we, outside of us as parents, wanting to drive and to go watch games and travel with him, we had really paid a penny for my son since he was like nine years old to play football. And, you know, kind of seeing that evolution, like, he started off with the Columbus Crew Academy when he was nine to play on their U-12 team because we didn't have anything really in West Virginia to offer him. And so we were the crazy parents that would drive him back and forth to Columbus, Ohio, two or three times a week at nine years old to do it. And then... That's a bit of a drive. Yeah.

This is before they would have... They had their trading ground now. We're at, you know, historical Columbus Crew Stadium where they have the trading ground now. They would either, if it was on the east side of Columbus, it would take us two hours and 45 minutes to get there and two hours and 45 minutes to get back. If it was on the west side of Columbus where they were training, it would be three and a half hours. and, you know, seven hours round trip. So it was a lot. But then when pre-court decided to move the crew to Austin, they ended up letting go a lot of their younger teams and only kept 15s.

And he was just way too young to play up with that age group. And that was an interesting age group because his age group had three underage players. And that crew group was a very good one. But Cooper Sanchez now starts at Atlanta United. was an 08 that also played up on that 06 team. Kellan, who is now signed with the Philadelphia Union, my son, Gavin Wolfe, Josh Wolf's youngest son, was on that Columbus Crew Academy team.

And so there were a lot of good players that ended up leaving that club because they ended up having that little hiatus before the ownership from the Browns Group came in and saved the crew. So, but yeah, the idea of leaving there was okay. We offered him the opportunity. It said, and believe it, he was only, you know, 10 or 11 at the time. And we're saying, what do you want to do? Do you want to come back to West Virginia and play on your local team here?

What do you want? And he said he wanted something different. And so he was invited to go out to Philadelphia. You had to train with their group out there. They really liked them and enjoyed him and offered him a spot immediately. And, you know, the rest is kind of history. He's moved through the pathway. That was before you even, that was before you even went to Philadelphia.

Correct, correct. He spent a year and a half in Philadelphia while I was still in Mortgantown, West Virginia, coaching at WVU. But the process, the identification process, the academy structure, the free, the free portion of the development and the coaching and the travel. He's been to Brazil and Spain and Scotland. he's been all around the world and we haven't paid a penny for him to do it. And, you know, even just that portion of what it was like when I was a kid to where it is now

and probably with the direction it's still going in is it's incredible to see how much that process of being identified and developed has changed so much over, you know, the last 20, 30, 4 years. Yeah, that's cool. So can you talk a little bit about the transition from collegiate coaching to the academy system? Like what were you able to take from coaching at West Virginia that you could apply to, you know, the academy? What was different? Yeah, I think I was really fortunate at West Virginia for a good portion of my time there. Oliver Luck was my boss, the athletic director. And Oliver

Luck was Andrew Luck's father, the former number one draft pick for the Indianapolis Colts, quarterback who unfortunately had to retire early from concussions. But Oliver also was one of the first people that Don Garber brought over and Sun Neil Golati brought over from NFL Europe to whenever Houston, that franchise started. So he was the president of the Houston Dynamo when it moved and they created that team. So I had an athletic director at the time, West Virginia, which considered, you know, one of the Power 5 schools that actually had a football soccer background. And so, in a lot of ways, that gave me a lot of freedom and leeway at West Virginia to not just be about, you know, results, but wanting to do things in the right football culture and the right football way about developing players.

And I really had a pension for wanting to have American players at WVU and not just go the international route and teach their own. But that was just my kind of, you know, my ambition. And I had an athletic director that really supported that. And so the transition for me to, and my time at the academy is very, very short. When I moved to Philadelphia, I waited for my contract to end at West Virginia, joined my family who had already moved to Philadelphia. And COVID hit right when we got back from, I followed. My son was in Brazil playing with the academy as a U-12.

player came back. I think we're on the field for a few days and then COVID hit. And so we had some time off. And literally, during MLS's back, when everything went down to Orlando, if you remember, for the MLS's back tournament. I do remember that. Yeah. I'd gotten a call earlier that morning from a number I didn't recognize. So I didn't even answer it. And I'd say maybe like eight, nine hours later, I finally was like, oh, yeah, I missed some calls. There was a voicemail. And it was at the, at the time sporting director Ernst Tanner calling me to somewhat do an interview with me over the phone. I was already supposedly, I was going to work at the academy, but everything got shut down, MLS is back.

They came back earlier. They needed to make a change at the second team, high coaching position. And I had two players that started for the first team, Ray Gaddis, who spent four years with me at West Virginia and is, I think maybe second all time in a peer. at the Philadelphia Union and Jack Elliott, who spent four years with me at West Virginia, he's now the captain of Chicago Fire and was also a starter for the union at that time, had both kind of, unbeknownst to me, had Ernst had quiz them about whether or not, you know, I could take over the second team. I think I might have been the only one at the time also

qualified to take over the second team from a licensure standpoint. But so I didn't actually do one single game at the academy before I did my first game, took over the team like middle of the week in August. And we ended up beating Red Bull my first game. And there's a really cool picture of all the first team guys. And the team was off to a terrible start that year in the USL championship. And there's a really cool picture of Jimmy, the staff, and a bunch of the players watching the game down in Orlando and us coming back and winning. and it was uh that's kind of how i went from the college game to the to the pro sector and

I'd always told myself I had no interest in coaching pros and I really enjoyed and was comfortable in college and maybe a little bit too comfortable at times but um the thing that pushed me out of college more so was just my my family and being apart you know from my wife my my daughter and my son were all living in philly and I was living in in west virginia and it just got old really fast. So he just decided to join them. I didn't join them with the thought that I was going to join the Philadelphia Union at the same time. Sometimes timing works out well. And it definitely I was really, really fortunate to have Ray and Jack both in the first team here to kind of put in a good word for me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a credit to you that if they put in a good word for you.

How do you, this is, I got a few questions from listeners, so I'll just say their names because it'll make you know, it'll make it cool, I guess. Sammy asks, how do you balance the hyper-specialization and singular focus that making it in soccer demands with equipping athletes to succeed if they don't become pros? Probably something you thought about a lot over the last two decades. Yeah, great question. Look, I think that, you know, football, there's so many direct parallels between football. football in life. And I've had this really unique perspective that I have a son that's a high performer

and wanting to support that ambition, knowing what it takes to kind of get to where you need to get to and hold them accountable for those things. But at the end of the day, still kind of rolling it back to how it impacts life in general and period. And so the accountability, the responsibility, still being able to push the drive of this, you know, hyper-intense A-type personality environment. but relate it back to, you know, what's important in life and some of the lessons and some of the intangibles that go along with being a high performer in the sport. And they're not all going to make it.

And even if you do make it, it doesn't mean you're going to make it over the course of a 10, 15, 20 year career. And so, you know, my son signs his first professional contract with Philadelphia at the age of 16. And all I'm doing is saying, great, that takes you until you're 22 years old. What's after that? And so the understanding now of the intensity and the requirement to continue to, you know, stay disciplined, stay after it, don't lose sight of where you're at. And I think, you know, it's probably an advantage that he has. And I think Tad Ramos said something not too long ago about how football starts in the home and the best ones come through environments where it's, you know, it's in the house. I think, you know, making sure that there's a discipline associated to, you know, just the general lifestyle portion.

of it as well in terms of making your bed in the morning, having the discipline to eat properly, you know, making sure you rest and you sleep at night. Like all of these things are hopefully setting up for setting them up for success over the length of what it takes to be a pro, but even if pro disappears, preparing them for life in general. And there's this funny story when I was working at Penn State, the Darby County backroom staff came over to visit and see what we were doing at Penn State in terms of education resources, backgrounds type stuff in our background. And one of the backroom staff told this story of one of their top young players that were in the dining hall, the cafeteria area, having lunch. And they heard one of their top young players say, what part of the horse does horseradish come from?

And they all looked at each other like, holy shit, he really just asked that question. But it was eye-opening for them of what was needed to actually prepare this young, top, talented footballer for real, real world and real life. And so it's an interesting question that Sammy asked because I think the more and more, I certainly gain a lot of satisfaction of being able to tell the current players that I have now, the ones that I have will have in the future and the ones that I've had in the past, that I talk to you know differently than I would talk to my own son. and having, you know, kind of grown with him

and this generation and seeing how they kind of process things, I think it's allowed me to be a better leader in those regards. You said your son is 16? He's 18 now. He signed when he was 16 with the club and the organization. He's had a pretty cool pathway as well. Like he's gone through the process, grinded through, you know, a dog-eat-dog Academy in Philadelphia. got into the youth national team at you know at you 15 didn't didn't grow right away and kind of fell behind and went two years almost a little over little under two years of not getting called back in to the national team to spending the entire 20 25 calendar year back with the national team making the under 17 World Cup team and kind of you know going through the ups and downs and the peaks and valleys of of of competing and

having struggles and realizing that development is not linear. There are ups and downs. There are people who rate you really high when you're 12 years old, don't rate you anymore when you're 15 years old. Now you're Alex Freeman who spends three years at Orlando City B, and next thing you know, he's starting at a FIFA World Cup at the senior level. So football is not linear in development.

There's ups and downs at peaks and valleys. And I can literally speak to any of my players along those same. the same lines, just having gone through it in my own household. Yeah. It's like I imagine that the performance level smooths out the older person gets, but man, having a strong opinion about a 12-year-old based on maybe like one day of watching them play. Yeah, it's tough.

You get a good breakfast that day, you know? Absolutely. You're 100% right. I think a lot of people, and even us from a scouting perspective, you really only watch the games, right? You see a game and you don't know what's going on. on that day that leads to a good or, you know, in different performance. It's the everyday environment of seeing young players.

And, you know, I tell the story of like a Frankie Westfield, who is starting for the Philadelphia Union now had an incredible under 20 World Cup breakout. He was literally days away from going to Penn State. And, you know, who knows if we'd have seen him again. But we really just pushed and pushed and pushed and signed it. I had him for two and a half years in the second team, and I still remember talking to Marco Mitrovich about him, and really pushing Frankie Westfield telling you this kid,

he's got something, he's a competitor, he's not perfect, but he's got something, he's going to come along. And we're in the airport flying home from a Union 2 game. He has a dropout of a player to go to Chile, literally the very next day. And he calls me, and we're sitting in the airport flying home, and he's like, what do you think about Frankie? should we invite him? And I said, Marco, you need to invite Frankie.

And just so grateful how open Marco was. And I'm so happy for his success in New England right now because he's doing a fantastic job. But Marco brings Frankie. And he was arguably our best player at the last year 20 World Cup. And, you know, it was, it was thanks to Marco for being open-minded. But he was almost literally at Penn State at the age of 18. now he starts every game for the Philadelphia Union. He's probably working on his second professional contract.

There's arguments that he could be in the next World Cup cycle and maybe going to Europe soon. But days, when I say days, I'm not kidding. He was a week away from going to Penn State when he signed his contract with Philadelphia Union to stay with the second team and eventually get to the first team. And that was in 2024. And otherwise, he'd be currently a junior at Penn State, which is crazy to think. Incredible. I mean, don't never give up. I guess is what everybody develops a different rates you know and so to annoy somebody at 12 or 16 or 18 would be foolish in a lot of ways

You used a word to describe Westfield earlier that I want to follow up on you said he's a competitor and I I feel like I picked up on that watching the U20 World Cup How much is that what you're looking for from players? I mean I'm not asking for a specific percentage but just like talking about that a little bit? I think it's a big piece. Look, our national team got a lot of criticism for not competing and fighting, right? And it's an element as to what our DNA is as a country that I think helps maybe bridge the gap a little bit in terms of us compared to a Belgium, perhaps. That's been playing this game far longer as our players exposed to you know, international football on a weekly basis that really, really competitive matches that,

you know, I don't think that it's always just about X's and O's when it comes to the way we need to put the best 11 players on the field that give us the best chance to compete and win a game. And, you know, in my year with the national team and maybe not a whole, maybe not. not fully in the U.S. way in terms of the X's and O's, but a little bit more fully in the way, in the U.S. way in terms of the DNA of the spirit and the competitive nature. We were horrible in our final game when we beat Portugal and Switzerland, or the UaFA Friendship Cup,

where we played France, Argentina, Australia to make it to the final. We'll play Portugal. And we played terrible in the Portugal game, Portugal game. But we competed and we fought and we ground out the result and we ended up winning the event. You know, Frankie is similar to that. And we didn't play this super clean 433 on the day. We turned the ball over a lot. We got outpossessed.

He got outplayed similar to maybe what you saw in the U.S. Belgium game. But we competed and we found a way to win. I think it's something that I certainly look for. I think it's something that maybe we were criticized for. with our World Cup team prior to heading into it, right? The fight and the character. I think Frankie, some young players, coaches need to make sure that that's still an element of the player pyramid is the character. And don't forget about the character should be the pinnacle of the player pyramid.

And, you know, not sacrificing, you know, the integrity and the character of the team just because a player may be is so absolutely outstanding that you know you can't look them off but there's something to be said for guys that are willing to stay square and block a shot versus the guy who maybe turns out it deflects off of them and it finds the back of the net um i think uh it's it's not to not to diminish the importance of being a better soccer nation with great tactics and exes and o's and guys you can who are technically you know competent but not to lose that fighting spirit because Argentina rode that fighting spirit all the way to a final. They just didn't have enough in the final to get it done this time.

But if you watch the Argentina play Uruguay or Colombia, it's like life or death to those guys. It's transcendent, really. Right? Yeah. And Spain has that in them too. It's life or death, the way they compete. And sometimes you just don't look at our teams and our players

and say that it's life or. death every hit moment out there and kind of maybe goes back to sammy's question that you asked uh one of one of the people sending a question that hyper you know hyper intense atmosphere but um football isn't life or death but when you're out there it is and and you should play every moment like your life depends on it if if you want to be the best i as it struck me watching spain that kukorea you know he's got that like really distinctive hairstyle and you might think well that's not a serious person out there but man, is he serious. He is dead serious.

He's got a lot of dog in him. Yeah. Passion means something, right? He plays with passion. He's not always the best player in the field, but he will fight until the bitter end. Sometimes you need that kind of player. I think you always need that kind of player.

And if you have 11 of them who are really good at football too, but they all play like it's life or death and they have the passion, that's why Spain and Argentina, those guys always seem to end up at the top. And it's all sudden done. I got, I do want to, I am going to ask you about your season that's ongoing, but first, let me ask you a little bit about the coaching education system. Because you have, you have, you have like every license you can get. You mentioned it earlier. You might have been the only person with the license to coach the Philadelphia second team. What do you think of, very general question, what do you think of U.S. soccer's coaching education system? Yeah, look, my last taste of it was the pro license.

And honestly, it was the best coaching licensure I did with them was the pro license. It was the most rewarding. It was the most reflective. It was the most collaborative. My cohort had guys like Wilfred Nancy and Mike Ivaras and Rob Valentino. We had a really, really great cohort. And I think all of them have been really great. But it was the most rewarding and the most personal one where it felt like I wasn't just doing.

something on a piece of paper and kind of going through a process just to get a license. It felt more like I was learning something and doing something. I think that it's my, I don't remember a whole lot from when I did my A because it was so long ago. But I think I think whenever you kind of go through a lot of the coaching things, it just seems very, everything seems the same, you know. I can't tell you last time I went to a convention. mention because you go and it doesn't feel authentic anymore.

And I don't want to sound critical. I learn more now by going and seeing coaches in their own environments and kind of seeing how they interact with their players, how maybe they put their own twist on the way they want to play and those kind of things versus maybe a license or course or just like a show put on for coaches to watch. And sometimes those are the best. conversations are the best. This, for me, like collaboration and opinions. And I think we kind of live in this world right now where it's right or wrong and people's opinions are often frowned upon.

And I guess I'm still part of that older generation that maybe grew up a little bit differently where we didn't wear seatbelts and, you know, people smoked in the same area you were in. And you kind of just, you didn't complain about it. You just moved somewhere else or you kind of ask somebody to step out. Like now confrontation is or, you know, or conversation is mostly done through a computer screen or a Twitter handle or something like that. And a lot of that collaboration is lost. And I think that last course that I did with U.S.

soccer, the pro license, it was all about communication and collaboration and working with others. And that part was fun. But I don't know what those coaching courses are like now. I did a presentation for an A license a couple of years ago where I presented like periodization, I think it was, to like a cohort of an A license group. But it was me just kind of speaking to them on a Zoom, you know. And then I fielded some questions at the end.

And I was trying to be cognizant of the fact of trying not to be boring and trying to just be open and share as much as I could. And, you know, I'm that way now. People ask me now, can they come out? and I'm an open book. Yeah, come over and watch. No problem. I'm out in the field. I've had some coaches locally from colleges, some agents,

some visiting coaches during the World Cup, and who just wanted to come and watch a session or two. And I think for me, that's the best learning that you can do is just being out there and talking to people and seeing people. And, you know, maybe you see somebody, you're like, I would never do it that way. That's horrible. That's learning for me.

Versus feeling like you have to have your cones spaced out like this. and your numbers or have to be like that and you didn't teach the overlap when you're teaching wide play. I think, you know, opinions are one thing, but kind of directive is another and there's different ways

to manipulate wide spaces that don't necessarily have to be an overlap and I don't think that's the way that one person does. It means that that's the way everybody has to do it. Let me ask you this. I mean, I'm actually taking the D license class right now. I coach like U-10 soccer.

But there's this emphasis And to your point about conversation, I've actually found it very useful. I mean, it's useful for me and thinking through how to like organize a training session and stuff. It's good for me. But there is this emphasis on the USSF game model and then finding the principles and subprinciples

you want to teach and then tying those principles to player actions. And a critique I've heard of that is you want to teach, we should be trying to teach player cognition which I don't think the two things are mutually exclusive, but this heavy emphasis on like we're teaching this action, controlling or, you know, shooting, whatever. There is this idea that when you're so focused on player actions,

you're not as focused on player like independent thinking as you should be. What do you think of that? Is that a fair critique or? Yeah, I think so. I think especially the younger you are, right? and everyone always talks about like especially with young players it's it's critical scanning right and red blue you know these kind of things that are trying to gain information from what's around you and I think you often hear like coaches tell players like things like check your shoulders

what are they looking for and I think when you're super young and you're trying to teach like these cognitive type of actions it's typically There's not enough information to go along with what, like, check your shoulders. And even today with senior players, I have players checking their shoulders, but all they're looking for is to see if there's somebody on them. But the way that I've always kind of taught things like check your shoulders, and even with my own son is, okay, what is it that you're looking for? So when you look over your shoulder, are you just looking to see who's on you?

Or are you looking to see where your teammate is or where the space is that you can go next? or, you know, what's the next pass I can make? Does it need to be a chip? Doesn't need to be a through ball. Does it need to be a travella? Does it need to be curving inward or outward? Like all of these, all this information from a cognitive perspective, when you check your shoulders is exactly what you're looking for, right?

And coaches hear things like, oh, the critical scan, the last scan right before the ball gets played. Or they, you know, so-and-so scans five times every 10 seconds. But, like, it's not just scanning. it's actually processing information. And so now how do you now take a training session that's about scanning and colors and direction and all these kind of things and actually have a process

to what you're trying to achieve on the back end of it. And so I've always, like from the point where my son was eight or nine years old, is what you're looking for when you scan is you're looking for your next action. Like, can I break a line with my next pass? and I put the next player in. And then you talk about what position do they play. So if you're a 10, which is a dying position now,

and football is the 10, because everything's become so pet cardio of ruined football with tiki-taka football, right? Now everybody's so condensed and compact that 10 is now eliminated. Now you're seeing the advent of the winger, the dribbling winger, all the time, that those players need to be able to play in tight spaces and get out of them very quickly if a player is brave enough to play the ball to them in between all the congestion. And so it's now, can you find something as a 10 that's going to now make an attacking action happen?

That's different than a centerback. It's different than a winger. It's different from all these other players. But, you know, look for what the next action is not just whether you can turn or not. I think most players right now only look to see if they can turn, but it doesn't solve the next part of the process of why you're having that scanning action. And so it's like little things like that that I think make a big, big. difference in the development of the player in order to hopefully teach them something that's more than just turning with the ball on. One time, there's another one where you always teach

your players to maybe open up their hips to the inside of the field versus facing away from the field or facing the sideline when they received the ball. And I'd always been that way. And then I started working with Jose Cleverson, who was my assistant in Philadelphia. And Cleberson won a World Cup with Brazil, he played for Manchester United. He's the forgotten player in the transfer when Cristiano Ronaldo went to Manchester United. They both went at the same time, but it was bigger news that Cristiano went. But Jose Cleberson, within his own right,

is a World Cup winner and played in Manchester United. And he says to me, he goes, but he's like, coach, what about if the player receiving the ball wants you to think he can't see what's behind him? And he's actually setting you up to come and press him on the sideline. But he and his mind has already thought of a way to getting out of that. situation because for many many years i said oh you don't want to receive the ball this way because you can't see what's behind you if you're facing the sideline where the next action has to go

but maybe that player is setting you up because he's already seen what's there and he wants to make you think that oh yeah come get me on the sideline and now he's got a way to wiggle out of it and he surprises you and i thought it was a really really interesting perspective to have that is and it took a Brazilian world cup winner who played a manchester united teach me that but he's 100% right. We can't just pigeonhole everybody into doing the same thing because perhaps that player has a different way of looking at the game that maybe you don't have a way that you don't see yourself even as a coach.

Well, one more coaching education question. The grassroots sort of stuff. I know you're a million miles beyond this. And I'm sure you're not just like going out on rec soccer fields and checking things out. but is there anything we can do better on that front? And I ask this in the spirit of like growing the game, producing better, a broader, deeper pool of players. Because, I mean, a lot happens at like U6 rec soccer

that could go really well or could go really poorly. And it just feels to me, I'm kind of leading question here, but it feels to me like U.S. soccer barely is paying attention to that. Or maybe it's just too big of a thing to pay attention to it. I don't know. Yeah, that's another great question. I think I'm a little bit, my focus right now is on attacking play, really.

And I was asked the question as, you know, why hasn't the United States developed a world-class attacking player yet? And I kind of want to cycle this back to your question there about like youth soccer and grassroots. And I cycle back in my son's not, grassroots anymore, he's 18 now, but there are times I'll watch him play. And I'm not in Philadelphia anymore. I'm not there every day to kind of mitigate kind of what he's doing. And I tell him he's playing

like a robot. And I guess where I'm going with that is that at times I feel like we're, as coaches, we want to, we want to coach too much. And players, especially today, the way they learn, the way they kind of get information is always on a computer screen. It's always on the internet. It's always, you know, chat GPT kind of thing. That the way they follow instructions sometimes, you need to tell them what to do in order to do it. That there's a lot of self-discovery that's missing now for me.

And the creative player is hard to find. And it goes kind of back to this whole adage. How do you teach creativity and can you and can't you? and I think you can. I think sometimes you need to leave a player alone and just give them an objective and ask them to solve it versus telling them, you know,

we want to play this way and have formations and want them to play one touch or play two touch or pass the ball or on the flip side they don't pass the ball and we don't want to tell them you need to bring a teammate into it. I think we're missing a little bit of the freedom of the player who needs freedom and the directive of the player who needs directive.

And I don't think you can treat every player the same, but you can treat them all fairly. But if we want to coach young players, we have to leave them alone as well and stop telling them always what to do. Because as they get older and you can't tell them what to do anymore, we're not. When Lemini and Yamal is doing something crazy, and now you want them to do something crazy themselves and make a moment out of nothing, when the player that you told them they had to play the ball to isn't there that time

and they don't know what to do next, that's kind of where it starts to break down. And so for me, when I was coaching in college and there would be like you 12, you 13 games going on, and you 17 games were like on field 25, but I was on field five, I would love to stop and watch the younger kids play and watch them all chase the ball around. And hear the coach say, spread out, spread out. Which is funny because when they get to senior football, if you ever took an aerial view of a team in possession,

everybody's in like a one quadrant of the field, all 22 players, right? Out of our 21, one goalkeepers on the other side of the field. Everybody else is literally pigeonholed in because the game is so condensed. It's funny that we scream spread out, spread out. I used to love watching because the game for me there, the fun part of it, the experimental part, the trying things part. You know, I almost feel like too many players now play, especially attacking players, play and play safe instead of taking risk and taking chances.

And, you know, it's the, that was like the Clint Dempsey that used to get you excited to watch him play because he would do, you know, things that, you know, he was just so brave and bold and you know who's that player now in our team and that's you know you saw a little bit from Balligan how we just kind of wanted to turn and go to goal all the time and I think that's why

people were so excited about him but you really don't see as much of that anymore and you just wonder how much of that can be mitigated even at some of the younger age groups like because development is up and down and because we shouldn't be saying at 12 years old

this kid is the anointed one or he's not going to be any good. I think about how much freedom we take away from players at young ages. I think that that's something that we could do better. Okay. Awesome. Okay, this is a question from Mateus. That's a Brazilian name, by the way.

Two weeks out from their first game, Brooklyn FC had like 13 players on their roster. What was the process of putting together as a squad in such a crunched time frame? Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, in a lot of ways, it's been the biggest challenge of my career. You know, I wasn't hired until December. Yeah. Good luck. Kind of putting a squad together for January preseason in December around the holidays and everything else.

And yeah, yeah, in a perfect world, I wish I would have had, you know, six months. to, you know, a year to kind of get ahead of things with Brian. Brian was only hired a month before I was, a month and a half before I was. And so in a lot of ways, it was not an ideal way to put a team together. And, yeah, it was a big struggle. It was hard. It's still hard. We still only have 22 players on this roster.

It's not done. And it's, you know, it's not going to be done before this season ends. And it's one of the many things of starting a new franchise that's been really, really challenging, You wish we could, like I said, I wish we could add six months through a year. The way Rhode Island did it, you know, to put it together. Kano was a good friend. He was also in that pro-license cohort that I mentioned before. Conno Smith had 10 months he was hired before they ever kicked the ball in Rhode Island.

And, you know, to do it, you know, six weeks before we bring the team together was a challenge and eight guys in your first training session. Mateus, it's a... Well, you really got to focus on those eight players. Yeah. Yeah. always spending it in a positive, right, when you're coaching, but I would tell Mateus that it was not easy. It's still not easy. It's still a process. And there's a lot of growing

pains in the player acquisition process at Brooklyn that we're still working through. Can you talk a little bit more about your working relationship with Brian McBride? How does that collaboration work? Yeah, great. Brian and I get along really well. I think Brian believes in the game model and the principles and the foundation and the identity that we want to have for this club and this team. I was pretty adamant about that when I went through the process. It's funny, I did this process. He reached out to me when I was in Qatar for the under 17 World Cup watching my son play. And I got the email, obviously Qatar is something like 12 hours ahead or something like that.

and I got the email asking to meet in the next 24 hours on a Zoom call. But by the time I actually saw the email, it was already like middle of the day and like going to meet with them like pretty quickly. So that was an interesting process. But yeah, Brian, I was really adamant when I did the interview of how I wanted to keep character at the top of the player pyramid. Explain what a player pyramid is real quick for us. So you look at like what is important when you build, like what is the player, is technical, is tactical, you know, like all those kind of things that go into him being a player and why you would want that player to be in your team.

What is the makeup of that player in all the facets of, you know, can he shape a ball? Can he, you know, what position he plays? Is he good in the air? these things that make up whether or not you would want a player in your team. But a lot of times it's like the character part. And so like no one would ever debate that Terrell Owens was a great wide receiver. Um, you know, uh, um, that, um, um, gosh, why is his name escaping me right now? Who was the, uh, no, going to go back to football. Um, who was, uh, the Italian, uh, center midfielder who uh...

Peelot. Um, not Pierlo, um, the African one, uh, who got in all the trouble and, um, I can't think of his name either at the moment. It's embarrassing. You know, I'm talking about cinematic guy. Um, yeah, uh, even if you look at, um, you know, uh, just some of the best players who were just, for a lack of better words, uh, assholes, but, you know, like guys who, you know, maybe brought their back. baggage in the locker room with them. Like, guys who can, you'd love to have them on your team when you're playing against somebody else, but you don't love to have them in your team, you know, six days of the week because they're

destructive to your environment or the old coaching rule never make a rule that your best player can't follow. Well, if this player can't follow any rules, then you're screwed, right? Because how do you hold your entire team accountable? It's that guy. So for me, the character was important. The guy who was willing to sacrifice himself and make a nearer post. run as a center forward that's going to open up your 10 to come in from behind or your weak

side winger to come in from behind to score the goal or the guy who's just going to check off his run and wait for the cutback um like that you got two guys waiting for the cutback yeah exactly and no goal gets scored right and so um like the character part for me the guy who who lives the life um and and that that's still i would take a worse player with a great character who's going to help the team win then take a guy who might score a 16 goals, but perhaps your team loses eight more games because it was all about him

scoring the goal. That for me and some organizations still want a player who's going to who's going to maybe get the goals and you risk it and you roll the dice on it that it's not going to disrupt the team. But I've learned that the older those guys get without being mitigated, the harder

it is to kind of rein him back into the team concept. And so character for me is at the top of the player pyramid. And what I made really clear their ownership. And Brian was that when we go and get players, it can't just be the most talented guy if the character's not there.

If we're going to build a real team that's going to last the test of time, then it seems to be done on the right foundations and the right principles, both from a playing perspective and from a character perspective. Call me old school. Balotel it. You hit it, Balotelie.

All right. Different issue all the time. So talented. Tapa, literally, at one stage was up there what you consider to be one of the best players in the world. But so many issues off the field. Yeah. Probably went through a lot in Italy, I imagine.

I mean, we know he went through some stuff there. Some racism. I'm just going to be clear about it. Oh, yeah, 100%. 100%. You brought a handful of players on loan with you from the Union Academy. How is it integrating them into Brooklyn FC.

And how does that, you know, the balance of expectation shift between, from more development to now it's more about, I imagine, more about results? Yeah. Obviously, whenever you bring guys in on loan, it can be a really tricky situation, right? Because those players aren't necessarily always happy that they're on loan. But at the same stage, they also know that that's not necessarily where their future is going to be in the long run. So sometimes that can be tricky.

But I brought two guys in who I knew and I'd work with for a number of years. And I knew that they would commit to what we were trying to build in terms of an identity. And one of the discussions I had with Brian early on and just as recently as now that the European window is opening, has opened up that we didn't want to build our franchise on loanies. The USL is already a high turnover league in terms of players. And if you build your franchise on lonies, then. what identity do you really have? But these were guys that I knew would buy into the identity and the culture that we wanted to establish and would add to it. And both Marcus Anderson and C.J. only of the two guys you talk about I had in the second team, both are first team players in Philadelphia now, but needed a bigger challenge than MLS Next Pro this year for where they were in their development pathway.

And my relationship with Philly obviously helped. and both have come in and been big players for us this year. And so it worked out well. I'm glad it's working out well for them. It's working out well for us as a club and what we want to do. But in a lot of ways, they've been great examples for, you know, what I'm speaking towards in terms of the character, how we want to play,

establishing the identity in the culture of what we want to establish and, you know, not feeling like they aren't committed to the cause. It's been really good for all parties. It's about as well as alone could go. I guess it's pretty easy for you to vet the character of the union players because you coached them already. How do you vet the character of the other guys you and Brian want to bring in?

Like how rigorous is that process? Yeah, it's hard. And it was hard and kind of goes back to what you were saying is when you only have 13 players two weeks before the season starts is because that's what you're trying to do. But you're trying to do it on Y Scout. You're trying to do it by talking to other people. And a lot of our kind of process this year is just learning who these guys are

because nobody knew anybody when you pulled the team together, right, with that close the season. From not just a playing standpoint, but even just like you said, from getting to know who they are as human beings and establishing relationships. And, you know, it's not an easy process. I told people and joke that I didn't sleep. I was having such a hard time sleeping at night because I would spend 16 hours a day staring at my computer screen

and YSkow was trying to watch players play and try to get a sense of who they were on a computer screen. And it's a challenge now as we still are trying to establish a scouting department within our club. Being a new franchise, we don't have that out there yet and trying to get eyes on players versus just always kind of identify and try to suss out of.

who they are on a video because as we alluded to earlier, we're not there day to day with them. And making those kind of determinations and decisions based on video can be really, really tricky and doesn't always tell the whole picture. What's your favorite? When you go into Weiscount, you pull up Kellan LeBlanc, you're going to look at him, try to figure out if you want to bring him in. What's the first thing you look at?

Dules? I think it's, depends on the position. If it's an attacker, I like to look at, you know, essentially the production of what they do, goals and assists, obviously. Then if it's a defender, probably I'd like to look at duels if it's a centerback. I like, and I think it always kind of rolls back to what your game model is and what your principles are.

So it's probably not the same for every coach, yet alone ever obviously each in position, but specifically to what my game model likes and what I would like it, look like. I'm huge on tactile flexibility. I have a game model and specific principles that I want to see. But I was able to have that same game model and put it in with like, you know, the national team, for example, which if you looked at probably where I was, if you've ever seen a Philadelphia Union game, you'd hardly call it great football. There's not a whole lot of the ball. and, you know, it's heavily transitional. And you think about what U.S. soccer's game model is, a 433 winger possession style, you know, like talk about the antithesis.

It's completely separate, right? But I was able to take things from my game model, from what I did with the union, implemented into, you know, the U.S. soccer game model, which I thought helped us in undefeated 2025, playing all internationals. and my game model and adapting it now. And so I'm not fixated on it being a 433 or a 442 or a 343. It's more about the principles and the ability to be tactfully flexible with the players that we have. So if I were to look up a player, I'm looking specifically to see, you know, what can they do? What are their strengths? How can that fit into our game model?

Does it offer us something different than what we already have? we didn't probably get to do that this year and building this roster because there was no time to really do that. But that's definitely something that I want us to do moving forward in terms of our player acquisition. And, you know, left footers versus right footers can, you know, are they,

do you have a player who can play both as a winger and as a nine? Those kind of things, I think for me is I think I'm, one of my strengths as a coach is being able to utilize players in different roles to get the most out of them and get the best out of them, and not feeling like I need to buy a specific player to do a specific job. But you can only go maybe so far with that thought process. And I'm not naive enough to think that spending money on a big player can also help you get big results too.

Well, I don't want to take all your whole day, but I do have to ask about Kevin Sullivan. I got to tell you this. I used to go on FottMop to see, do a little cabin check in, you know, see how he did in his Union 2 game. And always, C.J. only was the one who scored. Like every single time I, oh, C.J. a C.J. guy scored again. But what do you think of Sullivan? Is he, you know, going to save American soccer? I love that question. First off, FottMob is awful.

it gets so many things wrong in their AI it's incredible really really oh my gosh they've gotten goal scores wrong there's a lot wrong you'd be surprised as as a coach who would go back and we'd go back and use opta or stats bomb or one of the real true analytics that you get from a match and how it compares sometimes to what Bob Bob had is completely off especially if it's like you know what the difference is is if you use phaumob and there's a multi-camera system it's typically better but with an mLS next pro for example you have the single camera that that you know if you think about the first couple years the camera sometimes didn't keep up with the action right like it was this right and so it's it's missing or it's misidentifying players when it's on the far field or the sun

maybe decide to play a game at 11 a.m. in foxborough stadium and the sun is glaring down because of the way it's hitting the stadium, it's misidentifying who some of the players are in certain parts of the field. So a lot of the thought of stuff can be inaccurate. That said, I had Kevin in the second team. He was 14 when I first introduced him into playing in the second team. And I've known Kevin because he's my son, he's in 09 and my son's in 08. So they've been playing together since my son first came to Philadelphia to join the union.

So I've known him since he was, you know, a real little kid, eight or nine years old, really good friends with the family. I had Quinn, his older brother, played for me as well, who's on the first team and, you know, has been to Youth World Cups as well. And is Kevin going to save U.S. soccer? Kevin will not save U.S. soccer by himself. What is really, really important to me, and I think I read somewhere at Andrew Carlton, came out and had a lot to say about American players and an MLS. And he's taken a lot of heat up for it, but he's not wrong. What you're seeing right now with Cabin-Sullivan is he's been given the opportunity to play.

And if you were to go through every team in major league soccer and you look at who plays the nine, who plays the 10, who plays the 7, the 11 or the 8, you'd be hard pressed to find America. who are playing in those positions because those are the DP positions and you don't see very many Americans playing in those spots. I don't know what the number is, but you might be able to count it on one or two hands. I would think so, yeah. Out of the 30 teams and those five, those five numbered positions. But what you're seeing right now is an adaptation of giving a young player an opportunity and a chance and him growing. And he took a lot of criticism, early on when he first started playing. Oh, he's not that good.

Oh, this, that, the other. Everybody's a critic who doesn't see the every single day. They just see the 10 minutes that he came on the field. Cabin is a very, very good player. And he's what we like to refer to as a high potential player. But he's not just potential anymore. Kevin belongs on the field. Much like I believe Justin Ellis, who I had with the national team,

belonged in the national team. I push for Justin to be in with us. And you see him now with what he's doing with Orlando City. Much like you see with a lot of other young players out there, they're capable. It's just about being in an environment where they're allowed to fail and or succeed. And Kevin has the temperament and the personality and the character that he will win ugly if it requires him to win ugly. But he also has the ability and the skill to take a player on

because he has the character to be brave and change a game. I think it's really, really naive of fans out there to think he's the second coming. When Messi was his age, nobody thought of him as being the second coming. And for a while there, Messi got criticized right up until 2022, too when he won the World Cup that he wasn't in the same league as Madadona and Pelle and

the greatest to ever play the game until he finally won the World Cup. Now everybody's like, oh my gosh, Lee Messy's the greatest. You know, it's, I think people are who don't see him every day. It's easy to criticize him. And it's also easy to celebrate him when he does something special in a match and say, oh, he's a second coming. But to see him every day, you have a different. perspective of what his potential is and how far he still has to go.

And he has great, great potential, but he still has a long, long way to go. And I still text Kevin, you know, I don't know, every other week. Like I said, he's, you know, arguably best friend. He's a family friend at this point. Yeah, he's best friends with my son. They hang out. They go to the mall. They talk.

It's something different. But I will text them and tell him if he's been shit. and I'll text him and tell him he was great. And like what makes him a little bit different is that you can text him and tell him he wasn't very good. And before I've done it, his dad has told him, his mom has told him, his three older brothers have told him. And I think that's maybe what separates him from the others is that whereas, you know, the Adidas contract and the commercials and, you know, the spotlight and MLS and all those kind of bells and whistles that are around him. He is incredibly grounded.

He is incredibly down to earth. He has a showboy mentality. But if you know him, there's a humility there, too. And I think that's what maybe makes him a little bit different than the others. No one's trying to just protect him from the media. No one's trying to, like, you know, keep him out of it. He can handle himself. And trust me, there's nothing you can say that's so bad to him that he hasn't heard already.

and that he doesn't let people be smart enough that he doesn't let people just kind of fill his ego he sees through that kind of stuff so for a 16 year old he is incredibly old beyond his years and I can I can say that his best years are still ahead of him but he still has a long, long way to go but man he's he's every week I turn on if I watch a Philadelphia Union game he's the best player on the field at 16 years old. And, you know, even some of the things that don't come off, the ideas for me are, and I guess I look through it with a little bit more of a development eye than just when you say, what do you look for when you turn on Y Scout, when he doesn't score or it doesn't make an assist, the idea

that he tried that didn't come off, it may not show up on a stat page to say, oh, he didn't score 16 goals and get 10 assists this year. Maybe you only got five. but when he's 18, when that ball does come off, those are the kind of things that I still look for in a player. And his character to compete, at least, really does pop off the screen. Hard to imagine him wilting against Belgium at the World Cup. I don't think he's going to save American soccer just to be clear.

He'll be one of the special ones, though. And hopefully there's a generation that are going to be more like him. But he's only 16 years old. we don't know what he's going to look like at 20. He could be exponentially better. He could be the same. You know, what does that mean at 24? He's not in his prime until he's, what, 28?

And so that's, you know, 10, 12 years away from before he even hits his prime. There's, there's, we would be naive as a soccer culture to anoint any one player. as the next guy. You know, Messi, people knew Messi was going to be good. Do they ever think he was going to be the greatest? And be the guy to bring a World Cup back to Argentina? Probably not. They had him on drugs trying to stretch him out to grow more than 5'7, right, for a long time.

And all he did was change football before people's eyes. But he was a very different player in his first World Cup than what he was in this one. There probably was nobody. and ran more than Leo Messi when he first started playing. Now there's nobody who runs less. Yeah, that just frenetic energy of those old highlight reels from like him playing and Champions League and stuff. All right.

Marlon, thank you so much for this. Good luck this weekend against the battery. And good luck with the rest of your season. Good luck to your son, Callen, with his career too. Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. Thanks for having me on. Let's do it again.

All right. I would love that. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll see you.