Pitch to Pro
Pitch to Pro is the official podcast of Ozark United FC. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, Northwest Arkansas. This is a journey. We want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, Our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way.
Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community, and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes, telling the story of our club.
Pitch to Pro
Stoppage Time Special: The American Fan Experience
Soccer's ascent in America has been remarkable – once considered a foreign oddity, it now captivates millions across the country. This Stoppage Time edition of the Pitch to Pro podcast explores this transformation through the eyes of passionate supporters who've witnessed the sport's incredible growth firsthand.
We dive deep into what makes supporting a national team different from club allegiance. While club soccer may showcase superior technical skills due to players training together year-round, there's something uniquely powerful about watching professionals return to represent their homeland. As Al Schaefer puts it, "It's fun to have pride for something that matters to you."
American soccer fans experience a fascinating duality: cheering for the globally dominant Women's National Team while embracing the underdog journey of the Men's squad. This contrast creates a rich emotional landscape where supporters can experience both the thrill of expected success and the nail-biting tension of potential upset victories. Recent challenges, like the Men's 5-1 loss to Colombia despite fielding players from the world's top leagues, highlight the ongoing evolution of US Soccer's standing on the international stage.
The conversation also explores how national team coaches face fundamentally different challenges than their club counterparts. While club managers can buy and sell players to fit their preferred style, international managers must adapt their approach to the citizenship-limited talent pool available to them – a constraint that creates unique strategic considerations.
Curious about the growing soccer culture in America? Watch the full episode to hear more perspectives on how this once-niche sport has become a defining part of our national sporting identity. New episodes of the Pitch to Pro podcast, the official podcast of Ozark United FC, release every Thursday on YouTube, Instagram, and all major podcast platforms.
Welcome to the Stoppage Time edition of the Pitch to Pro podcast. This is a highlight reel of some of the best moments from the show so far, and every other week we will be bringing you a special 5-7 minute segment featuring the best stories, tales and moments of the podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm a soccer fan In this country. It was kind of awkward, Right what?
Speaker 2:do you mean it's so boring? Yeah, you don't know. Yeah, seeing 0-0 games be the most fascinating thing to ever watch on TV. It was incredible. I agree with that. It's pretty awesome. So I think that's been awesome. You know, that's how I got into soccer and now you got, has grown, it has built up, it has exploded in popularity. You know, you see these it's, it's happening. Yeah, there's a lot of things people complain about the way our youth systems are set up. Right, hate a play or whatnot.
Speaker 1:You know you need a field and a ball, couple backpacks, yeah your play, your play, and that's what's amazing about it it's so accessible. So that's great. That's an incredible story and one that I, too, one day hope that I get to live out, when maybe in my lifetime, win a World Cup and be able to celebrate in that way. I'm going to hold it out. Hang on to this moral quote.
Speaker 2:I don't care what it takes.
Speaker 1:So you took that and now have pivoted that into your, you know, maybe not entirely lifelong, but a very large part of your life as a soccer supporter. And specifically, let's get into what does it mean to be a supporter of the national team and talk a little bit about that versus your club? You know that some people may be very passionate about their club, team, um, and talk a little bit about the american outlaws and sure, what is that culture like? And, uh, talk a little bit about that, I mean soccer, the variety of packages offered.
Speaker 2:You know international club, uefa, all this stuff. You know people like what they like. For me it's the international game. I love nation versus nation soccer versus Asian soccer and while I admit that the club game is way more technically good because these guys play together for lots of money all the time, I still love when these professionals come back to their country and represent. It's fun. It's fun to have a little pride for something being something. To you. It matters. You know we could see the obvious difference. Anybody who's a SOG fan knows the difference between our men's team and our women's team in the scope of their success.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's still kind of exciting in a lot of ways to support an underdog yeah, which is our men's team, yeah, and every victory is just that it's it's awesome we almost kind of have the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1:Yes, when you get to support a global powerhouse. Yeah, you go watch a global powerhouse and watch the women handle some business, and then you get the underdog story with the men. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:You know, the whole Columbia game was.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, for those that don't know, we just had a tune-up game for the Copa America. We just had a tune-up game for the Copa America and we unfortunately lost to Colombia 5-1, although it was 2-1 in roughly the 60th minute. So they were doing okay and then the wheels kind of came off. Hopefully they're getting the cobwebs out now in these tune-up games. That's what they're for Ahead of the tournament itself.
Speaker 2:That was a rough one, considering the lineup we had. Yeah, you're like, okay, this looks like our guys.
Speaker 1:There's that evolution of increasingly becoming a little bit less of the underdog but still an underdog as we continue to progress as a soccer nation on of the underdog but still an underdog as we continue to progress as a soccer nation. On the men's side, I think this was the first time, or one of the first times, you have had the starting 11 all playing for club soccer in the top five leagues in the world. And unfortunately that's the thing about. To Al's point, that's the thing about the national team. Your player pool is limited to those that have um citizenship in the united states, that you don't necessarily have to have been born here, but you have to have citizenship in the country and so. So that limits your player pool, whereas on the club side you can buy and sell players from all over the world and so if you have a specific system that you like to play, you can go and buy and sell those players to your heart's delight and within your budget and the rules, but by and large can kind of shape and mold your team around. That, by and large can kind of shape and mold your team around that for sure. On the national team side you have your player pool where the coach's job, at least in my opinion, there are coaches that will still try to impose their specific style of play, um, but I think, from my perspective, it's the job of the national team manager to understand the talent that they have and then fit the system and their style of play to that for the best possible results with the talent and the players that they have.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us for this stoppage time special of the Pitch to Pro podcast. If you've enjoyed the conversation, you can click watch the full episode here. Be sure to tune in next Thursday for a new episode of the Pitch to Pro podcast here. Be sure to tune in next Thursday for a new episode of the Pitch to Pro podcast, the official podcast of Ozark United FC, available on YouTube, instagram and everywhere you get your podcasts.