and it doesn't particularly matter.
If you bring a player over and he's able to hold his own and
you know that he's able to hold his own.
Then it doesn't really matter kind of how old he is.
It just so happens that at 14, 15 physically,
the body's maturing a little bit more at that point.
And they're able to go and do what they need to do.
But whenever I had Gideon over on trial at 14, he jumped in with the Reserves.
And he jumped in with kids that were had already played in Champion League games.
Some of the younger guys that had made their debuts in the Champions League and
he didn't look out of place, at all.
So it all depends.
Where as you could bring some 13 or 14 year old kids over and
they're not over 5' tall and they would stick out like a sore thumb.
So it all depends really.
>> Let me just ask you a couple of final questions for our audience.
So now you're counseling a family, and
they have a really good player 14-15.
And IMG Academy comes calling to play football, soccer football down there.
Is that the best player?
Should he or she continue to play for their high school team?
Or does it all depend?
>> So actually more and
more kids are starting to steer clear of high school soccer.
I think even the development academy now in the States has said
has gotten rid of that.
And a lot of the clubs if not all of them, at this point.
So high school soccer in the States is,
it's different because it's great like
I played, I played my freshman year and my sophomore year and then I stopped playing.
I think I stopped playing halfway through my sophomore year actually because
risk of injury.
And I think when Americans look at high school sports,
they see like the All American high school sports hero.
And it's like that's the story you want,
is playing in front of your friends, playing in front of your girlfriend,
in front of a packed stadium, I mean, it's fun.
Because for the most part, playing soccer in the US,
nobody really knows what you do.
Everybody, you travel every single weekend,
you don't get to play in front of your friends.
You get to very rarely play in front of
your entire family unless you're playing the game at home.
So it's very different from what
the rest of American sports are like,
and I think that's because of the kind of the concentration of talent as well.
For us, our club team in Roanoke was the best
team in the area and our closest league game was three hours away.
So we had to drive three hours at least three hours at the weekend.
Our furthest was five just to play in a league game.
So the idea of having high school soccer is great because
you play Friday night,
that's the main event, all your friends are going to be there.
It'll be fun and then you'll go to a party afterwards and
you're kind of the star of the school.
Which every kid, that's
they romanticize about that at that age.
>> [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH] So I wouldn't say I think focusing more on club, and now
the landscape of American soccer, especially the club level,
the youth level has changed dramatically even since I've
begun scouting never mind since I left to go play in England.
But even so against scouting the development academy has
developed and grown exponentially and is becoming a very
good place to play your club soccer.
It's a very good place to get seen by the national team and at the moment ,I believe
there's like 76, maybe 76 clubs throughout the United States.
They're considered development academy clubs by the
federation and they have to train a certain amount of hours
each week, or a certain amount of days.
They have kind of a curriculum that they follow that comes down from
Jurgen Klinsmann,
from the very top of how he wants his teams to play and everything.
So, it's becoming much more structured, which means, for
the sake of things, you don't have to go to IMG.
You don't have to go to Florida and be one of 40 kids
in the country to become a better player.
What they're trying to do and what they're trying to accomplish is, bring IMG or
these academies into 76 different clubs.
And I think we're still a long way from that to an extent, but
it's definitely a move in the right direction.
>> Last question, so now you're talking to a 16,
17-year-old the next Danny, who's got a chance to make it for Arsenal.
What would be the go,
no-go advice you would give the next player like yourself, as to whether or
not to take that college scholarship, or to sign with Arsenal.
Let's make him 17, just like you were on your way to your senior year,
your last year of eligibility, and he's got Harvard out there as his option.
Let's make it your option.