Soccer Education Quotes

I want soccer to be a stable profession that attracts young female athletes when they graduate from college.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In football in this country, we want to be able to check off every box of a soccer player. You have to be good at this and this and this. Because of our society, and the way that I grew up in soccer, I had to become well-rounded-but I also cherished the parts of me that made me special.

It's been a big flaw of ours in the soccer department that a lot of our best athletes go and play other sports. But I think young players have seen me, and others, go over to Europe and play in some of the best leagues - and MLS is improving so much, too.

I'm facing new challenges in China, the league here is developing and I try to help Chinese football develop here and around the world.

Let's build women's football from the bottom before we get to the top; it's not about building from the top to get to the bottom. We can talk about the Etihad and Man United's ground, the Theatre of Dreams, in a few years' time. Let's fill the Academy Stadiums, the Kingsmeadows, first of all.

Holland I think is the best school to learn football. I think its a great league for that because it's not the strongest league in Europe.

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.

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.

Belgium's 1986 team is like the Christmas movie that they bring out every single year. That World Cup is something we get to see and hear about all the time. It is part of our general education in Belgium.

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.

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

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.

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.

When people say 'American soccer,' they think of the U.S. national team. But American soccer also includes Major League Soccer, and until we have a league that produces players at the rate other leagues around the world do, I don't believe we'll ever get to where we want to be.

Fletcher Moss was where it started for me and a lot of other players as well.

My father fought for me to play football. He never had to make me shinpads, but it was a lot of money to send to me to a soccer school. And to provide boots and things.

I think it's important to make clear, you know, that the problem with American soccer... it isn't talent.

I hope that everyone tries to help to increase the level of the MLS and also that American players like Pulisic are here and not in Europe. That should be the goal for America. I just try to help as much as I can.

The more people who come from abroad who played soccer and are brought up playing it and watching it, then come over to America and bring what they know and what they play, that's how the sport will grow.