Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer.

Our guest today played college soccer at Drake University in Des Moines.

Now he is, among other things, a lawyer and the head girl's

soccer coach at Dowling Catholic High School, which happens to be Caitlin Clark's alma mater.

He recently recorded a podcast episode where he methodically evaluated the claims made by a soccer

about essentially what's good for teenagers who play soccer.

So, you know, we love talking about high school soccer.

We love talking about the grassroots here.

So please welcome Matt Sehag.

Good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Thanks for being here making it work.

So it just seems like an important line of inquiry to me.

And it kind of cuts to the root of the matter, which is how do we get more kids to love

the game and get good at the game.

Could you maybe start by giving us the background what the ECNL did?

What the ECNL is, what it did, what it's doing, and sort of the pitch that was made to players in Iowa about it.

Yeah, sure.

So the ECNL is the, I guess the acronym stands for Elite Club National League.

I believe that's what the acronym is.

And to kind of understand the background, before the EC&L kind of came onto the scene,

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