Why Kelly Gray Chose MLS Over Europe — And What’s Wrong With Youth Soccer

Welcome to Offside in the Bay. I'm Claudine Wong, journalist and news anchor. And I'm Alex Lubben, former professional player, coach and lifelong fan. And this is a podcast about soccer. Everything from the World Cup to youth soccer and recruiting. We're also going to have one-on-ones with players and coaches and the movers and shakers in the soccer world. This is Offside in the Bay, to the pitch and beyond. Hello and welcome. We're back and our guest today is Mr. Kelly Gray, a Bay Area native who's spent pretty much his entire life in soccer. Kelly grew up in Palo Alto. He went on to play eight seasons in the MLS, including two stints for the San Jose Earthquakes. He's won the Supporters' Shield with the Quakes in 2005 and an MLS Cup with the Houston Dynamo in 2006. Today, Kelly is the founder of Cinch Sports, a youth sports management company. It's focused on bringing the fun back into youth sports. Fun? The fun, don't forget that. He's also a long-time coach and commentator, giving him a unique perspective on the game from the professional level all the way down to the youth sidelines welcome sir happy to be here all the way down to the babies who are just starting out thanks for being here so we talk a lot about soccer um you know we have and then here we do we talk about everything from all the way down from the youth soccer up to the dream that you lived sure but let's start with kind of i mean bay area kid growing up yeah playing soccer which wasn't you know the sport everyone played yeah i mean i think look i've asked my parents this and they're like look you're an active kid so i played every single sport under the sun and soccer was just one where you're kind of engaged the entire time and whose idea was it for you to play do you remember i don't even know i want to get you out the house huh yeah it was they just you have a lot of energy go outside run around you know and um and i've got two younger brothers as well so you can imagine yeah parents are like okay we need to do something with these kids you're gonna break something in the house yeah but um yeah you know so so growing up it was play soccer it's kind of what you do and then you got your baseball season and then um you kind of you know flip-flop spring back then you could do three sports and it wasn't like a killer like i feel like it's now it is impossible frowned upon which is wrong but um but yeah it was uh probably financially possible but then as well i mean i think i think the maximum cost of soccer at that time was like 200 a year like what you know that's crazy and i'm sure people complained they were like what this is crazy um i i always like to ask this when did you know you you were good oh that's that's a good question so um i knew i was good the first time when i was like 11 and 12 uh okay i played that was my second season playing like competitive soccer and i played on this ridiculously good team from from Los Gatos that was my hometown and that was like where you know we all my friends played and so we joined this team and we ended up winning state cup at under 12s which is like back then state cup winning state cup was like a big thing um and I was I was good and I remember thinking like okay I'm I'm good at this game I really enjoy this uh over the next like three or four years I was not good it took that's interesting it took like you know I had this dip and then it wasn't until I was 17 again that I was like nope I'm better than everybody was it do you think it's because you were growing do you think it was because you know because that dip sometimes if if a kid has a dip now I think you started with winning and winning is always fun so that helped I'm sure yeah you started with winning I mean I think uh I wasn't I wasn't as developed as a lot of the other players um I was still you know fairly short and skinny um and and I think that played a little bit of a role but I was always fast um I think that it's just one of those those times where people develop at different times. And so while I had, uh, you know, I wasn't a starter on my club team for a while and, but I still really enjoyed everything. And then what I learned was I knew how to, I knew how to work really hard. And, um, so I kind of doubled down on the things that I could control and, um, you know, making sure that I was the most fit person on the team hitting the weight room. And a lot of it was just enjoyment for me. And then, um, the amount of time I spent outside of practice with a ball, uh, with friends messing around tons and tons of pickup games um just going to the field and just just hitting long balls and what motivated you to go and do all that stuff to get better it was so much fun i just i just loved it and i also recognized from like the the work perspective i recognized that uh if i was more fit than everybody on the field it was way more fun everybody was like super tired so the last 30 minutes of the game i'm still flying and i feel great and i was finding success uh through that piece of it did you have good coaches i had great coaches yeah um local some local guys um paul bravo was like my first uh coach my basically my first competitive coach um and so cool for me because you know he grew up around here he played for the clash and you know his career is incredible right um so for for me to kind of be able to like have that as like almost like a mentor somebody to like look up to and and and uh emulate in a lot of ways um was great and then when he he had to stop coaching our club team because the Clash started and he was gonna be a superstar there um Dave Gold came and took over our team and Dave I thought was a fantastic coach um so much fun brought it brought a real a real intensity to all the training sessions but also a uh a sense of enjoyment too there's a lot of joking around but there was you had this mentality of you you could joke around as long as the work was being done you could have both yeah and it was yeah you could and so that set the tone for me uh in my youth career certainly so you're 17 and you're like oh wait I'm pretty good at this game in fact I think I'm better than than some of these other guys out here then what what then how does the dream formulate and how do the goals formulate from there yeah so it's funny because I remember I remember being on a field in Lodi and it was like the specific moment that I I walked out in the field and I was like I just feel bad for the other team because they they think that they're going to be able to stop me and i just know that they're not gonna be able to stop me and it sounds cocky to say it right but you know all of this is so much about the self-confidence and the self-belief and so many kids these days don't have that um but i remember that moment and as soon as i kind of like grasped that uh it really transformed me as a player you kind of knew you were ready for the next level but i knew i was ready for the next level and then um i was playing for the Cal North State team we had gone up to Portland to play in a friendship cup uh and University of Portland coach Clive Charles uh was there scouting and um so after that tournament um he got in touch with me or however you're supposed to do it those days yeah uh you know talk to my coach and then whatever um and so he had come down and watched me a few other times and uh i'd say i was lucky enough to get to play for him at University of Portland and he'd talk about biggest influence in my life outside of my parents Clive Charles without a without a question what do you why do you think that is like what what magic did he bring because i mean as a coach like now right like you you can do all these things but you have to connect yeah yeah and so he coached the men's and the women's programs which i think gave me a really unique perspective into people and personalities um he he understood what his what his job was and it was not to win games it was to build people develop people and uh he had said to me when he was recruiting me you know look if i want to win a national championship i'll just go get a bunch of foreigners and we'll win a national championship he's like that's not what it's about for me um he's like what's your goal i said i want to play professional soccer he said i can make you play professional soccer and i was kind of sold you know obviously coaches will say things yeah but with him with his background at that time he was the Olympic coach for the 2000 Olympics um he had just come off the 98 World Cup uh as the assistant coach with uh with the U.S. team um so like he had the credentials to back up everything that he was saying and it was never about his own ego it was always about you know developing those players and so i had seen him uh you know put Steve Trundle uh in Germany uh he did the same thing with what who was my strike partner Connor Casey ended up putting him uh at Borussia Dortmund like the pros just started churning out at that point you know and and so everything he said he lived up to he did uh but for him i think the bigger piece was just the philosophy of it of like you know the professionalism the respect uh kind of how he saw the game he certainly taught me how to like see the game differently and think about the game differently um and just the culture that he had and did he use his connections within the game to help some of these guys get into these places you think or he just got them to an ability level where they got noticed or he helped kind of open some doors i think it was a little bit of both right i think he had an eye for being able to see things in people that others didn't see and i think i was one of those cases right i was one of nine freshmen coming in my freshman year of college uh i was i think the only one that didn't have national team experience and at that point i hadn't even made the regional team let alone national team sure and he just saw something in me and um and i saw him do that i mean time after time with players and uh and then he would be able to give you those tools you needed to to keep elevating your game you know did you did you have any stumbles when you were there in terms of confidence playing ability just love of the game um yeah I remember my first ever pre-season game we played against UCLA and being the soccer nerd that I grew up being Carlos Bocanegra was on the other team he was playing for UCLA at the time and he was like this national team star for the youth national teams and I remember going to the game and being like oh my god that's Carlos Bocanegra I can't believe this and uh and so I got subbed into the game and I wasn't sure if I was gonna be a center back or a center forward I had kind of gone through preseason as both positions and uh I ended up going in as center forward and you know basically just ran around like an idiot for for a while um and so the next day Clive called me into his office and he's like so I've got good news and I've got bad news he's like bad news is you ran around like an idiot the good news is I can teach you how to run and you have an engine and sure enough from that point on it was like okay we kind of decided I'm gonna play as a striker um so i started doing more of the the attacking drills with team um and we talked about just i think bigger concepts of space and movement on the field and so the next game um was my it's my first actual college game i scored a hat trick in it and the second one i scored a hat trick as well and it was like okay confidence is is flying now and so again i was fortunate enough to play next to Connor Casey who's just one of the greatest players uh ever and i think in both those games he scored hat tricks too so uh that's a good start for the season it was a good start for the season and for the team it's a good launch pad um but that that season was was really good because we did find success um you know i was finding success scoring goals i had definitely had some games where i feel like i should have scored and i didn't and then yeah there's a little bit of confidence dip there too but clive knew me he knew how to handle me and my personality and what i needed at those times sometimes it was to be pushed sometimes it was uh you know to be soft um you know sometimes it was humor and he just knew he just knew how to connect uh with me in order to to push me like that sometimes that's more important than the kind of the tactics the x's and o's that that man management they call it of of players and yeah looking after them means you work perhaps harder for them maybe yeah i mean and i think that that's um you know when i talk about clive one of the biggest things i say is like you're always like a little bit terrified of him but you you just want to impress him all the time right and so you're just you have this like love and this this like you're striving to impress this man and um and he loves you back but he's not going to let you off the hook he's going to hold you accountable and uh it was such an interesting coaching dynamic and in taking it into my own coaching of youth players and things i try and have that same thing and it's it's kind of what i was talking about with dave gold too right it's like look we can joke around we can have fun as long as we're putting in the work yeah and we need to keep pushing that level um so it was definitely kind of had opened my eyes to um this whole this whole next level of connecting with people but also um performance yeah because if someone didn't care about you didn't believe in you as your coach i mean certainly people have had that experience where they're just like this person just didn't think i was any good someone else did but i mean every player's had that yeah yeah and so i i think if you talk about magic sauce of coaching like you have to you have to recruit players you believe in because otherwise they're never going to be what they maybe could be yeah i mean i think uh look you go through a lot of coaches in your in your career and there's nothing more disheartening than that moment that you realize that your coach has kind of given up on you uh and uh thankfully for me clive didn't um He kept pushing me hard and he knew what I was capable of. I wish that he was still around because I certainly could have used him a lot throughout my professional career. How did that launch? So I'd say I was fortunate enough. I actually finally did make the regional team when I was after my freshman year of college. And it was like the last kind of youth thing. And then so we had this regional play day where all the different regions play against each other. and then the u20 national team had just convened um and they were a part of that as well and so the national staff was watching all of those regional games and i was asked to stay over for an extra week with the national team um i don't know how much of that is because i played all that well or that i had had a really good freshman season and they get stats to back it up yeah and so they asked me to stay over um for that week and train with the U20 national team at that time um obviously i was pumped about it was the only thing i'd ever dreamed about doing and i remember the first training session i just felt like i was at home i was like this is where i belong 100 percent this is where i belong and so i don't think i missed a training camp from that point on and then we went through to uh the U20 World Cup in 2001 in Argentina and um and so that was kind of i mean that was like the last stop i'd say before you know basically going pro um going through all the training leading up to the World Cup there was a moment we were sitting we were all sitting in a room uh at in Chula Vista at the Olympic Training Center and Todd Durbin from MLS walks in and essentially was like look we want all of you guys to sign pro contracts with MLS and i was like wait who this is this is a good meeting yeah and uh so that was kind of the moment that i realized like oh this pro thing could like this actually probably happen and then you know we play some international tournaments and then we have european um clubs that are calling and asking and all that so i kind of understood that that was going to be a possibility moving forward um so we go to play the World Cup and it went okay um i played well in it so i felt good about that uh and then and then kind of you have to make these decisions right you have some european teams calling and to be fair i just don't think i was like mature enough to handle going over to a new country not speaking a language just all on my own and so that's partly what led me to uh to sign with MLS and look it was a great decision i i loved my career in MLS um but yeah that that's kind of how that whole thing came about and happened what happens in the MLS is it more like the coach there or the Quakes kind of comes after you or you get signed to the central group and then they draft you to the other teams back then like how was that working how'd you end up at the the franchise you ended up at um so i i signed what was called a project 40 contract So the MLS had this initiative to sign the top 40 prospects that were still in college, so early, to get them playing professionally. And it made sense for me, my goal, I wanted to play in the Olympics and I wanted to keep my development going. And not that I wouldn't have continued developing in college soccer, but I had done pretty well and I wanted to step up to that next level. um so part of what project 40 was was that uh it was nike uh run and they would pay for the remainder of our schooling so that's kind of how i convinced my parents to actually let me sign pro yeah that's nice yeah so um so with that you get these um assurances right i didn't have to make a roster i was guaranteed that i was gonna not count against a roster spot for whatever team so then um you know being on the national team helped because i got a lot of exposure um to you know you have all these pro coaches that are watching and so honestly i was in sicily at the time we had played against the italian u21 team the night before and then the mls draft was the next day i'm sitting around the my computer hitting refresh on mlssoccer.com to find out where mls net or something yeah and uh to find out where i'm getting drafted it was me me kyle martino and brad davis we're all sitting there just hitting refresh trying to figure out where we're going to live now um and so yeah i kind of see the draft picks go through and then see my name picked and then the phone rings and it's you know it was chicago fire and um bob bradley was head coach at the time okay um and uh the administrator just kind of figuring out now it's logistics of all right how do we get you where we are you know and uh to be honest i don't remember i don't remember exactly it i think i may have gone straight away from from there Sicily to where they were in Portugal at the time um in fact I think I did but yeah that was the how that whole thing happened that's good exciting times interesting to see how it works yeah yeah I mean it's kind of funny because like you were how old I was 20 yeah 20 I I kind of just felt like a spectator in it in a way it's like kind of just tell me what I'm supposed to do next you know you'd have been happy to go anywhere right but Chicago a great place to to sign and a manager who obviously was clearly very talented so that's yeah and it was a that was a really really talented group finally got to have Carlos Bocanegra as a teammate instead of me sitting there in all of them um uh but yeah that that team was absolutely incredible uh i had had uh my my national team teammate Demarcus Beasley at the time was playing for chicago as well so that made the transition pretty and this was what three years before Beckham came to the mls and kind of this was blew up the popularity of the league let's see this was 2002 and he came in oh seven okay yeah yeah it's a good timing as well trajectory yeah yeah was it what you thought it would be when you got there oh like yes and no um it's it's just there's this moment where you you realize like oh i've looked up to all these people my entire lives and then and then all of a sudden they become colleagues and it's hard to you know there's that imposter syndrome a bit of like do i really belong here but then but then you get on the field and you realize you do you know and uh again i was pretty lucky my my rookie year i played almost every single game uh it had a had a had a really good season um at that time i was playing center midfield as me and me and Chris Armis and um i know Chris Armis tore his ACL, that's partly why I got my spot so me and Jesse Marsch who Canada's national team coach I know um which was which is funny um but you talk about being put into this locker room with these guys that are I mean just legends of the game at the time and and even more so now um you know I was young and I knew that but also I knew my ability and and then um they saw my ability and so then there was that instant like kind of respect that we had and uh that made me feel definitely like I like I belonged you were just such a kid yeah such a kid when do you think your career peaked oh that's a funny question um god to be to be fair I don't think I hit my peak uh yeah I think 2003 with Chicago we had a really really good team we lost an MLS Cup to the Quakes um we won the Supporters' Shield that year we won Open Cup that year um this team was was absolutely incredible and and I was an integral part of that team I think that was that that year from like 2003 to like 2006 with um the Dynamo I think that was probably like the the highlights of my career um you know those those teams and those play that teams that I was lucky enough to be a part of and those players I got to play with uh I mean we'll go down in history as some of the best teams ever ever in MLS I think um why I say I don't think I ever really hit it was because i think like i found some struggles at that time and and i don't know how much of it was i mean i think it was all mental i think it was like i think there was some of it was burnout. Um, but it was at the end of my career, 2009, I felt like I was playing some of the best soccer of my entire life. And I don't feel like I really got the chance to like finish that out. You know, um, how that whole thing, basically how it all ended was I'd had a disagreement with one of my coaches and I was older now and it's pretty seasoned and, and, uh, and I'm a pretty stubborn person and opinionated person in general. And so I went into the office one day and just we had some words and uh and it was you know i didn't i didn't dress that next game and then i found myself uh with my contract being waived uh you know a week later so and i think part of it was like i said burnout i think at that time i i remember i remember walking to the locker room and not feeling that connection not feeling that desire not feeling that camaraderie with the team what was the frustration that i'm not being picked as often or you just weren't getting on the score sheet as much as you'd like so i was playing all the time um but part of it was there was a big money player who was uh injured and i had put in a lot of work the previous like pre-season you know i i kind of knew that my coach maybe wanted to cut me and i was not going to let that happen or you know so i put in a ton of work uh especially on my fitness um and yeah i came down to this the the player got healthy and then i got taken out of the lineup but i had been playing really well and i would say that i you know i fancied myself a better player than than this big money player and uh so yeah i went into the coach's office and basically have your opinion gave my opinion and look this coach is a very close friend to this day um we have a really really good relationship but so i think at that time you know it made me think about it differently and re-evaluate and you know uh i had gotten married like a year before or something we were back here in san jose and my wife's from here as well and we wanted to start a family and so all of a sudden there started to be these things that seemed better or bigger than this this game that i get to do for a living and so what i did at that time was kind of doubled down i had to finish school thankfully uh you know had the nike to pay for that i ended up finishing my degree at DePaul in Chicago and um and then then there was that time of like okay what now I don't know and so you didn't even try to find another club or no no I had contract offers but at that time we had we were pretty settled here and I'd say my wife wasn't real psyched on the idea of having to move away from like on the road show yeah yeah and so I thought about it but I think i was still in that burnout state and it took me about six months uh seven months maybe of being out of the game to question maybe maybe i should go back and ultimately i didn't i didn't go back um do you ever regret that yeah sometimes i mean i think i probably could have played another four or five years um you know i was lucky i didn't have any like major injuries or anything like that and uh always took care of myself for the most part um but you know the counter to that is still pretty pumped with where my life is at so i can't really it's a challenge that you're a professional athlete all of a sudden you've got to up sticks and move your family and change cities and change environments it's not always as easy as it looks from the outside no and part of it also is that my wife had you know done the road show for a while and we'd go places and we'd be there for six months she'd get a job and then we could trade the next day and it's like so she wanted to have that stability that stability yeah and i don't fault that at all i totally agree with it and that's that played a huge role in in me deciding you know deciding not to take up some of these other contracts um and it's easy to see that the burnout it went away after six months but had you stayed in it it might have started again you know yeah but i'd say like that's you know something that that not a lot of people end up talking about is okay well what's next because here i am at this time i was 28 29 years old i had only dreamed of doing one thing and i did it and it ended. What the hell do you do with the rest of your life? You know? And so I was fortunate enough to be able to take some time off. I ended up taking a complete year of basically doing nothing, um, trying to explore different avenues. I've always been a bit of a tech nerd, obviously growing up here in Silicon Valley, you're kind of in it. Um, so I ended up talking with all sorts of different companies, different roles, um, trying to figure out if that was the, what I wanted to do. And, and that I came away from that thinking, yeah, there's no way in hell I want to do that. So it's good to explore. But so then, you know, you, you kind of go through these philosophical exercises about what's important to me. What do I want to spend my time doing? What are some things maybe I can, you know, what can I do to make some money? What can I do to feel good about my time and where I'm putting that? And ultimately I came down to passion and what am I passionate about? Well, soccer, that's, that's what I'm passionate about. And so then it becomes that puzzle of okay figure it out then how are you gonna how are you gonna do this how you're gonna live here in silicon valley and make a make a business and in soccer you know and that's that's a challenge every single day but um it's also been such a such a fun time you know i've been fortunate enough to be able to do a lot of cool fun things you have the street cred to create it so yeah but you know you realize real real quickly that as soon as you're not on that field nobody remembers who you are that's a hard transition it is and uh you know you don't get to a high level without having somewhat of an ego and that's a real gut punch so you know it's it's something that i end up talking to you know current pros about is hey don't take it personally if people don't know who you are when this game ends uh you know and also plan plan ahead if you if you want to like have a smooth transition out of this game find things that you're passionate about and get started now did you start by getting into coaching yeah so the normal path you know you talk about coaching the babies so my first coaching job host playing career under seven boys and you know you go from talking about super high level strategic tactical to i'm just trying to get these kids to be able to run in a straight line or stand up on two feet Or come back the next day. It's a real baptism of fire, isn't it? But you know what? It was probably the best possible thing from a coaching perspective that I could have done. Because while you have all this knowledge in your head, you have to now break that down all the way to a six-year-old and having to learn how to explain these simple tactics of the game. And so it set a really good foundation for me when it came to being able to connect with players, you know, to articulate what's in my head to a young kid. When did you know you were a good coach? Oh, I don't know if I am a good coach. You got some licenses, but... I've got all the licenses. I've got all that stuff. I haven't coached in a while. Look, for me, it was all about the connection with the players. What you had. And I, yes, and I, I was fortunate. I had this, this group at Los Gatos United. Um, I had taken them from maybe 12 years old up until they went to school. Um, and so the culture of it was just good. We had a really good group of families. Uh, the boys all liked each other a lot. Trainings were intense and hard, but also fun. Um, you know, I would jump in and play often once they got to like a certain age and level. And, and it was, that was like super fun. yeah so I don't know I mean that's just how they listen to you more yeah you know it's the street cred part yeah as a coach being able to demonstrate something and then the kids thinking that they're so much better than you and then they they can't do what you can do or can't do do that yet let's say no it definitely helps you know in the in the cred part so that transitions us into this whole like soccer in the US discussion as well yeah when you see it I mean it sounds like By and large, you had a good experience coming up through the sport. I had a great experience. Yeah. Absolutely great experience. Not everyone we get in this room says that. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's a lot of, like, frustration or disappointment or, you know, whether it's coaches or the system or whatever. Now that you've got some space back from it, and obviously the U.S. soccer system gets analyzed ad nauseum. Sure, sure. Um, and usually open to lots of critique and reasons that we could improve it here in the U S what do you think of it? I think we've lost our way. You know, I, I think that at the end of the day, it's called play for a reason, you know, it's called a game for a reason. Um, I think today it's a job. I think that kids, my own kids, 10 years old, 13 years old, 16 years old. I think it's a job for them. Um, I don't see, I don't see the, the joy, the creativity, the personality, um, that you get or that you used to get. And part of it is, yes, it's a business. I get that. Um, I'm in that business. I know the business very, very well. So I understand that, that piece of it, but too much of the business is dictated by parents. Uh, parents are willing to do anything for their kids, which great and i'm one of those parents uh they won't listen though a lot of times to the logical thing because it's counterintuitive to what they think or what somebody else has told them and and you know my specific example of this is look if you have a club and or you have two clubs okay club a and club b club a is going to be uh training four days a week and it's going to be uh five thousand dollars for the year club b is going to be training two days a week and it's going to be three thousand dollars everybody's going to go play for club a because it's perceived to be better because you're getting more value you get more um more trainings i would argue that club b is actually far better and it's because you don't you don't get to be you know that next level player by structured trainings you know you the the development example that i always use when i talk about this with people is um it's like it's like learning guitar if you have a guitar lesson it's 30 minutes long and if you just do your guitar lesson every week and you do your 30 minutes great you'll get better but just at a slow rate but if you have that if you take that 30 minute guitar lesson and then you go and you spend four hours on your own messing around with the concepts that you learned your growth is going to be exponential kids don't have time to do that these days yeah you can it's like the play has gone out of it right you it's it's so over structured i think it's almost it's become like a chore going to training versus you go to go outside to play football because it's fun you enjoy it that was like oh we've got to go and do yeah yeah and so i think that the direction that it needs to go is much more free play the hard part with that is if now i'm a club and these parents are used to it and i say hey by the way no we're going to go from four days a week down to three days a week or down to two days a week and we're going to have a free play day okay those parents are all leaving and now your business is suffering yeah i mean it's a business pitch right you want to show people that you are giving them value for their money because it's not two hundred dollars anymore to play no and they want to know that they're paying for something more than backyard soccer when backyard soccer might be the actual thing their their player needs the most thing that they need yeah because you could that's i've said this before it's like you can't go you're paying a coach two thousand dollars a month to go train a team and then you turn up to watch you get planned they're not saying anything yeah they're just letting them play five a side which actually wouldn't be the worst thing they could do it's actually because you're like well we've done the coaching courses you've got to go and do you know you're going to work on pressing or you're playing out from the back or whatever it is you your topic is which is good but it's almost if you're doing that you're right four five nights a week and nobody ever gets to play it's a problem i've always looked at it as this as a coach my job is the training sessions right if i have those two training sessions okay i'm going to give my piece then but then come Saturday when they have a game nope my job literally is to sit on the bench let them execute if they're looking at me to make all the decisions for me what are they going to do when i'm not there so i as a coach i would literally sit on the bench with a cup of coffee in my hand and i would let the kids play now i might say something here and there and then at halftime i'll give them my piece but it's their job they have to go and they have to figure out those problems i think that that's frowned upon now because as you said parents are like well i'm paying this guy why isn't he doing this but they don't understand they they already did it this is part of the whole growth process part of it but i don't think it's a unique soccer problem i think it's sports across the board i totally agree with you and i don't know if it happened on purpose you know i i think it was like oh we need an extra training for here because this is a skill you don't you're struggling at so we need someone who's smart about this to to train you and then all of a sudden that's an extra training and an extra training and an extra that could be part of the problem as i think about it it's like the pressure as well i think i look back to being a kid playing soccer most of the soccer i played was when no one was watching other than your friends and I'd say the same there's not parents with chairs right on the line around them and the coaches and I coach myself now I'm doing the same thing so I'm back as a volunteer type coach coaching myself but you find yourself wanting to win for them but also because all these people have come and they're paying you know we're ex we bet they would like it if they won more than they lost right you've been a coach you're on a team and you were losing every week your team's running away if you're winning most weeks everyone's loving it but I think it becomes a pressure on the children a little bit more I think you're right. The kids definitely feel it. Talking with my children, they feel it. They feel that pressure. And it's the pressure to perform. But the problem with that is what that then translates to is not being willing to take chances, not being willing to be creative, to try things on the field, to express their own personality from it. And part of it is because they also haven't really had the chance to do that on their own, you know? And so now they're thrown into this game setting and, you know, you have a coach that's screaming, you got to, you know, they're just going to get the ball, play it back. Because why? Why take the chance of stepping forward? I do. I feel like that when I'm watching soccer, just in professional soccer in general, when the passing becomes, I'm like, somebody be the hero. Try something. Someone try something because no, none of the shots are clean. None of it's an obvious, you know, an obvious thing, but someone has to want it so badly. But it takes, you know, at a professional level, it's different, right? And even the academy level when it's, when it's a funded program, so parents aren't paying, you know, you're still trying to keep parents happy in some ways because they can always take their kids somewhere else. but at a professional level now um if the player feels that comfort feels that that you're like bought in then maybe they have that that freedom but you don't see a lot of a lot of these very free like creative players um you know anymore Sullivan just had what, seventeen, is he 17 now or is he still 16, Calvin Sullivan, did he have a birthday 17, just maybe just turned 17, he's a young youngster The funny thing is, is that, I mean, he just had that goal where he took it and just launched it. I mean, no one's, that's not in anyone's practice playbook. Like, you know, like I'd argue that that comes from pickup. Yes. But you're like, I'm gonna take that from you. You know, when you go out and you're like, I'm better than you. I want to, I'm going to take that from you. And, and the joy that comes from that, like we celebrate it in the moments when we see it. Yeah. And then we don't cultivate it because there's a fear of cultivation. I don't really know what the answer is because I don't know I think there's kind of a couple of things I think like the professional games kind of gone to this more following all the stats the possession stats right how many balls you keep so that's ruined the creativity I think at the professional level I think then there's the other bit you know you bring up is the pay to play but also sort of ruining it as well because they're not just having free play they're both both things are probably not helping with the entertainment aspect of the game pay to play isn't going anywhere there's real costs that come in this game in the United States and not to say it can't be paid for by somebody else but like it's just not likely in a lot of cases right so i kind of put that aside um i think that it just comes down more to like the education that we're giving these parents because i think a lot of the coaches know it uh i think that the directors understand the money aspects of what comes into the club and and why all that is important and they understand the the impact and the hit that they'd take if they say, by the way, we're going to be more of a fun environment, they're going to lose half their people. Because you're not serious about the game. Yeah, but I would argue that what needs to happen is a club just needs to do it. And I think what they'll find over a five-year span is that club will be the most successful club. But the five years is a five... It'll be a rough five years. Yeah. You'll attract the right kind of people. you will lose the wrong kind of people uh but ultimately i think the culture that you're going to end up building there will have exponential development compared to all of the other clubs and so they'll eventually end up uh you know winning a lot more which is what ultimately this is all about you also said like you had what two or three years where you weren't as good oh yeah i don't also feel like there's patience for that anymore like and a kid drops off like not even whether it's parents patience to say you know maybe this isn't your sport because we want to see you successful and you're not successful or our coach or a team or a club whatever i think that's a really normal thing like kids go through puberty at different times and they can be awkward you know like in a thousand different ways so it does make sense but totally there's also an impatience that you're supposed to be if you're great and i think we talked about this like kids who are great at you know at 10 sometimes aren't the best at 16 and the ones the ones who aren't find their legs and it's probably a case of sticking with it like you do you got to persevere through those difficult moments no i think perseverance is kind of that's a it's a perfect word right it's uh it's so much of what drives success and i don't care if we're talking soccer or anything else but being able to persevere through those hard times because it's never going to be just this you know straight perfect path right it's there's always going to be some sort of conflict and and challenge that you're going to come up against and it's being able to just just keep going we've had some guests in here that think u.s soccer should take a bigger role in setting kind of a standard whether it's because all of all the ECL MLS Next OPD like you know ODP ODP but like that that u.s soccer should set a standard and say you're a club level five or you're a club level four and then and maybe i don't know if they should dictate curriculum or training schedules or things like that do you think that because i you're talking about a hard five years if you're a club you're like i i don't have that to give i can't take that risk i might believe everything you're saying kelly but i can't do it because there are actual costs and we might just fold if i do that yeah but i think that that's part of it is there is that fear um and it may fold that it's a it's a risk that you end up having to take but i think i do think that that's the right pathway i don't think that u.s soccer should try and dictate much um it's just that's just too big of an undertaking uh and you end up painting this broad brush when that's not what we need um every city is going to be a little different right every club is going to be a little different every um every coach every team like so so to to have u.s soccer try and kind of control a lot of that stuff and even all of it and even like yes giving a grade to different clubs i don't think that's a great idea either because it's going to cause a lot of animosity and it's going to really affect people's businesses because people are only going to want to be at you know the tier one club yeah it's going to really affect that and then once tier one club knows that it's like oh well guess what fees are going to be six thousand this year yeah i think seven thousand next year because there's nowhere else to go yeah i just think the hard part is like you guys looking at a club and going in there and watching their coaches and and seeing have an informed opinion about what you're looking at and can make an informed decision. There's a lot of parents, people like me, who go in there. I'm like, I don't know. Coach is really nice. I have no idea if it sounds good because it is a pitch, right? Because if I don't know what I'm looking at, I can't tell you if I'm putting my kid in the right place. So you need some sort of outside source to tell me you're in the right spot. Because if parents are talking, parents are like do you like them your kid's going to get playing time are you like you have all these other factors because you don't have the actual field knowledge yeah i think that's what the category system does back in England it kind of rates on all these different categories i think right now you've kind of got like a category one club would be typically somebody who's got MLS Next or whatever they have the pathway to that but they get the you know the logo on their website and they have to hit certain criteria yeah but maybe not as much if you look at you know how the Premier League categories get done so i think it's um and ECNL is like that to be an ECNL club you have to have like it's like a certain number of teams yeah a team in each age group like and it's the same with girls academy as well and what's difficult about that though is you know when you're talking about like geographically like i drove to Bakersfield last weekend for a game yeah that's crazy that's crazy i live in the Bay Area you're telling me that there isn't a team around here that could be a challenging team for my daughter's days like there's a guy on I thought the same thing when I was coaching in the DA. We did some of those drives. and we did some of those drives, and they went and won 7-0, 8-0 and you're thinking, well Yeah, well, I know. there's a guy on TikTok He's like, soccer dad here. and he was in Bakersfield Have you seen that guy? I have seen that one, yeah. And I'm like, you're not wrong. And he's like, and we paid for parking. And all of everything he said for anyone who's had a kid in, and I don't think it's just soccer, any sport where you're traveling and you've gotten this level, there are those moments you're like, what am I doing? like what what are what are we doing here travel in general is fine but yes going back to it it's like i think that there's a just the structure of play that we have set up structure of leagues and and how all that works right now it can just be done in a in a better way um you know everybody sees the opportunity and that's why you have you know eight billion different acronyms for different leagues that you're playing because people see opportunity and and and i see it too um you know being in this business i see it too i just don't know that i think if we've lost this this whole idea of like what's actually good for the players and what's what the goal is here is our goal to make money or is our goal to um put kids at the next level um and look it's gonna be different for every club it's gonna be different for every or it's the goal just to share the love of the beautiful game where kids might not have any chance of going to the next level but they just like it and it's a lifelong sport that they get to play yeah no and i think that we've we very much kind of um set our clubs up in a way where there's there's only these two things right there's recreational soccer for 350 and then there's competitive soccer for 5 000 and there's absolutely nothing in between and so here you have you know especially in the bay area very competitive uh parents most of the time that are like oh my seven-year-old is just crushing it at rec now i've got to drop five grand a year to play comp and comp at seven is basically rec you know and then and then you have all these club teams you know you're gonna have your u7s then there's gonna be seven teams in it it's like guys that's just rec soccer you're just collecting money on that i get it it makes sense from a financial standpoint but are we really are we really needing to do this does that mean that we aren't missing opportunity to develop the talent for the next U.S. Men's National Team for the next group of players too because that's the other if we go away from certainly there's rec players there's people who are just going to play but then there's this other discussion as well about the pipeline to becoming dominant specifically on on the men's side of soccer we had so many ad nauseum talk about the World Cup and we're going to do it again in four years and we're going to be talking about our our youth system again and so you know i mean we do have great talent that we're seeing you know in MLS and it's developing in different places but yeah i mean i think um players players generally get found you know it's it's not all that hard to see when the talent is just that high i think what is good about the system is that with the development of uh you know MLS Next and you know ECNL Girls Academy you are getting more groupings of higher quality players um playing together what i don't like about the system is that just because you have the best players does not mean you have the best team and i think that we've lost a lot of team dynamics and team growth um and i don't think players are actually being exposed to to what that looks like in the proper way and and i only say this because on all the teams that i played on the the ones that won all the championships were not the best group of players they were the guys that that all fit together we all had the chemistry the locker room was the best thing in the entire world um that that's trying to find the combination of those two things isn't of talent on the the group because you might have you might have a player who's you know not going to be a starter but they are glue in the locker room and that's really really important to the overall performance of the entire team but we don't really get put into those settings anymore to well even like the club the club deadline before the world cup starts like about two weeks to be like hey introduce yourself first match coming up i mean where it used to be a longer stretch right where they could actually you know you hear about coaches would take them on retreats and then you go and you bond and you do a whole thing and so that when you hit the pitch you were yeah yeah i think but i think that that's you know we've in u.s soccer specifically i think we have individualized a team sport and i don't think that that is to the benefit of the game and and to the players um i understand the reasons why you know of course you're going to think okay yeah we're going to put the best players all together and the level is going to be high but that's just not how teams dynamics work you know i don't care if it's an engineering team or if it's a soccer team um there has to be a culture there has to be a you know the team dynamics that that are headed in the right direction you know proof is actually about to be at the pudding i think too and and you know if you talk about we just switched basketball really quick the valkyries and natalie nikasi that's what she said at the very beginning of the season when she was letting really high value players go and people were freaking out and they're like that person on paper is amazing what are you doing and she talked about the importance of chemistry and everyone's like well we'll see how the season goes you know and it was really a if if they did well they'd be like okay well she's figured something out if they did not people are like well it's because you let all those you know high stat players go obviously they're having a great a great season but i think people really held her to the fire with that kind of well of course you know like idea but it's playing out in in well it takes guts you know as a coach it takes guts to you know cut big name players yeah i'm a big arsenal fan and with Mikel Arteta let Aubameyang go a couple of years ago he was the captain of the team he broke the rules and arteta was not going to have it and so they end up selling him but you know you look at what arsenal has done now over the last few years and look he had his culture he had his way that he wanted things to be done and he held everybody to that same standard it did not matter who you were how much money you made none of that mattered right and so it's that kind of team dynamic that i think we we just don't see enough um especially specifically in the youth development right now you know you need courage you need you need courage and you need some direction because you've got to think that especially in the youth game let's say right you have influential parents who maybe want their kid on a certain team and you have to have a coach who can stand up to that and then a director who's going to have that coach's back. The director is not going to want that parent to leave because they're influential and maybe they donate money to the club. There's all these dynamics that play into it and it's a tricky spot to be in. But it's a long game and a lot of people see the short game. So how hopeful are you that these things get fixed? Because it's as complicated as you've acknowledged that what we think should happen, what maybe should happen, doesn't mean it's going to be what actually happens no i think it's i think it's going to happen i mean you see you see there being a lot more uh push or at least i see there being a lot more push on open play these days um you know a lot more pickup soccer street soccer uh i think those are all hugely beneficial i think that i think that there's this gigantic gap right now in the middle of rec and competitive soccer that can be filled with all sorts of various things without having kids fall behind. In fact, I think that those kids will actually probably develop much faster if they go into something in between as opposed to going into comp soccer at seven years old. But I think it's going to take time for that to show and it's going to take a couple of use cases of people being able to show the data behind it as to why this works and why this is the right direction. You'd hope the US Soccer Federation comes in with some kind of game plan. Yeah. Give people some guidelines to work with under. It seems like they've bounced around different ideas of trying to copy different countries, bringing in different people to the coaching courses from different countries. All great information, but it seems like this big melting pot. They're not quite sure where to go. It's more so to get back to what is the identity of the U.S. soccer team, U.S. soccer players. What is it about this country and the soccer they've gone? Well, let's work at these things and try something that's theirs, not try and copy Spain or the Netherlands, whoever it may be. Go for your identity and go with that. I think that would be nice to see. That would be nice. Look at U.S. soccer right now. How many Americans are actually involved? It's very few. Yeah. If you look at all of the coaching staffs across all of it and all the different roles in U.S. soccer on the soccer side, primarily foreign, you know, from Pochettino down. I love Poch. I think he brings a lot of the culture piece that I think has been missing. But still. I don't want to say missing, but still. But, you know, we had Greg Berhalter. I thought he actually did a great job as well. And I thought that, you know, his players wanted to play for him. He did a really good job. But it should be like when the head coach goes, surely, well, Potch, fantastic coach, right? No one's doing well. But when he goes, and he'll go at some point, right, for whatever reason, what he leaves, what's left behind should still be going along the same track and not all of a sudden divert, well, Potch is left, so we're going to go here. And I'm sure they've got this in place, but it doesn't seem that all the directors of youth clubs across the country know exactly what they should be taking from this. doesn't it seem because if we don't win dominantly then they want to try something else they're like let's pivot yeah but i mean look u.s soccer has classically just copied as you said copied everybody else's things right it was um 2010 spain wins the world cup oh u.s soccer adopts the spanish federation curriculum here we go 433 everyone's 2014 was uh germany oh now we're working with the german federation like they've done the exact same thing over and over i think that they're still making progress every single year um but but i just as you said who we are as country i think boils down to much more than just like the curriculum and the what we're going to try and uh how we're going to try and play, I think figuring it out, yeah, I think so much of it though comes down to the actual like cultural piece of like who are, who is the American player and I think we we actually know that right, the American player is is going to be big, fast, strong, athletic um I won't say creative yet, there are some very creative but we haven't had a super creative number 10 um on our team, you know, in a long time, you can argue Pulisic but I'd say he's more of like a winger, he's not, he's not the guy that's like, you know, pulling the strings, you know, I think the closest that we have right now is probably Weston McKennie and so I think U.S. soccer will will get it right, they're heading in the right directions, they do have some very good people involved, it's just a matter of getting more and more people involved that that maybe have come through the system that understand um what what is missing maybe and also what that identity of, of that American player, American team can and should look like. And so as someone who chose MLS, you chose it and you stayed, what do you see as MLS's role? And some people have called it a feeder. Some people call it a development academy. Some people call it a, what is, what do you think MLS is now? And what do you think it should be moving forward? Well, you know, it's, it's, I think it was developmental when it started, right? It was this idea of can we start a league and can we have it be sustainable in this country, I think we have gone far past that, we have to prove that um I think that it's on its way to being the biggest league in the world um because I think at some point there's just going to be so much money in MLS that every player from around the world is going to want to come play here yeah i mean you've got the stadiums haven't you got the fan bases growing that the television's obviously always going to be here it's just really missing the the top players in comparison with no disrespect the current most but you know compared to the players in La Liga and the Premier League right now you would yeah there would definitely look there'll be plenty of those players i would want to bring here even you look at Saudi Arabia the money they've pumped into it to get such great players there exactly as soon as some of the more of those players start funneling here earlier in their careers it could be well that's what i think it's like really Saudi Arabia with kind of they kind of did the job of proving it out for us because the paychecks are just the checkbook that people will go play there they don't care they've they're like look this sets up generations of my family for wealth um yeah i'm gonna go do that i'm gonna go people like still have they still want to you know play in UEFA they still want to win Champions League they they want that they think that i think is the highest competitive thing and i and i do too um but i think that that will continue to change as more and more money is invested in into the U.S. always comes back to the money always comes back to the money it always comes back to the money be true all right i think we've solved all the world's problems we've just we've just put them all on the table and now the Kelly Gray plan then u.s soccer will be fixed the world of soccer will be good and youth soccer will be fun again please we please we figured that out yeah it's amazing all right yeah let's have a good time oh we do appreciate your time happy to be here this is great i could talk about this for another five hours all right yeah just stick with it you know part two is coming up all right thanks kelly thank you sir yeah free audio post-production by alphonic.com