American Soccer Dream

By Ken Jones

An American Soccer Dream walks through the trials and tribulations of retooling the United States National Soccer Program. Using many resources -- previously untapped talent pools, an array of underutilized ethnic soccer clubs, the power of technology and one of the best sports marketers - two friends - one a foot soldier in the national soccer federation and another a technology professional with a love of the game - work tirelessly to implement their vision. An American Soccer Dream chronicles the team's exploits, traveling the streets of America and beyond, detailing efforts to raise an organization to new heights, and winding their way throughout North and Central America before the team's journey ultimately concludes at the World Cup Finals in Brazil in the June of 2014. But as the players and coaches travel this road together -- something even more special is sparked -- a spirit and kinship of family which brings together this set of diverse human beings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Jones
• Release date: Aug 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465911360

Ken Jones

Ken Jones was a Zen practitioner, writer and teacher of some forty year years standing, and alsoa widely published haiku and haibun poet.

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An American Soccer Dream

By Kenneth Jones

American Soccer Dream

Kenneth Jones

Copyright 2010 by Kenneth Jones

Smashwords Edition

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the author. Requests for permission or inquiries about discounts for bulk purchases should be directed to the author.

For Miles and Matthew

PART 1 – ASSESSMENT

As the chartered plane for the United States Men's National Soccer Team slowly taxied out to the runway, there was a palpable pall in the air. It was a mood which lie in stark contrast to the unbridled optimism exuding from the team when they touched down in Johannesburg six weeks prior. This is what happens when one's performance does not meet one's own expectations. Football is sometimes exhilarating, often exasperating, and frequently disheartening, and while the World Cup 2010 had its' breathtaking moments, in the end it was a disappointment for the Yanks.

The team was very optimistic after the group stage. There were many positives, for the squad showed the ability to fight from behind, a ton of resiliency and a flair for the dramatic. But any contrarian worth their salt could see several warning signs in the initial proceedings. Their viewpoint, quite honestly, was that the Americans put forth a trio of lackluster efforts. Yes, they won the group, that was indisputable. But when looking under the covers, many warts were exposed. Benefiting from a keeper's horrific misplay, giving up goals or tremendous chances in the first quarter-hour of each game, and failing to dominate the run of play against relative minnows Algeria and Slovenia were all ominous signs that the program was struggling. Did the Americans show tremendous heart, resiliency and courage? Absolutely. But were they able to control games against teams far less talented then theirs? Absolutely not. Therein lied the problem.

Much was expected of the Americans, particularly after being drawn into the easy group for the tournament, the converse of the dreaded Group of Death draw of 2006. After a more than acceptable 1-1 result against the Three Lions of the United Kingdom, albeit a draw entirely due to the howler of all howlers courtesy of Robert Green, the results are not what one would expect against the smaller countries in their group.

The soccer world expected the United States to find a way to get positive results, more specifically three points in each match, against capable but less talented qualifiers Slovenia and Algeria. But, alas, it was not to be, as the Stars and Stripes played two exciting but substandard matches against these teams. Against Slovenia, although the Americans showed a ton of heart in storming back from a 2-0 halftime deficit and it was true they were robbed by a referee's call, the Yanks ended up with a disappointing 2-2 draw. The comeback was stirring, but because of two serious defensive breakdowns, once failing to close down a player in the midfield and another time seeing a member of the back four unnecessarily drop into a deeper position and play an attacker onsides, the American performance could be ranked no better than mediocre.

The Algeria performance was also second-rate. Yes, the United States won the game with a Landon Donovan goal in added time. It was certainly true that the goal came at the end of a very long run by an exhausted player, which was admirable and indicative of the Yanks’ will to win. It was also true that the finish was very exciting and that the dramatics energized the country. And yes, it was also true the Americans had plenty of excellent chances to score throughout the game. However, sport is a bottom line sort of activity. And the bottom line is that the scoreline in a match pitting two teams of different skill levels should be a lot closer to the 3-0 victory the United States achieved over Egypt in the 2009 Confederations Cup than a tilt which remained scoreless until the ninety-first minute.

While it was spot on to say there were some rather poor officiating calls against the Americans in the second and third games, no one could say that was only reason the United States struggled. Organizations have a full ninety minutes to overcome any odious decisions thrown their way. However, the American attackers allowed a plethora of excellent chances to go begging, especially against Algeria, and in each game there were more than a few times the back four looked extremely shaky.

With five points, the team finished first in their group despite the fact they were a mere three minutes from elimination. But, luckily for the Americans, their ability to scrape through just by the hair of their chinny chin chin earned them a date with Ghana, the very team that eliminated them from the 2006 World Cup.

The game against the Black Stars in the round of sixteen was, incredibly, more of the same. The United States conceded an early goal to Boateng after a careless midfield giveaway by Clark. In addition, the Americans were unable to maintain any semblance of possession in the first half. To their credit, the Americans came out with a vengeance and tied the game on a Landon Donovan penalty in the second half. As promising as that was, alas, they conceded early in extra time, again due to poor play in the back. This time, the two center backs were positioned far too apart from one another on a long ball sent straight down the middle. This allowed Gyan to collect the ball and blast a shot right down Broadway. It was a howitzer which Howard had absolutely no chance to stop. After that, the Yanks were out of miracles and the game ended 2-1 in favor of the West Africans after two hours of play.

America had, pure and simply, been eliminated. The loss was somewhat devastating for the team, but that paled in comparison to the impact it had on soccer within the nation. The 2010 draw was deemed to be a gilded path to the knockout stage, as the Yanks were drawn into the easiest group. And then, the single elimination stage fell very kindly to them, for America was placed into a foursome with Ghana, South Korea and Uruguay. This was quite possibly one of the easiest potential paths to the semifinals in World Cup history. Given those circumstances, failing to win a game in the knockout stage was quite disappointing to Sam's Army and all the other United States faithful.

So, what after the group stage was expected to be a glorious victory and an opportunity for the sport of soccer to give the nation a shot in the arm, instead became a deflating moment. The players could now think only about what could have been. Landon Donovan's destiny was not to be that of a Mike Eruzione or Jim Craig, a hero striking a magnificent blow against a world powerhouse. Instead, his fate was to be clumped together with the many other sporting stars who slipped into relative oblivion after a fair to middling sort of performance.

At least, a few of the players joked, they weren't the Italians of 2010, for the tradition in Italy was to greet a national team who was substandard at the airport with a barrage of overripe tomatoes. While the Americans deserved nothing of the sort, that did not stop the players from thinking about what might have been.

Those in the soccer press had their own opinions on the proceedings. A lack of cohesion, limited flair and inventiveness in the front, a dearth of athletic talent, inexperienced frontrunners, a back four whose composition shifted from game to game and a propensity for slow starts all received considerable airplay. But even if one polled the so-called experts and created a tally sheet or bar graph of the opinions, there was no effective way to accurately measure the impact of the various negative factors.

But, one thing was clear, especially to the recently appointed national soccer federation President and National Team Executive Director Rajon Estrada. Estrada's appointment actually could not have been more recent, having come a day after the United States loss to Ghana, the match serving as a catalyst for the immediate resignation of his predecessor. Estrada was a long-time director within the federation who had risen through the ranks as a youth, collegiate, player, coach and executive, toiling for a variety of clubs in the United States Soccer League, the second division of soccer in America. The thing which was clear to Rajon was that the federation was not as effective as it needed to be in creating a world-class side capable of competing for the world's most treasured prize. 

The national soccer federation is the governing body of soccer in all its forms in the United States. Now more than ever, it was clear that change was needed to move the United States senior men's team into the elite ranks of FIFA. The federation was headquartered in Chicago, where the mantra of change had been freely flowing through the Windy City for many years, a result of the need for change slogans bandied about by Barack Obama during the 2008 United States Presidential Election. And now, just as the country as a whole seemed to require a fresh outlook at that time, Rajon saw his organization as being in the same boat. And he was of the opinion that tweaking and adjustments were not the order of the day, but instead a radical transformation in the structure and management of the national team was required.  

What those changes should be were topics for another day. Now was a time of sorrow and sadness, at least in the context of sport. World Cup 2010 was still in the sightlines of the world, but not for the United States. Their plane was climbing into the air and would soon be whisking the team back to their homeland, but as he leaned back in his chair awaiting the reaction of a disenchanted nation, the wheels of creativity were already turning in Rajon's mind. Rajon, much like Mayans of more than 7,000 years ago, would soon be planting seeds of innovation, seeds which would hopefully germinate a new era in United States soccer.

The national soccer federation is not unlike many large organizations, full of traditions, entrenched management, set ways of thinking, and a collection of expected and acceptable behaviors and stereotypes. Although soccer is miniscule in the eyes of the American sports fan when compared to baseball, football and basketball, on the youth level the sport and the organization are fairly monolithic. Although there are many, many estimates on the number of soccer players in the United States, one thing is clear, they number in the millions. And this organization was charged with regulating all of this.

Freight trains can't be stopped on a dime, and giant organizations like the national soccer federation are not nimblest of crafts either. The organization is a lot more like a cargo vessel than a speedboat, efficiently providing a capable and functional service, but not necessarily well served to perform creative and free-flowing maneuvers. So, the task at hand for Rajon was not an easy one. Implementation would be a huge challenge. However, as all leaders do, he put aside the future challenge of driving changes through the organization and the soccer community and decided to focus solely on a single objective, that being the development of a 2014 Vision for the country's national team.

Putting together the vision required some basic thinking. Brainstorming was certainly one necessary component, as creativity would be a critical component of the future course to be set for the national soccer federation. But, equally important was the need for assessment. It was crucial that every aspect of the program, from youth player development to the final selection and preparation of a twenty-two man national team, be examined in a thorough and forthright manner. 

Rajon realized that he, as a new leader, had talents to offer, but would also greatly benefit from the insight of others. So, he began to assemble what he came to refer to as a Council of Experts. This Council was a secret organization and did not meet as a group per se. Rather, Rajon decided that the best way to gain maximum value and candor from the group was to organize the group as an electronic, on-line group of experts whom could and would communicate using a variety of collaboration technologies. This would allow the group to formulate and post well-thought out opinions which could be developed over the course of days or weeks, as well as quick ideas on the fly. Additionally, the fact that the group existed purely in a virtual sense helped to maintain the free flow of ideas. In this format, members tended to avoid personality conflicts and were not intimated by one another, since members did not know each other.

The online Council began with a couple of members with whom Rajon had worked for years, and gradually grew into a group of six after a month or so. Its final composition made it a truly international group. There were two overseas members, one a current European club manager and the second a retired former manager of several Asian and African National Teams. The third participant was a renowned national soccer broadcaster and former North American Soccer League player. And the fourth contributor was a current U.S. national team player. Rajon knew each of these experts had been through the wars and should have informed opinions of what did and did not work for both clubs and countries.

The Council also had two other domestic members. Both were, in a way, unconventional choices, but they were selections made in the spirit of soliciting unique perspectives and a wide variety of ideas. One was a collegiate coach currently at an ACC school, whom Rajon hoped would bring his knowledge of the U.S. Youth Soccer and player development process to the group.

Finally, the sixth invitee to the Council was a total unknown on the national soccer scene. The participant was a friend of Rajon's, a business leader in the technology field with a strong passion for the game. His only formal connection to soccer was his serving as a youth coach in his hometown in New Jersey. This member, Rick Johnson, Chief Executive of the Trimont Corporation, was selected by Rajon in the hope that he would provide an entirely different perspective to the group. For example, Estrada anticipated Johnson might help with ideas about how the principles of management might be applied to the program, inject thoughts about how technology could be leveraged, and, most importantly, provide an outsider's perspective to the deliberations.

But, unbeknownst to the others and even to a certain extent to Rajon, Johnson was not just a captain of industry, but also a rabid fan of the game. No, he was not a lad who had spent every Saturday on the North Bank Terrace mind you, for that would have been somewhat difficult with Rick not being a Londoner. However, his ability to regale one with tales of the amazing exploits of his beloved expansion 1973 Philadelphia Atoms was indicative of Johnson's love of the game. Only a true fan would remember the members of a team who won the North American Soccer League crown in their inaugural year, the goal scoring exploits of the team's Scottish born star, Andy Provan, or that the Atoms starting an amazing number of six unproven Americans in the title game.

Johnson was truly a soccer junkie. He kept since childhood a tattered version of the September 3, 1973 Sports Illustrated, the first time a soccer player graced the cover of that iconic magazine, the subject being Atoms' keeper Bob Rigby. He could also vividly recall Pele's first game with the Cosmos at Downing Stadium at Randall's Island on CBS and his frequent trips to Giants Stadium as a teenager to see one of the world's most famous clubs, the New York Cosmos. All of that plus Johnson's ability to tick off some of the great goal scorers in American soccer history, Giorgio Chinaglia outdoors and Steve Zungul indoors being just two of the many he could wax poetic about, truly classified him as an obsessive fan.

Rajon had to clear many hurdles to get the Council up and running. The first was the issue of compensation. While some members of the group, such as the current National Team player and Rick Johnson, were flattered simply to be asked and willing to work on a pro bono basis, the other members expected an honorarium in exchange for their services. This, of course, posed a challenge given the goal of keeping the existence of the Council a secret. While this was not exactly a challenge of the same scale as something like keeping the LeBron free agency decision under wraps, nevertheless Rajon was forced to take some special steps to make this happen. One step was asking Rick Johnson to set up a U.S. Soccer Fund at Trimont which could be used for this compensation, Johnson arranging to have this done in an arm's length manner so that the members of the Council would be transparent to Rick.

Negotiating various compensation models for the team was one challenge, hammering out privacy and confidentiality agreements with the members was an even greater barrier to clear. Members needed to agree to absolute secrecy regarding their participation on the panel. This was an issue Rajon took so seriously that he wrote into each agreement his right not only to withhold wages but also the right to seek legal remedies against any member who divulged the team's discussions, their participation on the team, or even the existence of the Council itself. These restrictions included even disclosing such information to any current employer, so, as one can imagine, the time required to finalize all of these agreements was substantial and, to be honest, took far longer than Rajon hoped it would.

Although these delays led to Rajon being pilloried in the soccer press for his apparent lack of focus and action regarding the revamping of the national side, those were body blows he needed to absorb in the interest of setting the proper course and getting the right members on the Council. Rajon's interest was simple, he wanted a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis to be completed. Having confidence in the team members was a vital element to assure Rajon that he was charting the proper course for the program.

After several months time, the legwork was complete and the Council was ready to begin working. The first meeting of the group was called for the morning of Sunday, October 10, 2010. Timing was, of course, difficult due to the fact the European club football season and collegiate soccer seasons were well underway, meaning weekdays and Saturdays were generally busy times for the participants. For that reason, Sunday mornings seemed to be the best window for the members of the Council and would become the most common working day for the group during the months the team would be operational. Thankfully, Rajon was Catholic, so he still had ample opportunity to attend Mass on a Saturday evening or later in the day after meetings on Sundays.

During the initial kickoff meeting, Rajon did all the communication, acting as meeting facilitator. He invited each participant to dial into an initial voice teleconference, but in a format where only he as the moderator could address the group. It was an arrangement like the quarterly earnings calls Trimont conducted, thought Rick, where others could listen but not speak. During this call, Estrada thanked everyone for agreeing to participate in what clearly would be a difficult, yet important, interactive experience to help improve and revamp the national team program. He continued by informing the Council that in the future they would be meeting and interacting in several different ways, all of them online. Each week, the group of seven, the six members plus Rajon, would be invited to an on-line collaborative meeting. During this, the first meeting, Estrada, using an online chat room type of interface in addition to the voice line, communicated the scope and vision of the team to the membership.  

The team's goal was to assess the status and effectiveness of current national team and feeder programs while, in parallel, crafting a set of achievable and reasonable recommendations to help the United States field a more compelling eleven in 2014. The team was notified that several working groups, in the form of private group message boards, would be set up on the web-based collaboration software system. These groups would initially include areas such as Youth Soccer and Player Development, Senior Player Development, National Team Training and Preparation, Relationship and Role of Club Football to Support International Football, Player Selection, Tactics and Strategy, Team Management and United States Soccer Organizational Management and Oversight. But the team members would also have the rights and authority to create additional working areas.

Members were encouraged to participate in and contribute to any of these forums during the week. Then, each topic would be briefly touched upon during the Sunday morning meeting. Also, Rajon informed the team that every week he would toss out to the group a few discussion points and objectives so that the creative juices would start to flow and the members could begin exchanging ideas and experiences.

To access the systems and interact with each other, Rajon explained that the members of the Council would all be assigned randomly generated and generically named system accounts like Council1, Council2, etc... to access and post content to the system. The assignment of non-identifiable credentials was a way to protect the identity of the users on the system which, Rajon hoped, would ensure the team members would feel comfortable posting content. Or, to put it another way, hopefully since participation was anonymous, they would not feel intimated or threatened knowing a colleague might be a future employer or boss.

So, the Council was off and running. The meeting concluded with Rajon asking the team to spend the following week focusing on a couple of questions, those being how the United States should locate, seek and develop talent and how might the typical United States player develop more of an inherent sense and feel for the game. 

It did not take long for folks to begin voicing their opinions, and internet packets really starting flying on the evening of Sunday the 10th. About two hours after the kickoff meeting concluded, Council5 kicked off the data exchange by commenting that the United States method of developing talent catered to the affluent. This was, in fact, a fairly common contention, as the bulk of players in the United States tended to come from clubs and Olympic Development Programs (ODP) which required families to pay a king's ransom to keep their kids in the most elite programs. It was more than fair to say that most United States internationals were not sportsmen who learned the game by stuffing burlap bags full of socks and kicking them around.

Each posting to the collaboration site triggered an email to each of the other users, so all of the participants would be prompted to comment on the other's postings. Council5 continued, noting that the overwhelming majority of youth soccer players came from middle to upper class families and that the average cost to participate in a general travel soccer league was well over $1,000 per year with the better programs sometimes costing as much as ten times that amount! Council3 chimed in, stating that this was no different that baseball and Council4 then noted that hockey was an even greater cost. Then, interestingly, Council6 posted an item in the thread commenting that although that indeed was the case in baseball and hockey, the domestic American sports leagues were becoming increasing represented by players from other areas of the world (Europe in hockey, the Caribbean and Asia in baseball), which was not an option for a national team.

So what could we do? Council2 asked. We've all heard the various ideas about placing fields in the inner city and all of that, but it never seems to work.  

Council6 continued by posting Well, perhaps what we need is not to encourage mass participation in the cities, but instead try to cherry pick a small number of the elite urban and rural athletes currently playing baseball, basketball and football, attempting to move a small number of them into a superb United States training program.

That was an interesting thought which triggered a slew of postings. Yes, clearly the United States has tons of premier athletes, but an overwhelming majority of them end up playing the major sports. These sports, basketball and football in particular, held mass appeal as well as the potential of a college scholarship, something exceptionally attractive to families in economic need. But if even a small core group of fifty or so leading athletes could be moved into a select training program each year, this could greatly increase the athleticism of the national team player pool. Currently, the pool by and large tended to be comprised of smaller players known as much for their guile and work rate as for their size and speed.

Of course, to entice players to do this, incentives would need to be developed. Major sports offered the carrot of a fully paid college education and even fame and fortune. But there were questions about whether getting these players into collegiate soccer programs was really the answer. Council6 wondered in a posting, "If we are striving to develop a world-class pool of talent, does it really make sense to cultivate talent through the collegiate ranks? Is that what other countries are doing? Would that not potentially tie up our best resources for the four years they attended college?

Or, would it make more sense to pour more funding into some yet-to-be determined places where emerging players could work 24 x 7 on their game? Perhaps institutions like premier academies associated with domestic clubs which would be constructed on a par with the academies of the best European clubs? Alternatively, it might make sense to create a centralized large scale national soccer training academy modeled after something like the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the key being that it be owned and operated by the federation, not a private entity. Going down either road, would it not help to develop training environments dedicated only to soccer where the appropriate focus and energies can be put into developing world class talent?"  

These were ideas the Council liked, debated and tossed around for a week. As they did, ideas began to flow on the subject of how the United States might instill more of an inherent sense of the game in their players. American players, as we all knew, tended to watch and follow American sports like baseball, football and basketball more than they followed club and international soccer. The consensus of the group was that there needed to be more of an effort to indoctrinate the American player into following the ins and outs of international football. However, they also recognized that even if the typical American player followed the game as a fan, expecting them to have the same sense for soccer as a South American and European player was in many ways unrealistic. Several members of the team, led by Council1 and Council2, expressed opinions that getting a sense of the game was something which only came from eating, living and breathing football from one's birth. And for many players, the horse was already out of the barn in that area.

Consequently, one of the ideas most members of the collaboration team liked was that a mixture of different player types would best suit the team. One type would certainly be the prototypical player being produced today. And a second type would clearly be the elite athlete type the Council discussed developing at length in the previous discussion thread. But perhaps a third mold for a useful type of player might be individuals who were raised abroad and moved to the United States and had that special sense for the game having grown up with it from birth. Or, if not born abroad, perhaps players whose families lived in ethnic pockets within the United States, places like urban Greek, Polish, Portuguese or Hispanic subsections of cities, might also fill the bill. In these places soccer, not baseball, football or basketball, was the dominant sport. It was suggested that, hidden within these small cultural urban neighborhoods of the United States, there was a reasonable hope of finding players who had supreme ball skills and soccer instincts woven into the fabric of their soul.

After close to a week of work, Rajon was quite pleased with the efforts of the team. Each of the team members was contributing to the project, bouncing ideas off one another and building upon the thoughts of others. The end result was that a set of new and creative thoughts for player development and team composition was emerging from the fertile minds of some world soccer experts. Could all of these great ideas be implemented? Of course not. But, could many of the ideas evolve into workable concepts which could be applied to the program in the next four years? Perhaps.

Over time, the team tackled many supplementary topics placed on the weekly docket by Rajon. The Council bandied about subjects such as the role of club play in national team player development. Other threads included lively exchanges on the benefits and pitfalls of playing in Europe vs. Major League Soccer, training methods, the types of friendlies which should be scheduled, and the pros and cons of having experienced versus youthful players on the national team. 

As all of those discussions carried on, certain team members began to settle in to different roles within the group. Some members, especially Council1, Council2 and Council4, tended to be sounding boards, not necessarily contributing the most unique or innovative ideas, but instead performing the function of providing feedback and helping keep things on track as the group worked their way through issues. As Allen Iverson might say, these were the folks who were keepin' it real.

Council5 tended to be most engaged and have the best insight in the area of youth player development and, in fact, came to be recognized as an authority in that area. Ideas from Council3 tended to be a touch off the wall, and at times summarily rejected by others. It had to be said however that his innovative ideas were a springboard to and catalyst for many unlikely, yet ultimately constructive, discussion threads.

Council6 was, in the mind of Rajon, the preeminent contributor. Many of his ideas tended to be unorthodox. But, they were by no means misguided thoughts which were immediately discounted by the group. On the contrary, be they suggestions about how to organize training, how to find and select talent or the type or style of play the country should adopt, thoughts from Council6 came to be well respected. This was because, once he was invited to provide detail and justification, the opinions of this esteemed team member tended to be well thought-out suggestions which seemed feasible to implement.  

So, after about eight weeks of work, on the first Saturday of December of 2010 Rajon sat down in his home office in his hometown of Kensington, New Jersey. At his workstation, he powered up two computers and began to pour through the vast amount of material created by the Council. The information was voluminous, but Rajon was determined to wade his way through it and compile a Top Ten list of ideas and projects. As Estrada did this, his focus was squarely upon conceiving action plans which delivered value by the 2014 World Cup. This meant, of course, that any initiative would need to be completed within two to three years to provide benefit to the qualifying effort. The actual qualification process would begin in 2012, although the more challenging group stage which posed some genuine competition for the United States would take place in 2013. 

Most importantly, for the purpose of this project, all ideas which were longer term in nature were to be passed over to a different implementation organization Rajon would soon create within the federation.

After a grueling two pot of coffee workday, a day interrupted only by the Liverpool derby at Goodison Park won by the Merseysiders, Rajon finalized a list of ten initiatives to share in the weekly Sunday collaborative working session. Using thoughtful deliberation, and understanding this list in its entirety was in reality far too ambitious to implement, his recommendations included the following:

1. Develop a formal program to find and develop inner city talent, focusing on the fifteen to twenty year old age group. This activity includes the identification of stars in other sports with soccer background and potential who could be candidates for immersion into the sport. 

2. Set goals for national team composition focusing on achieving a balance between the existing talent pool, exceptional athletes and soccer from birth instinctive players.

3. Identify one, if not two, club team owners willing to sign significant numbers of top American players. This would help create a feeder club for the U.S. National Team much in the same way Barca and Real Madrid do for Spain and Ajax and PSV do for Holland. This would ensure that top Americans are placed on top tier teams where they are assured playing time together, allowing them to develop chemistry.

4. Greatly expand upon the Generation Adidas program by creating a national elite training center. Populate the center with approximately fifty elite players somewhere in range of eighteen to twenty-two years of age. Offer a top-shelf college scholarship to those in the program to compete with NCAA athletic options.

5. Recruit corporate and individual benefactors to contribute significant amounts of money to selected Major League Soccer clubs for their youth training academies, with the stipulation that an elite player can be redirected to the national academy.

6. Engage players in an advanced physical fitness program, one geared to make the American players the best-conditioned soccer players in the world.

7. Create a retention committee of key national team players, past and present, to define reasons for early retirements from international soccer and develop plans to keep top talent in the national team.

8. Schedule more international friendlies or club matches to provide increased opportunities for a wider range of American players to gain international experience. These games need not be against A level competition but, ideally, many of the games should be away games in hostile environments so current and future national team members become battle hardened.   

9. Develop and hire a formal fund raising committee of well-connected governmental and corporate soccer-loving individuals, people who can build the relationships to help create a new National Team Development Fund to finance new activities.

10. Create a position for a General Manager to oversee the program, separating administrative functions from those of the national team coach.

Rajon awoke before dawn on the next day, the first Sunday of December. Having only recently accepting his leadership position, Rajon had been spending his work weeks in the offices of the national soccer federation in Chicago and returning home to Kensington, New Jersey on the weekends. He had maintained a home office working remotely in Kensington for years as he oversaw teams, tournaments and other issues in his assignment administering youth soccer in the Northeast region of the federation. These work patterns were, in part, the reason Rajon was so comfortable working in the electronic, on-line manner he designed for the working Council.  

Rajon stepped out of the house into the early morning light. Standing on his deck, he sucked in some refreshingly crisp, frigid air prior to what he expected could be several hours huddled in front of his twenty-one inch state of the art computer monitor. He paused to reflect while amongst the now bare trees in his backyard about the wide variety of issues his Council kicked around during the past few fortnights. Even Rajon was not aware of the specific account ID's of each of the Council members, which he could have learned had he chosen to, but he preferred not to do so. He thought anonymity was a key element of the team's work, allowing all work to be contributed and evaluated in an unbiased manner. Natural human curiosity however was persistent within Rajon, and he often wondered in his mind which contributors were the creative minds, the voices of reason, etc... Most of all, he wondered who the introspective Council6 was. But Estrada quickly put that thought aside, cognizant of the fact he would know each of the specific identifies soon enough. 

On a whim, Rajon hopped into his jeep and headed over to the local youth soccer complex, Branchberg Fields, where he played as a youth. Unlike the vast majority of Kensington residents, he lived as an adult in the same town where he spent his formative years. His years as a soccer player at the collegiate and professional level took him around the country during his teens and even more so during his time as a player in the USL and MISL, but he eventually returned to the comfort of his beloved Kensington. 

When he arrived, the fields were expectedly desolate, due to both the hour and the season. But despite this, Rajon was not lonely. His mind quickly was filled with the many memories, both exhilarating and deflating, that he had playing on those fields.

This might seem strange to some, but for Rajon, some of the most vivid memories he had of the game were accumulated prior to the time he was categorized as high-potential player. Once that happened, the pressures and expectations grew, but the game he played before turning ten or so was exactly that, a game. On those fields, runs were made out of joy, not obligation. Passes were made in the spirit of creativity, not in accordance with scouting reports. And in these early years, teammates always supported each other, a mindset which stood in stark contrast to the typical crying for the ball, bellyaching about playing time or finger pointing which tended to occur at the travel or professional levels of the game.

Perhaps there was something to be learned in that, thought Rajon, as he made a mental note to be sure restoration of the joy of playing the game be added someplace to his list. Was finding fun in the game just a frivolous thought, or could it actually be considered an essential aspect of a team which was capable of achieving victory? And could fun realistically be injected into a side at the most elite level of sport? Good question, he thought, although as he recalled the manner in which Brazil or Barcelona played the game, perhaps the answer was self-evident. It was a topic certainly worth filing away in the archives, that was for sure. 

Driving back home, Rajon decided to stop at St. Mary's for Mass for the first time in ages. He wasn't really sure why he attended, perhaps he was thinking it was a good way to get some solace and gather his thoughts prior to the big meeting. And, it certainly would have pleased his late Mother.

During Mass, the readings and the homily focused on an interesting topic, that being the subject of stewardship. More specifically, they described how one should not only use their own individual talents to achieve great goals in both charity and their vocation, but also act as a teacher and help others do the same.

To Rajon, this reminded him that he as a leader could only do so much to individually help the program. Perhaps a larger contribution on his part might be his ability to effectively mine the vast amount of talent available to him – extracting value from both players and administrators -- and get the most he possibly could from all his resources.

Thinking along those lines, for the second time in a few hours he was reminded of his youth and his experiences with the Kensington Youth Soccer Club. His club, like many in the area, was overseen by a set of involved -- no strike that -- make that over-involved, controlling parents. Rajon's own father used to say that, by and large, the club administration was on a power trip. In Kensington, many administrators reveled in the fact the club was the one and only place in their lives these underachieving professionals had the power they so desperately craved.

Most of the Kensington club directors, starting with the domineering league president and permeating its way down the organization, were not particularly successful people. Most directors made a mockery of concepts like term limits, desperately trying anything possible to maintain their tenuous grip on leadership positions for lustrums, sometimes even decades. And it was actually an exceptionally sad commentary that a group of adults with an unusually high percentage of unemployment issues, credit problems or wayward children crying out for attention, would spend their every waking moment on the soccer fields. On the surface, it sure looked like the men were devoted public servants tending to Kensington's youth. But once one dug a bit deeper, and one did not exactly need to bore down to the depths necessary to rescue the Chilean minors to arrive at this conclusion, you could see the truth. Only in the Kensington Soccer Club could these limited individuals dole out their special version of moronic jurisprudence on topics ranging from field conditions to travel soccer tryouts to soccer rules. And in the Kensington Soccer Club, rules were rules, except of course when the authoritative body decided they were made to be broken.

Rajon knew it was of paramount importance that he ensured this philosophy did not exist in his organization. One of the most egregious examples of the misuse of power within the Kensington Soccer Club was the annual travel team tryouts. These were nights where all the kids of the town would dutifully show up for skills tests and evaluations. Their efforts were charted up on a set of independent grading points which were amassed by impartial assessors. Then, back in the club's headquarters, this data would be promptly discarded by the leadership, who routinely placed their own kids and the children of their cronies into the desired team slots.

Ironically enough, in order to keep their positions, the directors knew the teams had to be made somewhat competitive. Therefore, a smattering of kids with obvious talent like Rajon were included on these teams despite not being a member of the in crowd. However, the end result of bending these rules was that Kensington's teams tended to be bottom feeders in the regional county league.

Rajon's harkening back to those days was not an expression of bitterness or regret. No, they were actually valuable lessons he knew he needed to apply to his challenge, now that it was he who was assuming the mantle of authority. He might, in theory, carry a big stick but, like Theodore Roosevelt, he'd probably be far better served to speak softly, engaging the brilliant minds he had on the team, deferring to the majority, and taking every possible opportunity to use the collective wisdom of many.  

Having digested more than a day's worth of memories and lessons, Rajon drove home and made himself a pot of coffee. Although he tried to be generally abstemious regarding his intake of caffeine, given his workload he did not expect this pot to be his last of the day. Once the brewing cycle was complete, he ambled over to his laptop computer at the kitchen table with a solid sixteen ounces of Starbucks' best. Although Rajon had a home office, it was almost always cluttered with papers, bills and books, so he often chose to work in his spacious and fastidiously kept kitchen. 

Sitting in the brightly lit kitchen, courtesy of a bevy of picture windows surrounding his table, at 10:00 AM Rajon convened the final Council session on the first Sunday of December.

Rajon had organized this meeting as he had the inaugural Council session, having AT&T create a teleconference line similar to those used by corporations during a quarterly earnings call. This allows the speaker to deliver an uninterrupted voice message prior to opening the meeting up for comments. He also, for the first portion of the meeting, directed all the members to a WebEx meeting area. It was here where he posted the topics for each to read with the thought that discussion would then proceed, both live during the meeting and continuing afterwards in the Council's standard collaboration area.

The meeting started, promptly as always, and Rajon began by thanking the team members for their hard work and contributions over the past few weeks. He then moved briskly into recapping what he believed to be the key group recommendations, verbally enumerating the bullet points he pounded out on his workhorse, an aging Dell laptop, the prior day.

Virtually immediately, even before Rajon finished, some responses began popping up on the collaboration site. Thankfully, Rajon had remembered to mute the Beyonce song notification message he had configured to play when new postings arrived in the system. The feedback was hauntingly consistent in type and tenor with the prior comments of the group. Council1, Council2 and Council4 offered up various opinions or suggestions on what they thought would and would not work, without offering too many alternatives or bolt-on type ideas. Council3 and Council5 showed a bit more creativity, suggesting how some of the ideas might be expanded upon or enhanced and even, at this stage in the game, interjecting some new ideas.

It was amazing to Rajon how every team member continued to be dedicated to making this project a success. It was a testament to all those involved, since after several weeks one would expect some of the team members would have checked out faster than Jimmy Johnson in clean air at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It was for this reason that Rajon continued to try and be as diligent and respectful of all the comments as he possibly could, even those which arguably might be considered trite or banal. 

The final member of the group also was fully engaged. Council6, as was his wont, participated in the discussions on a daily basis, quickly and insightfully processing site content. He asked many probing questions, attempting to learn and understand as much as possible about each of the proposals. After a certain amount of fact-finding and deliberation, he then offered his opinions on the various proposals. Council6 did not usually offer up a witty repartee like some of the others, his input was generally a more introspective multiple paragraph passage which provided an opinion on viable options or next-steps, the pros and cons of different options and on some occasions minor suggestions on the content of the proposed action item. Most notably, at least to Rajon, Council6 seemed to be the one member of the team who understood that the time for brainstorming had passed. Instead, he tried to be sure the group agreed on some go-forward steps which were achievable, reasonable and helpful in moving the federation closer to the ultimate goal of winning the Jules Rimet Trophy.

The feedback and interaction on the collaboration site continued in this manner for another week or so, until Rajon decided to close the site for further input. He did this because some time was required for him to process all the feedback on the proposals during what he expected to be a relatively quiet last two weeks in December. During this period, Rajon's goal was to pull together a proposal for the organization to review within the Executive Committee at their next scheduled meeting the first week of January of 2011.

As Rajon began to study and reread all of the material posted during the ten plus weeks the Council was in place, he grew increasingly impressed with the contributions of Council6. He was temped to look under the covers to see which of the members had that profile, but initially resisted the urge to do so. After all, he wanted to maintain the integrity of the process by continuing to conceal the identities of each team member.

But after a few moments, Rajon rationalized it really did not matter who was who, since the input portion of the collaboration process had concluded. He, not unlike a curious five-year-old child, could not help himself. He logged out and then back into the system, this type with the Super User account, and entered the Administration area of the system. After another brief secondary pause, he clicked on the Users button. There he saw the identity of Council6. It was Rick Johnson. 

The more Rajon examined, refined and improved his original ten-step plan, the more daunting the list appeared. Each of the tasks standing alone might be enough to keep a single man busy. Collectively, they presented a monumental challenge. The question asking why there were so many initiatives on the table surely would be posed to Rajon by the Executive Committee of the federation. In fact, it was not at all difficult for Rajon to envision how one of the more supercilious members of the Committee might ask such a question. He could even imagine the way it would be asked, the question phrased something like: Oh Rajon. Oh Rajon. May I kindly inquire as to how you could possibly have the perspicacity to present such a grandiose plan without any consideration as to how one might actually implement such plans? A question like that was one Rajon needed to cut off at the proverbial pass.

So, Rajon quickly arrived to the conclusion that when it came to the recommendations, in actuality the last of these, the need to appoint a General Manager, should be moved to the head of the pack. At that point, Estrada formulated the opinion that it was a strategic imperative to find the proper leader to help the federation move forward on these endeavors.

But who could that person possibly be? Clearly, one approach might be to retain the services of a highfalutin executive search firm like a KornFerry to assist the federation in finding a strong candidate. That plan would require the preparation of a position profile including the desired set of background experiences, a salary range and a whole host of other background materials. The mere preparation of these materials would take weeks, if not months, and these were months Rajon did not feel the national soccer federation really had to burn.  

Of course, Rajon knew there was value to those activities as they helped a hiring manager move forward in a measured and careful manner. But, at the same time, time was of the essence and a sense of urgency raged in Rajon's mind. 2014 was indeed four long years away, but looking at that through a different prism, qualification was only two years away. And therefore the deadline to start finding players who were more talented and athletic and providing them with the necessary training and environment to help them improve and become cohesive was really only months or weeks away. Therefore, the identification of strategies designed to find, recruit, cultivate and develop top tier talent as quickly as possible was dominating Rajon's thoughts.

Rajon had an eighth grade Science teacher, Mr. Mayer, who had a pet phrase, one which he remembered and joked about with his friends to this day. The phrase was Be Bold, Not Bald. The teacher was referring to how a student took notes in their notebook, not a life lesson. However, amongst Rajon and his childhood compatriots, the phrase had evolved to mean they as leaders should try to think in an innovative manner and take strong and principled actions in their vocational endeavors.  

So, in that vein, Rajon began to make a few calls to his friends. Without divulging details, he told them about his need to find a leader for a project and asked them how they might go about doing so. The first few colleagues gave him the standard answers – try to define the requirements, understand the needs of the endeavor, assess a variety of candidates, involve others in the decision making process and arrive at a consensus. All were excellent comments and suggestions.

Rajon's fourth call was to Rick Johnson. This call, of course, was a bit more direct since Rick obviously was quite familiar with the challenges facing Rajon. After exchanging some pleasantries about life and the upcoming holiday weekend, Rajon asked his opinion on the issue of how to go about finding a leader. Rick paused for a moment, as he tended to do to collect his thoughts. He then responded in a way which genuinely surprised Rajon, both because of the content of the message and the brevity. Rick's comment was simple, telling Rajon You should follow your heart. When Rajon asked him to expand on that, Rick's simply said When you find a candidate you believe in, go and get him.  

Rajon thanked Rick for his advice, wished him and his family well, and got off the phone. He was surprised because he was expecting a project-management type response from Rick, and instead received the equivalent of someone telling him to follow a gut feeling.

Rajon had a lot of thinking to do. Rick's answer reminded him of Mr. Maier's comment. Although it was simplistic, the minimalism made it brilliant. Ultimately, as Rajon was beginning to understand more and more as a new leader, decisions like this were his most important responsibility. 

Christmas of 2010 drew nearer. As Thanksgiving had transitioned into Advent, the streets of Kensington were adorned with wreaths and lights, the town children continued the age-old tradition of caroling door-to-door on Friday evenings, and the township volunteer fire companies toured the streets with Santa proudly perched upon their gleaming, freshly polished fire trucks. All was well, as it generally was, in Rajon's hometown.

Yet, it was the fate and leadership of the National Team, not holiday cheer or his shopping list, which ruled the roost within Rajon's thoughts. Day after day, he split his time conducting historical research on soccer and scouring his extensive contact lists, folks located both on his old-school business card Rolodex or his electronic Microsoft Outlook contact list, continually working to gather more information to help him with his leadership decision.  

The candidate list grew and grew, ultimately totaling over twenty well-qualified individuals. It comprised a broad spectrum of the soccer community, including U.S.-based and foreign managers, former national team members and even a few former managers du jour, men with resumes spanning the globe not unlike the professional profile of the 1994 National Team Manager, Bora Milutinovic. But, whenever Rajon worked on this, the same thought continually nagged at him. Did he really need a man of experience? Was that really anything better than hiring a retread manager in baseball? Or would selecting someone like that be more of the same? Perhaps vision, management and leadership were actually more important. Following those thoughts, Rajon decided to break away from soccer and do some research on some other unorthodox sports executive appointments of the past few decades.  

One of the first interesting choices he happened upon was that of the Boston Red Sox and their youthful general manager, Theo Epstein. At the time Theo was initially appointed into that role, the youth of Epstein, professionally speaking, made his appointment close to a laughing stock. When one added into the equation the fact Epstein's management methodology was a heavy reliance on statistics and mathematics vis-à-vis the generally accepted method of letting a baseball man evaluate talent, this made Epstein's appointment highly controversial.

But history is the ultimate judge of events. In time, Epstein's selection was perceived to be not a misstep, but a stroke of genius. The Curse of the Red Sox which had existed since the trade of Babe Ruth some eighty years prior was eradicated by the strong, powerful team assembled by Epstein's seemingly overly analytical methods. As a result of the title he brought to Beantown, in a few short years Epstein's public persona had transformed from someone who was in over their head to a veritable boy genius.

Rajon knew that thinking outside the box and an over-reliance on statistics and non-traditional data needed to be balanced with a healthy respect for the tried and true methods of running an organization. But over the course of a couple of weeks, Rajon began to think more and more that some type of hybrid approach made all the sense in the world. Now, the question was, how does one find a manger capable of combining the finely balanced mixture of creative intelligence and historical wisdom which might well be required to make the National Team one of the world's elite teams.

Monday morning, December 20th, marked the beginning of the final true business week of the year. Rajon was spending it in the Federation's central office, the historic and stately U.S. Soccer House, where he recently moved into an office in the executive wing of the complex. During his Chicago work weeks, Rajon's general travel pattern was to fly to the Midwest on Sunday evening, but a Nor'easter featuring a healthy dose of ice and a wintry mix on Sunday morning totally fouled up American Airlines. So, this week Rajon was forced to rebook and catch a Continental flight out of Newark Liberty at 5:43 AM Monday morning. Leaving one's house at that hour is ungodly, with perhaps the only benefit being that 5:43AM might be one of the only times of the day flights actually left Newark on time.

So, feeling more than a bit bleary-eyed, Rajon landed at O'Hare at 7:50AM, caught a cab and rolled into the office at a fairly reasonable hour, something like 9:30 AM. The office carried the Bigelow brand of tea, one of his favorites, so when in the Chicago office it was tea, not coffee, which was Rajon's beverage of choice. As Rajon sipped on a delightful mug of Lemon Lift, he began sifting through his snail mail In the electronic age of 2010, there was nothing really interesting which one would expect might magically appear in the stack, but it was a nice sort of mindless task to get him into the swing of things.

About halfway through the pile, Milton Hawthorn popped into Rajon's office. Rajon, having worked the bulk of his career on the field as a coach or in a home office, still was not entirely accustomed to one of the more irritating aspects of the office environment, that being the dreaded pop-in. He ranked that activity right up there with the other annoying office traditions like water cooler talk and quarterly fire warden briefings. But he knew in his new position more people wanted to see him, and therefore he needed to be patient and reasonably accessible.

Hawthorn, like all the members of the Executive Council, was well aware that Rajon asked for and received from the organization a three to four month period to study the National Team Program. Being that the meeting to report findings was a scant few weeks away, coupled with the fact that Hawthorn was a