Modern Soccer Coach Podcast
MLS Youth to Pro Pathway with Philadelphia Union's Peter McDonnell
This week we are excited to be joined by Philadelphia Union U18 head coach Peter McDonnell. He discusses what makes the MLS club so unique when it comes to player development and how the club has created alignment from first team to all youth levels. The complexity of professional development is also a key topic as Peter shares how players balance academics, social media, and the rollercoaster nature of the game, in their journey. A true student of the game, Peter also talks about his experiences with a variety of different coaching course and the benefits of each one.
- Broadcast on:
- 30 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
We have a consistent methodology that's driven from the first team down through each of the age groups. We're very determined to promote from within, you know, number one or two this season with homegrown medicine in the MLS. When you look at a Philadelphia Union team play, they should look similar. The team is the vehicle to drive the individual development. Hello, coaches. Welcome back to another modern soccer coach interview. Big one this week, we are joined by Peter McDonald, Philadelphia Union Academy, a club that's got a brilliant reputation for success and player development, Philadelphia Union and provides unique insight into the player development and the professional pathway at the MLS. Brilliant stuff from Peter. Please like, please subscribe if you haven't. We really, really appreciate all the support. We've had a ton more subscribers in the past two to three weeks and we really, really appreciate it. Please continue to like, please continue to share. Thank you so much. Here is Peter. Enjoy. Peter, thanks so much for joining me today on the Modern Soccer Coach podcast. Really, really excited to have you on. Yeah, great Gary. Thanks for having me. We're looking forward to chatting. The busiest man in football and football is a busy world and we're going to get into your schedule and all this great stuff. We're going to start at the Union. One of the reasons why I wanted to get you on was to try and get an insight into the environment. Obviously, football is a village. You hear a lot of people talking. People rave about the environment up there to get it from someone who's inside a day to day. I just wanted to go straight in and ask, what is it about that environment in terms of what makes it unique from a player pathway standpoint that you can see almost the north star of the first team and you can work on that there. Any insights? Yeah. We're not shy in being an open book as far as how linear we are in our approach to methodology. We have a consistent methodology that's driven from the first team down through each of the age groups. That consistent methodology allows us to be aligned as a staff from a training methodology standpoint. It also allows the players, now we're down in Chester, Pennsylvania, where they can visually see the stadium, but also with the methodology moving through the ages. We're very determined to promote from within. We're not shy in moving in players forward quickly. They're hearing different voices with different coaches, but the methodology and the language is the same. When somebody jumps into a Jim Curtain training session, he's not going to be experiencing any different than he is, hopefully with a Pete Ritano training session, or even as low as 12s, 13s, 14s. That comes with its challenges, of course, but I think that it's really clear for the players. It's really clear the vision to play in the stadium is really clear, and obviously we've proven that now over the last while with the homegrown signings would be in number one or two this season with homegrown minutes in the MLS. I think it's really clear for people, and especially our players. And included that was innovative. That's another pillar of ours, and you can see that with the school. So having the school connected in that was a dream of mine, and it's why I'm at Philadelphia Union. Having a school connected to the training ground is something that's incredibly important for us. It allows the players to feel like they're playing with their mates, which is a key factor of football, which we all grew up in, but it's not everybody that gets to experience that. And that allows us then to teach from a similar methodology, because they're very experienced based in the school, from a similar methodology on the pitch as well. So yeah, it's fascinating to work here. It's exciting to work here. I wouldn't call it work. I get to go in every day, and it's been a thrill so far for me. A lot of people, a lot of clubs, try to do that. Like it's alignment's probably the most used word for football leadership at the minute, but they struggle in that there. And it's been consistent success there. So why do you think people struggle with it? What challenges do you think that some clubs get wrong and you guys stay on track? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say we stay on track. I say that we work probably harder to keep on track than anybody. I mean, I think it's really important for us if we are going to push all of our our cards in and go right, we're all in on youth development that we are aligned. That's incredibly difficult on a daily basis. You have to make sure that the coach profiles of the people that are coming into the environment are open minded enough. So for example, I come in this time last year. I couldn't come in with my own Pete McDonald FC methodology and say, right, this is the way I want to do things. And I just wouldn't be around very long. So you have to have a coaching staff that's curious and they're open to change and development of the methodology that's preceded them. You have to have a first team staff and a second team staff that are willing to play young players and to take a chance, which can be difficult. And it poses its challenges in many different ways. They have to be willing to play young players. And we have to be willing to have a reserve team that's of a low average age. They all come together with challenges that you talk about alignment. And you say, you think, how does everyone stay aligned on a daily basis? Well, we have that consistent language in our methodology. When you look at a Philadelphia Union team play, it should look similar. That's not to say we don't respect the individuals within the system and within the game model. I think that's probably a misnomer of having a linear system is that you have these profiles, which we do, that the players have to fit into these profiles. I think having worked here for a year now, it's clear that we respect individuals inside that, inside the model. But there are also some players who need to play a role that they need to be role players to be successful or to be professional players. So it's that dance between being aligned and being uniform, but also respecting the individuals. A good player might be a good player, but how does it fit in the system that's as linear as ours? It's so interesting. I always feel as if the more I go down the development pathway, like researching it and looking at it, I almost think that there's 10 more pros on this Pandora's box. It's so complex and the balancing act, and we'll talk, I want to get your opinion or your insight on a few of these balancing acts. The first one there, you kind of hint the doors about the team over the individual. And it's always, I just think as you go through even coach education, at any level, it's about kind of upskilling yourself to date with a collective. But then when you get so skilled that you're working at an MLS academy, I'm wondering how you balance them being almost collective focused and then having that focus on the individual. I mean, how do you balance that? Yeah, well, a wise man once told me that teams don't make debuts. So, you know, the individuals will be the one that makes the debuts inside the team. So, but in order for the player to make a debut at our football club, they have to look like a Philadelphia Union left back or Philadelphia Union center forward. So there are certain characteristics and traits that those players have got to exude before they move up to the next level. So, it's really important that in my environment as a transfer, as I'm transitioning players from, you know, academy football into professional football, second team football, and first team football is, yeah, we do pay attention to individuals. And how we structure that is really important at the under 18 age group. It's probably similar importance. But, you know, the details are different when you go down in the younger age groups. But from an under 18 coach point of view, we will be judged on the players who break into the first team and who can supply the first team with meaningful minutes. That's the bottom line. Now, along with that, as long as our team is playing in a Philadelphia Union way, we will have college coaches coming to watch this because of the professionalism and because of the structure and the detail that we go into with the players that might not be on a pro pathway. They're very short after players. So, I don't know if that's answering the question. You know, it's really important that the team is the vehicle to drive the individual development. And in the individuals, we could take, you know, Gary Kearney, we could take Pete McDonald, we could take another one or two individuals and they'll all have to be tailored towards their positional profile within IDPs, within weight rooms IDPs. Whatever that is, it's now we start getting into the detail of how to push that individual from an academy player to a professional player. The flexibility piece down around the position, someone that may enter the first team or the reserve team and play in a different role, is there a way to prepare that to move them a little bit more or does that dynamic create a headache at the younger age groups? No, I literally had a conversation with a lad that when I was leaving the school that this weekend we're going to start to move him from a player who's played inside a little bit more to a player. It's going to potentially play outside because, you know, these are all decisions that are made at a higher level where we see some characteristics in him that he might stand a better chance of being a pro if he plays as a right back in our system. So, this is a player who's been in the system for two, three years. So, you know, these conversations are constantly happening and I think what's the important part of it is, is if a player is willing to do, you know, what it takes to be a pro and sometimes it can be a light bulb moment for a player where, you know, they haven't had an opportunity to play this position or to have been told by their parents that this is your, you know, your central midfield player. Why would you want to play as a right back? But we've had players who've come in as strikers and now they're, you know, probably three on the number three on the depth chart as a left back, for example, at the first team level. So, it's, I think it's really important to point out that to players and to families and educate them around, yeah, our system is uniform from top to bottom, but if you're brought in as, you know, a certain player in the system, then you may be asked to be here because this is your best opportunity to make it as a pro and to have that flexibility and adaptability. Yeah, it's a tough one to navigate because sometimes just to go back to your point before is sometimes the false perception of a linear system is that, again, it's IACS 1993 where you play the same system the whole way through, but I'm guessing that because today's football is tactically so flexible at the highest level, the players have to meet that demand. So flexibility would probably be a part of your player profiles as well. Yeah, it is. And I think again, it's the definition of that per role. Maybe somebody needs to be a role player and the best role player is like a number eight and the outside of a diamond in our system. You have to play this role really well if you're going to make it as a pro or, you know, you're a center forward, but if you play the role of a left back really well because of the characteristics of our outside backs, our white players, we asked them to get into the system more often than any other player. Maybe you have been a winger in a different, you know, when we were scouting you in a 4-3-3 for your local club, but now you're, now we're moving you into a left back position because that's where you stand the best opportunity to be in a pro. Yeah, I mean flexibility is always going to be important. And I think that is the misnomer about, you know, rigid systems like ours. Okay, why would everybody play 4-4-2 from 13s down, don't you want to have different types of players so that they can be adaptable? Yeah, yes, but then your methodology and the way you talk to players changes from age to age, and you may not be able to accelerate a role player or a creative player quicker as quickly as you'd like to. So when you go all in and in the way we've done it, I mean, that linearity makes sense. Yeah, supply and demand as well is an interesting concept because there's a lot of talk about about the scarcity in the US for our player development model, are we overcoached, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think there's a scarcity of attacking player or a number nine per se at the youth levels when they're coming up? Yeah, and I would have, you know, I would have always had that, you know, grumbled Irishman, high school opinion of, you know, why we always ask in the center forward to come into feet, you know, in 4-3-3, no one runs behind anymore. I think there is a scarcity of that, of that type of player. So moving into a, you know, a system where 4-4-2, like, I love it because, you know, growing up in the Jack Charlton era, you know, I argue with the German guys here all the time, and I said, we invented gig impression of what Richard Ireland did in the 90s or late 80s. But yeah, I think that supplying the man is a real important thing too, because you might be a good football player in our system, but you might be a center midfield player, and you look at it, and you go as well, there's a couple of home runs above me here, you know, they're getting good minutes, and there's maybe on 3-4 on the depth chart, and that's real. And maybe you have good enough qualities to be a right-back, and you like to get in high up the pitch. Like, that is the flexibility in our system, and we are able to, as a player goes through his development trajectory, we are able to move players around positions, so we see, you know, where is the best trajectory for this individual to be a professional footballer. And of course, maybe it's not a Philadelphia Union, but maybe they can have enough minutes to go somewhere else. That's also an important part of it too. Hello, coaches, we'll take a quick break here. We have asked, and you have delivered a couple of months ago, we said, we wanted to get to 50,000, 100,000 YouTube subscribers. We are close to 45, it's our biggest increase so far. As promised, the more subscribers and the more followers, the more content we're able to put out, so we are putting more onto the Modern Soccer Coach website, and we've also did the webinar last week on midfield rotations, which is available for free. If you missed it, you can get it on the link below, midfield rotations, full one-hour webinar for free. We couldn't do it without your help, so we really, really appreciate everyone who subscribes. If you haven't already, please do. And if you've already subscribed, please like, please share, please leave ratings. It all gathers momentum and works in our favour with a good old algorithm, so we can get more views, more content, more free stuff for the coaching community. Thank you so much, ModernSoccerCoach.com. If you want to go over there and catch up on all the free resources, we really, really appreciate your help. Back to Peter, thank you. Potential challenge is the player starts to move up the pathway, psychologically. I'm sure the dynamics are around out there, and the underneath there, now fastened with that age group that you're working at, where they're literally moving from youth football to senior football, and you hear this a lot, especially college players. I'm sure you heard it yourself, that it's become a job, and literally it's, but then you listen to Ronaldo a couple weeks ago, and even at 40, near 40 years of age, hunger, desire. I mean, how do you support, but then deal with the reality of football, that there's got to be a mentality aspect to support through? Yeah, it's been an interesting summer for me to deal with, because obviously with the success we had last year, under 17s at the Football Club, we had 13 players from that team training with Union 2 for the summer. So they had probably the first summer in their life that they have two weeks off, so the club gives them two weeks off versus the whole summer off, and they bring 13 players back in to train with their Union 2 environment. So really good for those players, but then as a bystander, and as someone who has a responsibility for these players, it's really interesting to see how some of them might hit a wall, because this is the first time they've worked as hard before. So no GPS monitor will track that, you might be able to gauge fatigue and equate to chronic load, and those things that conversations and someone's face, and if they're tired going into a friendly match, and these are all pieces where you still can't achieve that relationship with how a player is doing without having a conversation. And with the school being where it is, and with the opportunity for these lads to go to training, and then go to school, we're now back in the school where I can have individual conversations with players, they have flex time, they call it, I feel like they have flex time all the time, but they have flex time where we can grab the players, me and an assistant coach, and sometimes just talking about nothing other than like, are they missing home, is the work hard, how you're sleeping, is the missus keeping them up, texting all like whatever it is, it's just like there's an element of it being hard work, but I think the school being so close by allows us to still foster the relationship of how these young lads are doing. And also the school beings nearby that you know that, okay, even if I am tired, I've got to go and play football for a while, but then I go to school at my mates and it's, I don't know, I don't know many, that seems to me is like if you had to go and leave the facility, go to a different school, you know, then drive a couple hours in every day, I think that is probably a taxing part of club football, but these guys have, you know, a real privilege with the school being so close to have a shower, probably listen to some music in the in the dressing room and then they're into school together for a few hours and then a training in the afternoon again on certain days. But just to go back to the point of managing, managing players moving through that transition, I think it doesn't change from the way I used to talk to college players or club players anywhere in business, you have to develop some type of trust between coach and player that like they can share with you, they're not sleeping well or they, and then I, and then because we're so cohesive at the club, from a coach's point of view, I can share that with the Academy director or the second team coach and the player's not going to be punished or anything. So yeah, it's, it's been, I can see the players who have gone in and taken off and right now they're they're taken off on a trajectory that's, they think they're on top of the world and maybe something's coming and then players goes in for three or four weeks, doesn't do as well as they thought they would and they crashed. So the gamut is in front of you as an under 18s coach. But, but generally we have a good relationship with the players that they're open enough to to be able to tell you if they're, if they're struggling and we have a couple that, you know, you keep an eye on and we have great support in the school. We have, you know, mental wellness coaches in the school, we have two of them now that are connected to the school, but are also working with us closely as coaches. What do you see, what conversations have you had, you know, how much have they opened up to you, how do you know if they're sleeping well, all of these things that the support is, is quite unique for these players now. Yeah, it sounds like a community within a community that helps. Yeah, it is and I think that, that if we're going to promote players from within and we're going to again go all in on youth development here, the community aspect of, of player care is really important because, you know, happy player will be a player who accelerates a little bit quicker and might be a player who can then take the fact that he might have to sign the first team contract and he doesn't see minutes for quite a while. Like how is that? So, so as a youth team coach, can we structure that thinking from ahead of time? Can we have them, you know, be a, you know, future self-authoring or whatever you want to call us? Can you, like we do a lot of that in our under-18 group, we'll have, you know, right, right to your future self that's just been injured, or right to your future self that, that hasn't got the contract and your mates got a contract. And so many, the answers that we get back are quite fascinating. They're quite deep, which is a cool part. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. It doesn't surprise me, the answers are quite deep. When you ask questions to players and give them some space, you get some cool stuff. Yeah, really cool stuff. And now, you know, we use apps and things like that, and we give them a little bit of, you know, writing space. And when they know they're not having to present to their peers, some of this stuff is really interesting, you know. And yeah, I think that's probably the part for me that's gone through all of my coaching, but has had the most impact that even at this level is that human aspect of it. It doesn't change. Yeah, I saw a quote from Brendan Rogers, it was along the lines of players that I have more information, but with more information that you think that it's all solutions, but it's more problems as well for them. And when you're talking, I'm thinking, I never thought of the injury problem, you're probably going to, because you're going from training to adults, the body's probably going to take a transitional part of it in and out of teams. So they're coming from being a star at under 15, 16, play and time role as statistics. So imagine there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of bumps where players could ask questions of themselves. Yeah. And right now I'm dealing with our staff is dealing with that and the co-face, because we're the under 18 group, right, the under 18 coaching staff. And 11 of our players right now are training with Union 2. So on a Thursday, they're told they're either playing, staying with Union 2 for their game time or they're coming into the 18. So, you know, and if they're not doing well, even though the 18 is a high level, we have to manage that expectation. And now they're expected to be top one too. So there is a lot of expectation in that. And so it's constant, it's conversations all the time. And it's scripting performances, you know, again, it's like, tell me what your best performance was, okay, right now you've had a bad three weeks at Union 2 level. Tell me what your best performance was last season. And let's revisit those actions one, two, three. So we keep it really, really small and achievable in a 45 minute period that, you know, that they might have, they might not have an opportunity to play a second half. Because again, moving from the club environment, whereas at before, not another playing time is guaranteed, even if you are moving down from Union 2. So there's a lot that these lads have to deal with, which we have to meet head on, otherwise there's going to be too many problems if we don't. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic. There was an article yesterday on, on the business insider about business leaders today are just still, still disconnected from the young workforce is still a big, big issue. Jen, I don't even know what we're Gen Z here, we're still in Gen Z. So in your opinion, in your experience, has it changed in 10 years with that generational or what areas do you think have changed the most? Yeah, it has. And I so much since coming here, like for better or for worse, the under 17 team we had last year was like a celebrity team. Like, you know, I couldn't believe the amount of followers some of these, these guys had on, on Instagram. And so you're managing that aspect of it, you're managing the fact that there are, they think of themselves as a brand. And you know, they want to be the goal score, but you still, they, you know, the contribution to the, like, it's a, like, that dance is, is, is constant. They're seeing first team players doing similar. So things have got very brand individualized in this, in this generation. But how do you, I think we can just, we can buy a home bucket and we can go, you know, times of change and football's gone or whatever, or we can, or we can embrace the fact that, you know, maybe 11 brands coming together on a game day for a tournament for G.A. Cup is better than, you know, you know, individual brands at a different football club. So a collective group of Philadelphia union players is better than any group of individual superstars, right? Another club might go out and buy X amount of players for 6 million, 8 million, 9 million, 4 million, we'll push our youth in and we'll have the message that a collective group of you guys can, can beat any group of individual superstars. So I think that that's really important that we allow the branding to happen and we don't stand in the way of that. But, you know, we have some obviously rules and regulations around social media use of training sessions and all that type of stuff. But these lads are brands now and sometimes it works out fine, but sometimes it builds an ego that they think that they're better than they are. And again, you have to meet that head on with conversations. But it's changed and it's individualized now. It's hard to build club spirit and team spirit, you know, that's one thing. I've had loads of conversations with people. How do you build team spirit and how do you build club spirit? It has to be constant banging on the drum, but you have to respect the individual again. You know, they're a brand, they want to know what can I get from this. But we do a good job here for the F Union and it's driven by Jim at the top of, you know, we're collective and if we're collective and we're blue color and we work harder than you, we'll beat the superstars of the world. And that has to be another part of the consistency throughout the club. Yeah, yeah, I didn't even look or think about the brand aspect that you said there. But I mean, that's what is it two weeks since Raheem Sterling set a press release out before, I mean, every young player sees that, right? And then all of a sudden, these things become normal really, really fast. Yeah, and I think with the growth of the last next, I mean, that the first showcase of the year we're going to go to is called MLS Next Fest. Every, every scout in Europe is there. Every scout in Europe is there. And some players, they'll tell you straight up is like, yeah, I've got five European clubs coming to look at me and they're going to make a decision, you know, potentially on whether I go on trial or whatever. So you're dealing with that and then the agents are in the mix for some players who have said, I'm not going to go down the college route. I have an agent. So yeah, all of those come out yet and are coming up more and more. I think what we have a job to do too is to educate the parents around proper agents, branding, again, if social media use is used improperly, it could ruin a player's career very quickly versus like, you've got all these talents in the world, but you know, you post this picture or story and now it's over. So all of these are all the new nuances that have developed with the modern player. And, you know, we can't sit on the high stool again and go out. Football's changed and we, you know, the game's gone. You just have to jump with it. Yeah, but the modern player plus the modern coach is no longer about just going out and running a train session because you must spend hours talking about these things with your staff. Yeah, it frustrates the day the daylights out of some, to be honest. You know, they just want to have a really rigid, you know, not rigid, but like a perfect training session. And why is he doing this? Why is he doing a TikTok after the, you know, like, genuinely, like these lads will do a TikTok on the bench after, you know, after some training sessions. And, you know, you could keep that away or you could, what's the important things you're going to focus on? You know, how much of the pieces, you know, we have this club that's consistent the whole way through. We have standards. If the individual, that individual person is moving to a different, you know, stratosphere socially than you are. And like that just, that's just a piece of the noise, as long as it's not in the middle of training. It's just a piece of the noise that you have to deal with nowadays. But yeah, it's, it's, there's talk around it. But, you know, again, I think the club, again, we're aligned in our standards. There are new guidelines that are brought in socially every year. And we have departments in front of us that take care of that. And align with us. So it's not, we're not left to create the rules. Yeah, pretty much so. Well, let me ask you one rule and then I'll move on, but I'm fascinated by this because I could, I could talk about this all day, pregame. Because people have talked about this there and even Rooney's, Rooney's talked about it with Ferdinand, about how it's changed and how playlists and music now connect the phones and phones are connecting the people and faced him before games. You're an Ira from a match. What's your expectations with the team or how do you manage that or navigate around that there? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of different factors, again, MLS next, most of the time we have a locker room, especially if we're at home. And the locker room is the lads. I don't go like the same thing in the morning. It's really good. It's the same type of culture we would have had growing up. It's like, you know, your dress room should be somewhere you spend with your mates and have memories. For the most part, there's music. I don't listen to some of it. And if they go, if they bring that music out onto the pitch, it has to be the non explicit version. And I'll go in and speak for five minutes because the work is done and we might just have to talk about the values of Philadelphia Union. And before we leave here, the threshold of the door that, you know, we start the game and all those bits and pieces that you can go through before a game to try and get lads up. But then there's the tournaments and players go to a bus from the hotel to the tournament and pitch and they're all like I am right now. And we had an incident where, you know, again, I'm looking at this societal change that's going on and it's individual and it's their own music. And then at Jacob last year, they walked out onto the pitch to warm up with their, so all individuals, different individual things. So let that go for a little bit, but then collectively as a club, and this is again from the top down, they wanted that warm up to be collective. So once the half hour to get ready to warm up on the pitch starts, then we're collective, we're a cohesive unit, which is totally, the players, you know, again, you give a little to take a little, you know, they have to have that little bit of freedom inside the system. And so they still find joy from the experience. And then once you're straight up with them, and you're that, you probably get more out of the player too by having, letting them have a little bit more. And then, you know, collectively, right half our guys were collective and you put on one central playlist and, well, yeah, it's music, it's, it's, you know, I don't know if Roy King had loved everything that goes on before, before kickoff nowadays, but, you know, it's changed. That's probably why he's not there, right? That's why it could be. It could be. It could be. It could be. You took them to a jujitsu practice. It's hard to get them ears like I did. Yeah, look, a couple of things. You want them to see my, my world. I was new last year, a new staff member, and you want them to, they're so, I won't say so, I don't, but they go to football, they go to the school, they're with each other all the time, they go back home, they go to football, they go to, I just wanted to bring them into something that was completely left field. That's is the way I do this, because it takes me away from the, the hustle bustle of football. I have different colleagues on the maths than I do in, in the, in the club. And I wanted them to experience, you know, a slice of my life, but also when we brought them in there and physically match them up against each other, how difficult an individual battle is and how if you get to a situation where you have to tap, then you can tap and then it's all right, you can just go again, but you might need to work harder the next time. So just, there's, there's so many subliminal messages from the marsh, from martial arts itself, the respect of it, how, you know, by the time they finished a class, we're starting and how the, the people come in and off the street would respect each other and they would talk to each other. I think when you are together for so long, maybe it gets group thinking and you don't see the outside world as like this real thing, but like, it was really interesting bringing them to jujitsu. Some of them are really good at it. And then a couple of them challenged me and the instructors at the end and we wrestled with them. So it's, you know, a great, a great experience with this, but, you know, just to see something different to experience my, my world and what I do and, and a message behind, you know, I'm a bit older, but I'm still competing at, you know, something that's really difficult. I think that was important for them to see and maybe a message can go on from that. But then they could just see how difficult it was as an individual battle, an individual sport. And also the team aspect of the individual support, sports, you know, they saw my team come in afterwards. And that's my jujitsu team. So if I'm, if I'm going against you and you're not at your best, then then I don't get better. My training partners. So loads of messages from us, something different as a team building exercise. And we'll go back. We're going to go back in a couple of weeks. Well, the most interesting thing for me and that there's your, as you said, into your world, like how deep are you in that? Are you you're obviously competing in it? Is it something that's like, is it a hobby or does it go a hobby deeper? Yeah, it's a hobby. It's a hobby at the moment. I'd like to compete. The issue is competing. I don't have it in much control as the competition environment as I do have the training environment. So I tap really, I'm a blue belt, which is, you know, step above a white belt and white belt is a step above getting off the couch. So I don't compete because in competition, you might meet somebody who's gone to, you know, ripple in to win a gold medal, you know, like he might injure you. You don't, you just don't know who you're going up against. Whereas I know all my training partners at the gym, my limbs are too important. I need to go to work in the morning and I can tap early and I can just move on. It's a really, it's, and it's, I do it because it's, it's difficult. It's, it was something brand new. I've never done anything like this before. And as you know, working in football, it can become all consuming. So some, these guys never ask me about football. The guys are on the map, and that's with the girls. You know, they know, they know that I coach football, but you know, they're more interested in training and then, you know, the barbecue that might be happening, you know, it's just a different community, which I think is important to, to get us away from it at times. Love up, love up. You touched on it before about a player with European clubs. And obviously it, it looks like a lot of, well, from both ends, a lot of exports, US players now go into Europe, but also a lot of European clubs, either publicly or quietly, putting US-based scouts around the country. Why do you think the demand so high for US players at the minute, youth level? Yeah. I think there's a couple of factors. I think the talent pool has grown. I think the talent pool has grown to a position where there are a number of players that are of standard or above standard. You just look at the lad, it's just gone from LA Galaxy to Dortmund, and he's gone as a 15 year old and he's playing under 19s. I mean, that's not a PR stunt. There may be aspects of that in it. Why wouldn't you sign somebody who might be, you know, an American who might be as good as Tulasitch, might be as good as the Western McKinney, might be to have that Jersey sales, ticket sales back in the US. It's a whole nother market of 365 million people. So if you're a European club, why not? I would also imagine that, you know, if you scout early enough and often enough that maybe the transfer fees, I don't know this for sure, but the transfer fees might be a little bit cheaper than it might be if you go to go to pluck somebody from Toulouse or pluck somebody from Milan or pluck somebody from Manchester. So I think with those aspects, I think that American players are willing to run, they're athletic, they've got their work ethic. It depends obviously if they're from different cities, but they've got work ethic. And also, there's been a number of players who have proven that they can hang, you know, Poulouseitch, Brandon Aronson, Paxton Aronson from Philadelphia Union, Mark McKenzie, Austin Trustee, you know, you now need a number of hands to count the players from the United States, whereas before it was maybe one or two. So that player Poulouse growing, I think the talent Poulouse is getting better. And it's a real market now to scout early. And maybe you can, again, as well, the European connection of the families, you know, if they have a passport at 16, they can go, can you get that done cheaper than maybe somebody who's in the market or has been scouted already by one of the bigger clubs? Interesting. I just saw, and I don't know about financial fair play, but only saw yesterday that they're going to have to commercially, now you have to generate more income. So would you say there makes sense that if you get a US player that's going to crack through, you might open up a market over here for... Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, if they work, then you're going to sell a lot of jerseys. You know, you go back, you see the US tours starting again for the in pre-season, you know, yeah, it makes sense. What did your time in college, always interested in speaking to coaches now at the professional level who have been in college and saying like, what was the big takeaway that you, that you kind of, in your day-to-day at the minute, did you ever kind of reflect in the moment and say, something like a college coach who maybe talked about this before? What did you take from college that shaped you today? Yeah, I think, I think I was really looking to work in college because I can, I can talk to the players who might not be on a pro pathway or might be like just on the verge of a pro pathway about, you know, the qualities of a college career and, you know, being an impact college player and coming back to Philadelphia Union in that, in that fashion, if that's what, excuse me, what they want. I think the time management piece of it too is like student athletes. You know, we, we're, we're day-to-day with student athletes in the school now. I think their time management is probably easy enough to manage, you know, from a high school aspect, but being able to go, okay, you know, these are, these are the classes I want to take in your one, you know, two, three, is like how are you going to match that with the preseason, with fall season, with testing, with, you know, how are you going to match not playing in your fall season and you, you know, you get two minutes, two or three minutes in springs. All of those factors, I think, is, you know, for those college-bound players, I think is, is something that I can, I can talk about pretty easily. And as well as that being an assistant coach at college, right, I wasn't a head coach, so understanding the challenges of being an assistant coach and the desire for me to grow as an assistant coach. And, you know, I had great mentors, I continued to have great mentors, and how did that affect my trajectory? And if I'm maybe overlooking some qualities of, of an assistant, why am I doing that? I think one of my biggest passions as well is seeing assistant coaches grow and, you know, take their own team at some stage. And I think, like, having worked as an assistant coach, that's probably where that's come from, too. You know, to, to, to, to, at one stage getting your, your own, your own program, be it at a club or whatever. I think those, those steps, you can't skip them. You know, I think it's really important to have, you know, was at Hudson University a small division three school. I was at University of Maine on the women's side. They're all steps that you can't skip. You might not have, like, poignant moments, but they all shape you to, to deal with individuals better maybe. Final, final couple for you. The French course talked a little bit about it before we started recording, but yeah, I've heard it's intense. I've heard it's tough. I've heard they don't mess around. So you've, you've done a year and a half. How's it shaped you? Yeah, I've finished finally last Friday. Congrats. Yeah, thanks very much. Before you start, so people who do any single court, any, any course today say, really challenged me, pushed me outside the comfort. So, but it feels as if this actually does. It does. It does. It does. And they, and talk about individual within the collective. The French course, they individualized their dialogue with the, the coach does a look at the, the, the personal profile of the coach. They get, they get down into the nitty-gritty of who you are and, and they, and they test that. So, um, and that part then in the collective of the, the guys and girls that are in the trenches with you, you worked late into the night on, on debriefs. You have to debrief your peers twice a week for many of the weeks that were there. So there's a traffic light system, red light, amber light, green light. So a couple of times I've had to want to make good mates on the course, I've had to give them a red light because of this, this and this. And you have to have a detailed reason why and show in a quality presentation, the story behind you, you make a decision how you evaluate the trainer session, what suggestions you would give. So it doesn't just push you and, and stretch you met, you know, with the methodology. I think it stretches your, your character and how, and, and thus how you're going to manage others. You know, know thyself. If you don't know thyself, then how do you know other people? So 18 months of, I won't call it anything other than, you know, stretching. We all didn't make it. So some coaches didn't make it for, for various reasons. So we started out for 25 minutes, 22. But for me, it was a course that really honed in on what I've been curious about for many years, which is methodology around cues and triggers. But it's not just the coaching, right? So it's not just how to set your team up or how to develop the individual inside the collective. It's also about how to present a technical project that might get you a job at your next football club and how to do that in a storied fashion. So here's where I was, here's where I want to go to. Here's the pieces in the middle. They really push you and they grade you on everything here. And then in the times where you think, all right, I've got this, they'll poke something else at you, or they'll maybe make a remark in the room that'll make you stand up and go, you know, it's, they have, they have a way, whether it's a French thing or they've just done it for so long, this is the fifth iteration of it. They have a way of making sure that right till the last day of the Friday that we finished that you're a little bit on the edge of your seat. And that's a good thing. I think it's whether it's healthy over an 18 month stretch, I don't know. We had a lot of sleepless nights where we needed assignments done and deadlines met, but ultimately when this is all it said and done, the connections that you meet, the fact that you're in the trenches with other people that are in a similar vein of you, I was probably one of the only people that's ever been on the course that was asked to repeat a session three times, one after another after another, because my principal, they were just pushing and pushing and pushing and going, no more, I want to see more, I want to see more. And in those moments, do you crumble under pressure or do you go, I don't see ending here, but I've got to come up with it, or I've got it, maybe you might, and then there'll be very frank with you and say, you know, you aren't prepared, and then you might get a half hour to prepare again and you go, you go, go again. So yeah, it's warts and all. It doesn't hide any, there's no sugarcoat into it. If you've got it, you've earned it. I love that. I think that's really powerful. I was thinking this morning, Tony Anon was on, it must be six years ago, and he was raving about it on the podcast when we first started doing them, and he was saying, same thing, that piece about the personality, about just prodding to try and get, I mean, that's, you don't get that today, and coach education has made huge strides, and obviously you take your coach education very, very seriously. But you think that there's more courses there that give you the participation award than there are that really, you know, deep down have impact you? Yeah, I think it's like sometimes if you go into a restaurant in the US, you know, you're almost out of it before your food's on the table because they want to move in and move you out, and you don't know if they've had the experience. Whereas if you're in a restaurant in Europe and France, you know, if you sit now for two and a half, it's an experience to get your food out. Similar to, I think, with coaching courses, as we have this desire to make football better, we think that numbers and more coaches is the right solution. Now, if those coaches are leaving the coaching education programs with high level of detail and methodology shaped around, again, developing the individual within the collective, the collective must look something like a high level for the individual to come out at a high level. I think that we're missing a trick. We've got maybe coaches walking over each other to get jobs and maybe not having the impact on player development as we want. I can only say that from my experience of the French course and people who have come out of that, it's not for everybody either, and can it become group thinking? Yeah, I think it can, which is why I think, you know, my goal for when I was in it was how am I taking the ideas from this, the structure of the methodology, plus the structure of tournament development, game development, physical preparation. These were all modules, team building, IDP. How do you take a bit from everything so that by the end of it, I can create a better story for myself in the future, whether that's a director, whether that's a coach educator, or just a coach for the players that I'm with. Now, that's every course, but I don't think I've ever been on the course that's given us such nuggets of information in a such a difficult environment that they're not displeased or they're not unhappy if you can't do it and you leave, they're not going to call you and say, you know, please come back. You know, their methodology, their way of doing things is their way of doing things. Now they do adapt to people. It's not always hammer, hammer, hammer. But they want to know who you are. And if you're nervous or shy, or, you know, you don't have the work done, they'll find that out and they'll try and guide you to something that's better at the end of it. And I think that's good from a person development point of view and something I'm thankful for doing it, even though sometimes I'd bang my head against and the poor Mrs. here has probably gone, don't ever do another coach education module during your life. I'm guessing if there's a big ego or two in there as well, they're going to they're going to chip away at it. Yeah, and I believe in the past that that's been an issue. We have, you know, obviously, there's egos in every group and it's how that how they all interact in the environment. And it's because it's the fifth iteration of it. So stories have got out about what not to do, what to do. So, you know, if it's number one, EFCL1, which I believe was an interest in affair, it's probably a little different than EFCL5 or now six. I would imagine they're going to have six at the start of next year. So. Brilliant. Brilliant. All right, last one for you. You mentioned earlier about the time that, you know, getting the time to do the coach education balance and everything. How do you manage to do the jujitsu, the self development, the professional world? Yeah. Yeah, I've been in some type of formal education since 2019. Like I've gone from masters to academy director to EFCL. So that's been challenging. You know, relationship wise, I have to be upfront and honest. That's a difficult part of what we do. I don't know if it's really as healthy as people would see. Yeah, I'm dedicated to learning more. But I think sometimes in football, we think we, you know, whether it's imposter syndrome or something that we have to do more so I can stay where you stay where you are. And I think I've had a number of conversations with colleagues that they say, well, I don't have an A license or I have an A license person. I don't have an elite elite USA or I don't have a pro license. You know, so it's like, when does this become a situation where it's been too much? Now I've loved every minute. I did a masters at the University of Maine while I was coaching and I had a really good mentor there who taught me a lot about sports science and a lot about the nonsense of sports science that I have to forget about. So I'm able to have conversations with my performance coach. Now, that's really easy to decipher between the two of us and we come to a middle ground. The Academy director of course is maybe a trajectory that I'd like to go on. So and the AFCL has grown my coaching self completely. So I don't regret any of it, but it's a lot. So I definitely will be taking a little bit of a break for a while now. I did keep up jujitsu in the middle of all of this. So Mondays, Friday, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, I still go and do my hour there. But that's my, you know, I don't lift too many ways. I don't go out running. That's that bores me. So that's my exercise. That's my yoga or whatever. I go and do that and that's my hour to myself. So I kind of need that in the midst of all of the other stuff that's going on. But I think from a, from a life point of view and from a cognitive point of view to be able to allow all of that information over the last five, you know, five, six years now just to set lin and maybe I'm going to enjoy focusing on the under 18 team Philadelphia Union, helping players move, helping staff get better and then see what see what happens after that. But I'm looking forward to a time now where I'm not sitting on the couch thinking I've got an assignment due for, you know, on a principle of play. So I've enjoyed it. And I wouldn't, again, I would say don't skip the steps and, you know, education is really important. But I think there's a wider conversation to have amongst coaches about how much do we, you know, how much is needed to be someone who can connect with young players and to post them in the right direction. Do we need to continue to say that you have to have this, this and this and this before you can get in the door? It's hard. It's difficult. Hey, thank you so much. This was unbelievable. Thank you. Well, my pleasure guys. Good, good crack. Good, good chatting about it.