Hello,

Hello,

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Joe Lowry, and today I'm joined by a man who knows a whole lot about the United States youth development landscape.

It's Will Parchman. Will, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. Absolutely. And I want to start off, how are you? It's been a crazy start to

2021 already. And last year, we all know, was insane. How are you doing? Well, you know, I guess that's a,

that's a complicated question these days. Yeah. You know, you try to, you try to do all the right things and, you know, reach out to the right people.

And, you know, more than ever, you know, having distractions is great, which is why I still love

talking about the kids and the player kids movements and all that fun stuff.

It gets your mind off of everything

else for a little bit. And that is exactly what we are here to do. Today, we're here to talk all

about youth development in the United States. Later on in the show, we're going to chat about some

specific academies here in the U.S. But before we get into those specific markets and what they're

doing at different clubs in Major League Soccer, specifically, I want to talk about American youth development in a more general big picture kind of sense.

We're starting to see more and more young, talented American players develop and develop here in the United States and then get sold or move on at least to European

teams. In the last little bit, we've seen Brendan Aronson move. We've seen Mark McKenzie move. We've

seen Reggie Cannon move. Joe Scally. Brian Reynolds is still, you know, a process. But there are a lot

of players that have moved recently. Will, is this the start of something youth development-wise here

in the U.S.? Yeah, you know, we've gotten bitten before by saying, you know, X, Y, Z person. You know, I remember saying Matt Miosga was the, you know, the flood that was going to break the dam. And, you know, I guess there's some, you know, truth to that back in whatever that was, 2014 it took a little bit more time and so i think

there's always a little bit more of a long game in this when you're talking about you know really a

total you know see change and the perception of american players but you know it is turning and what

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