Playing time is the issue. Not “one of” the issues. In youth soccer, it is often the issue that drives the most tension between coaches and parents. A player is not getting the minutes the family expected, and suddenly the coach-parent relationship starts to fracture. In this episode, we get into that dynamic directly. We […]

Coaching licenses are often treated as a necessary stamp of legitimacy in American soccer. But what actually happens inside one of these courses? And more importantly, do they make coaches better? In this episode, we sit down with Paul Spacey, a longtime coach who recently went through the U.S. Soccer C License, to unpack the […]

American soccer has a way of selling people the dream while hiding the machinery underneath. In this episode, we sit down with Kirk Kinsey to unpack what he calls “McSoccer” — the fake development pathways, the tournament-win marketing, the college-scholarship sales pitch, and the closed-system incentives that keep parents, players, and coaches trapped inside a […]