Hello and welcome everybody to Soccer 101.

My name is Taylor Rockwell and today i'm joined by a friend who will never

find himself on the friendship development team because he's already on the first team it's

graham rathven hello graham hello taylor rockwell i think i am the captain top goal scorer

goalkeeper star defender just the whole lot on the friendship team i think the whole one and then

ryan is the occasionally utilized deputy, I think. Just firing shots at Ryan Bailey right out of the gate on this episode of Soccer 101. Yeah. Typical for us when he's not on it. And when he's on it, actually. Yeah, a little bit. A little bit of both, a little bit of both. Especially if we can sneak them past when he's not paying attention. That's always a bonus. If you are new to

soccer 101, this is a podcast connected to our other show, The Total Soccer Show. We use this space to

explore more basic concepts in greater detail or to answer questions that seem obvious, but usually

have deeper histories behind them. On today's episode, we're exploring the basics of reserve

leagues and development leagues, what they are, why they're important, how they differ.

The goal, as always, is to come up with a show that appeals to newbies, people who are new to soccer, but also allows people who've watched for a very long time to hopefully learn something new.

I say that to then say we're starting off with a very basic question.

Graham, like for the terminology

aspect of things as we go forward, starting on the most basic level, when we talk about a

player training or playing for the first team or the senior team, what do we mean? I feel like

it's important to establish that before we get into all the different pervutations underneath.

So that would be the team that we all watch on TV playing in the Premier League.

So Manchester Nett's first team would be players like Marcus Rashford and Casamiro and those guys.

And obviously, soccer clubs will typically have more players on their books than they require

for the first team, for their senior squads. They have youth players, they have more players on their books than they require for the first team, for their

senior squads. They have youth players, they have fringe players, players who are maybe injured

at that particular moment, players who are essentially surplus to requirements. And so they will have

...