Danny Welbeck Quotes

Even all the top players going to Europe to play helps soccer in America, as do all the MLS players like Beckham and all that, they're trying to promote it. At the end of the day it's about getting the younger generation interested at an early age so most of them will move on and play.

St. Louis has a super-rich history of soccer, so I was very fortunate growing up to have coaches that played.

Most of my players have come through academies with clubs. That's not a bad thing, but it's very different to what I grew up with.

All three of my kids play soccer. Each one of them started from the time they were about 5 or 6, and we just love it.

I think where we're still a little bit behind some other countries is just our pure soccer knowledge and our savvy on the field. That takes time and generations that have watched soccer growing up, played the game growing up.

Kids are learning to play. That's why we're seeing an emergence. That's why we're seeing the Under-17s and Under-20s doing better in international football.

I think it's a natural progression: a lot of centre-backs start wide when they're young and move inside.

I played street soccer; that's where I started. If you look at South America, that's why they have technical players.

For me, playing through all the youth teams at Borussia Dortmund was a really good experience because I was able to play against talented opponents at a relatively early age.

There is a specific mentality that is put into the young players at Barcelona, and from nine or 10 years old, you have to make good seasons because, if not, you are out.

Like many kids, I was thrown into recreational soccer in my town, and from there, I grew to love it. Everywhere I went, I carried a soccer ball with me.

Playing soccer is what I've done and known all my life, starting at such a young age with my friends.

Germany is where I had to become a true professional. They play in big games when they are young. We could model some of our soccer system after what they do.

My first club was FT Gern. I joined through my parents and friends. My father played for them and a friend from nursery school took me to training once. I was five at the time.

Sometimes clubs take their ownership of a young player for granted and do not necessarily do the best thing for their development.

At Southampton, my dad was the academy coach at under-11 level.

I think what we really want to do is to create a real soccer nation. We want to have kids really wanting to play the sport.

I was playing in a tournament in Brazil and an agent scouted me. He took me to his soccer school. The idea was he used it to scout players and anyone he thought was good enough he took over to Italy. That's what he did with me when I was 15.

I was about five or six when I went to the little foundation camps. I got into the academy when I was nine, and I've gone through every age group since and into the first team.

Once I reached about 14 or 15, I started to steady myself and get into a midfield role and carried that on until I was 17. Then I dropped into right-back, and I have played there ever since.

Our under-19s, under-20s, under-17s teams are all getting into Euro finals, World Cup finals, winning bronze medals. We're winning bronze medals; it's about that final step now. We've got to punish teams. In every game - youth games, senior games - just to push the game further.

My dad had a soccer school that he used to run, the Mark Chamberlain Soccer Academy, I used to go to that for two years until the age of seven.

I'm a big advocate of starting soccer young and always having the ball at your foot, but that's because I didn't do that. If I'd focused more on that when I was a kid, it would've been so helpful. It took me, like, halfway through college to feel comfortable with the ball.

Back in the days, being able to join the Jean-Marc Guillou academy was one of the best things that could happen to a youngster from Ivory Coast. There were thousands of kids who wanted to join that school so it was a great feeling for me.

I'm just another guy starting out.