00:00Brando, you are the founder of Youth for Youth, an initiative that has been providing access to thousands upon thousands
00:06of kids in the East Coast.
00:08Talk to me about it. Talk to me about your background.
00:11And how did you get involved at such a young age to change one of the most important problems of
00:17soccer in the U.S.?
00:18First of all, thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.
00:21So I'm a native New Yorker, Italian background, and I obviously naturally picked up the game at a very young
00:30age.
00:31I got better and better over time. And by the time I was 16, I had played for a bunch
00:36of different clubs and academies, but I landed myself at a pro academy at the time.
00:40And I started to see all my best friends make their professional debuts, get international team call-ups, get their
00:47first college offers.
00:49But I was feeling alone because I was getting injured. I was having confidence problems.
00:53And I started to realize, like, hey, I'm missing something that's stopping me in this journey, that's slowing me down.
00:59It's that I don't have a big brother who's done this. I don't have a mentor.
01:02I don't have somebody who's opened those doors that I dreamed of walking through.
01:06And I came to this realization at 16. And so I thought, I can't fix it for myself, but I
01:12can begin fixing it for the next generation.
01:15And, you know, let me let me do something with all this time I put into the game and make
01:18some impact, even if it's not me going to make that pro debut or going on to have a super
01:23lucrative career.
01:24And I understood immediately, like, I want to begin systemizing that idea.
01:30And, you know, one thing led to the next.
01:32And five years later, we've got a thousand players that would provide pathways to professional and collegiate football through training,
01:40through mentorship and through exposure opportunities run completely by those active professionals and active college players that I wish I
01:47knew when I was 16.
01:49What do you think it is the main issue that is pushing kids away from the game today?
01:54And I think that what you are trying to fix is very important.
01:57I've seen myself through the years that I've been involved with youth soccer, that players exactly at 14, 15, sometimes
02:07younger on the on the girl side,
02:09they start losing interest, passion, conviction for the game, even though that the skills and their development says otherwise.
02:17These kids have potential. They have everything.
02:20You know, they check every box from a scout perspective.
02:23But still, there's something there that doesn't really allow them to believe in themselves.
02:27And how can you fix that?
02:30I think there's there's a multitude of issues that we can look at in the pyramid.
02:34But what I always say is the U.S. is the country with the most viable amount of talent at
02:41square zero, meaning we have the most amount of youth that is interested in playing compared to pretty much any
02:48country in the world.
02:49Of course, you have the Chinas and the Indians of the world, but we definitely have a stronger football and
02:53culture than than they do.
02:54And so we don't really have an excuse necessarily to not have a super strong national team.
02:59That's the first step of the pyramid.
03:01The first thing that happens is we create boundaries to play, which is pay to play at an early stage.
03:08And so you already are cutting this pyramid down.
03:11And then the next thing is you don't have great coaching and then you're cutting that pyramid down.
03:16And that's not the Americans fault.
03:17That's just a coaching education issue.
03:18That's getting more people to want to coach.
03:20That's paying coaches more, making it a more attractive career to go into.
03:26And then you have as you go up each stage of the pyramid, then you have misalignment.
03:30So you have ECNL, MLS Next, GA, EDP, NEAL.
03:34You have all these different leagues kind of fighting for the same thing.
03:37And we're so misaligned.
03:38And so.
03:40At each phase of this pyramid, players are getting cut out.
03:43And then at the very, very top, you have a smaller talent pool to pick from.
03:47And so when you look at, when you look at, like, even you, of course, pay to play is typically
03:53the main one that people talk about.
03:56It's not the only one.
03:57I mean, someone has to pay.
03:58I always say.
03:59It's the entry level problem that we have.
04:01The pay to play is a period to start your career and to access the development.
04:07But it's really, as you say, there's a ladder of problem as the pyramid progresses that need to be addressed.
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