00:00One of the biggest issues that came out to be is that many former players came to denounce
00:06the pay-to-play system that exists in the United States. I have experienced this as a parent.
00:13Noah, you've experienced it as a player. The reality is that in the United States,
00:16if you want to perform at the highest level, you have to drop between $5,000
00:20to $10,000 a year per player. If you have a family with two kids that want to play,
00:25you're talking about $20,000 between tuition, your private training, travel, equipment.
00:33This is for the richest of the rich in the United States that they actually can
00:37advance in their career, right? Noah, in your experience, what have you seen about the players
00:44that are being left out? When you go and compete or when you go and ref, how many players of
00:50really
00:50good qualities are not playing at the highest level just because they don't have access to it?
00:55You know, I'll tell you, when I was a player, we would, you know, play in Surf Cup and we'd
00:59play
00:59in these big tournaments where, you know, college coaches are coming to watch. And when you're on
01:04an ECNL team, college coaches are more likely to come to your games. If you send them an email,
01:08they're going to answer you more likely than they're going to answer a player on EA or a lower division.
01:13Or even like, like SoCal.
01:15Mm-hmm, exactly. And what would happen is we go in these tournaments and we play against these teams
01:20that nobody knows about in a lower league and they kick our butts 3-0. And then next thing you
01:25know,
01:25these college coaches are looking at these players who never got the correct opportunity
01:30because they didn't have the financial. They never get to go to the ID camps. They don't get invited to
01:34scouting sessions just because they're playing in lower leagues. Yeah. That doesn't allow them. And
01:39that's one of the things. Also, tell me about the problem with injuries. I think that there's a
01:45there's a misconception that club soccer is kind of like no effort or there's no risk to it.
01:51But the reality is that there's an increase in injuries and sometimes even the clubs are not really
01:57prepared or ready to support players that go through that. Yeah, honestly, I went through a lot of
02:03injuries. I pulled my left hip flexor when I was playing in club and it was very difficult. We didn't
02:08have, you know, PT or anything in the club like that. So it's really up to you to just try
02:14to rehab
02:14yourself. I think they can definitely get better in that aspect for sure. To support because these
02:19players, you know, like you, they're players that put so many years and then sometimes when they get
02:25injured, they feel like, OK, then nobody cares about me. I put all these efforts into there. So I think
02:30that there's many instances where the US soccer system, the pyramid needs to change to address the
02:35situation that are systemic, unfortunately, and it happens over and over. And the sad part of it
02:40is that you find yourself with leaders of opinions in this country soccer culture. I'm looking at you,
02:46Alexis Lala, where you come out and defend private equity, when you come out and defend the pay to play
02:51system, when you come out and drop MAGA coded stuff in this in this beautiful game. That's why people
02:58are so against this, I don't know, this pundit, this former player of the United States that he was
03:06most recognizable for his beard and his play. And when you pair him up with titans of the game like
03:13Ibrahimovic and Thierry Henry, you start to see why the US soccer culture has not advanced as much as
03:20it should. Yeah. You know? Yeah. What do you think are two things, two things that we could do
03:25to increase access to the sport? I think we should, across cultures, have more financial aid for
03:32players who want to play at a higher level. I have seen, I'm a coach for a soccer club now,
03:37and I have
03:37seen financial aid increase organizations that help out with players. But I think we can definitely
03:43increase that, not only that, but increase the amount of scouts and coaches who are going to
03:50come out to these lower level teams. We need more people, you know, checking out teams that are
03:55lower level. They're not in the biggest tournaments, the most expensive ones. These scouts are doing
03:59themselves wrong because they're going to all these higher level games with people who have more money,
04:03and they're missing out on amazing players who fight for the game, fight for the game, and yeah.
04:09Another thing that I think is critical for this country is that we need to build more street
04:15ball courts all across the country. So many cities don't have space to build an 11-on-11 field,
04:21so there's a lot of abandoned basketball courts, a lot of abandoned parking lots, that if we were
04:27repurposing to create more street ball and more street soccer leagues and freestyle, we will see
04:33two-fold increase on players that get discovered and race to higher levels, but also a breathe
04:39of players that are not scared to dribble, a breathe of players that are, that have braggadoches,
04:44that are like, you know, ready to get in your face, ready to go to the one-on-one.
04:47Because we saw, one of the things that I've seen with Argentina, not that they have that problem,
04:51but I think it has, there's a little bit of relationship, is that we see a lot of players
04:55that don't want to do that pass, they don't want to do the dribble, they don't want to take the
04:58chance, they'd rather pass it to Messi, right? Exactly. And we see in the United States where they,
05:03they're so square. Oh my right. There's not a player that really changes the game. We saw it with
05:08Mexico, spending the last 20 minutes of the game against England, just doing the same crosses
05:14into the box, hoping that the tallest guy in the World Cup is going to take a misstep and then
05:18Memote Martinez is going to score. No, we need to develop these players that are aggressive,
05:23these players that want to get in your face and do a dribble, make you and go in and take
05:27a shot.
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