Welcome to the GP Soccer Podcast! (S14 E19)

                    Welcome to the GP Soccer Podcast!  (S14 E19)

                                    Bonus World Cup Coverage!

Proud member of the Sports History Network and endorsed by the National                                                  Soccer Coaches Association of Canada.     

Welcome to this special edition of the GP Soccer Podcast! Listeners of the show can now enjoy bonus content featuring- "Stories from The World Cup". Host Giovanni Pacini each week will highlight World Cup stories that typically don't get front page coverage but are interesting and fascinating nonetheless!

The GP Soccer Podcast features new shows every Wednesday and can be found anywhere you listen to your podcasts. Listeners are encouraged to "Like" and "Subscribe" the GP Soccer Podcast and share the show amongst those within their social media network! Those interested in advertising on the show can contact host Giovanni Pacini at gp4soccer@yahoo.com. And be sure to check out the show website at www.gpsoccerpodcast.com. 

                    GP Soccer Podcast enjoys continued support from-
United Goalkeeping Alliance - Music Meets Sports - National Soccer Coaches Association of Canada - The Sports History Network - Feedspot.com - GP Voice Over Services - Zone 14 Coaching

Host Giovanni Pacini's new book- "The Importance of Unstructured Free Play: Coaching with a Street Soccer Mentality is now available on Amazon!

GP Soccer Podcast welcomes a new sponsor- Zone 14 Coaching! Check it out at Zone14coaching.com. Use promo code GP20 for 20% off!

To purchase a signed copy of Dr. Joe Machnik's book- "From the Sandlots to the World Cup: 7 Decades of American Soccer", e-mail "Dr. Joe" at joemachnik@no1soccercamps.com. Be sure to mention the GP Soccer Podcast!

Enjoy the show!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Well, hey there, everyone. Giovanni Pacini here, your host of the GP Soccer Podcast. Welcoming all of you to Stories from the World Cup, as I've noted to uh to all of you in the last couple of episodes that I'm uh shifting gears, if you will, in my reporting of the World Cup, in uh trying to find some stories that that don't necessarily uh you know hit the front page or uh come up first on your on your social media uh platforms, um but they're interesting stories nonetheless. Uh a little bit of housekeeping first, um including this episode. We're gonna have uh three more episodes uh for the GP Soccer Podcast, stories from the World Cup uh this week and then last couple of weeks, and we'll wrap up just after the uh World Cup final. And then going forward, uh you'll still get your GP Soccer Podcast. I promise you, uh it will be the best of the GP Soccer Podcast. Uh those are the series of shows that I always play uh for all of you, my wonderful listening audience, between seasons. Season fifteen. Speaking of between seasons, season fifteen will kick off on September the ninth. Circle that in your calendar. September the ninth, uh, season fifteen of the GP Soccer Podcast will indeed kick off. And uh as always, you'll get an array of wonderful guests, great commentary, uh, and all the things that uh we follow in this great game of soccer. So September the ninth, season fifteen will be kicking off of the world of the GP Soccer Podcast, season fifteen. Now I'm gonna break a rule a little bit here. I promised all of you, and I've kind of held true to that, uh, that I'm gonna be sharing with you stories from the world from the uh from the World Cup. But it this this tournament has been so dramatic that I can't help but at least offer some some some two cents worth. I mean, this World Cup has already felt less like a tournament, more like a rolling storm. It's loud, it's unpredictable, and it's almost impossible to look away from. Across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, uh, this expanded field has produced a kind of, well heck, chaos that makes knockout football it irresistible. There have been late winners, penalty shootouts, red cards, heroic goalkeeping. My goodness, the goalkeeping has been phenomenal. And favorites uh settling discovering that reputation means very little once the whistle blows. Some of the things that uh I'd like to share with you, my own two cents here. I mean, one of the tournament's defining matches came in Mexico City, uh, where England edged uh co-host Mexico 3-2 in a round 16 thriller. Uh Jude Bellingham struck twice in quick succession to stun and really stun the uh the home crowd. Uh Harry Kane converted a penalty, and then uh the match to tilted to pure drama when England uh were reduced to 10 men. Uh Mexico, as you might expect, responded with urgency and emotion, and they cut the deficit and pushing deep into stoppage time, but England held on uh through pressure, noise, and a wave of Mexican attacks. It was a highly, highly entertaining game. Now, in the knockout stage, has been defined by teams refusing to accept the end. That's an understatement. Belgium produced one of the, I think, one of the wildest escapes of the tournament, rallying from two goals down late against Senegal before completing the uh the comeback in extra time. Egypt survived Australia after a tense draw and a penalty shootout. Wow, Argentina, my goodness, talk about a match. Argentina, we're dragging into a dramatic, extra time fight by everyone's favorite team, I think, now. Well, maybe besides Norway. Cape Verde, before uh finally escaping with a late winner. Each match seems to ask the same question, at least in my head, how much pressure can a team survive before the dream breaks? Now, you know, part of the magic has come from the teams that entered the tournament uh outside the spotlight and kind of forced their way into the story. Canada found a 92nd-minute winner against South Africa to keep its host nation dream alive. Morocco knocked out the Netherlands, another great match, on penalties, and then overwhelmed Canada in the round of 16. Norway, Norway stunned Brazil while giving the tournament another seismic result and setting up a quarterfinal meeting with England. Another great match to be coming up. Now, even in defeat, Cave Birds run became one of the most emotional threads of the competition, a reminder that the World Cup can turn smaller football nations into global protagonists for a few unforgettable nights. Now, the biggest names have not been allowed to coast. Killing Mbappe has driven France forward. Erling Holland has powered Norway's rise. Lionel Messi has kept Argentina alive in tense moments, and Harry Kane. Harry Kane continues to shoulder England's scoring burden. Yet this has not been a tournament ruled out by icons. Bellingham's performance against Mexico, Stephanie Staco's late strike for Canada, and Joan Arias's decisive goal for Colombia have shown how quickly a single moment can turn a player into the face of the name of a nation stunner. Now, what about the road ahead? Now, the tournament feels wide open. It really does. Now, France, to be honest, still looks formidable. They are indeed my pick to win this whole whole tournament. Argentina remains dangerous for as long as Messi is doing what Messi is doing, they will always be dangerous. Spain and Portugal carry star power, and England have survived the kind of night that can harden a contender. But the drama, the drama so far has made one thing very clear, ladies and gentlemen. This World Cup is not following a script. It is being written in stoppage time from the penalty spot in front of roaring host crowds and by players who know that one touch can change everything. This has indeed been an absolutely joyful, dramatic, entertaining, wonderful World Cup. And I think uh I think the best is is yet to come. So I broke a little bit of a rule there, ladies and gentlemen. I Thomas I wouldn't do any kind of analysis, but my goodness, I couldn't help it. I couldn't help myself. But we'll get back now to uh stories from the World Cup. We're gonna break for a quick commercial message, you know how that works. And on the other side, we'll uh I'll share with you two or three stories from uh stories from the World Cup. This is Giovanni Piccini. This is the GP Soccer Podcast. Don't you dare go anywhere. Youth soccer has changed. Expectations are higher, but systems haven't kept up. Coaches juggle endless tasks, players chase progress they can't measure, and clubs struggle to create consistency across teams. 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Visit zone14coaching.com and use the promo code GP20 for 20% off. And if you want to outfit your entire organization or even just one team, contact Zone 14 Coaching at Zone14Coaching.com for bulk pricing. Zone 14 Coaching, where high-level soccer knowledge and structured planning is accessible and simple.

SPEAKER_04 9:22

Hi, I'm Nico Calabria, captain of the U.S. amputee soccer team, and you're listening to the GP Soccer Podcast with host Giovanni Pacini.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

And welcome back to the GP Soccer Podcast, Stories from the World Cup. And I'm going to share with you this particular story from Miles Howard. And Miles Howard is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe, and he's the founder of the Walking City Trails. This is entitled Getting to Gillette Stadium is Expensive, so I walked instead. Goes like this. Hoffing my way up Washington Street toward the summit of West Roxbury's Bellevue Hill, the highest natural point in the city of Boston, I have to remind myself to look over my shoulder for a stunning view of the city skyline. On a regular walk, this city vista could be a climactic reward for an accrued mileage. But on this particular broiling, sticky Saturday morning, the view was only a measure of how far I had left to walk. About 15 miles. Because you see, I had decided to walk the 17 miles from Boston to Gillette Stadium to catch a glimpse of the World Cup. The first and only professional soccer game I had ever been to at Prague's Fortuna Arena was all the more fun because my friend Odrej and I were able to walk there, mingling with fans, drinking beer, and singing as they made their way to the game. I had a feeling it would be different, different story each trying to reach Gillette Stadium, rebranded Boston Stadium for the World Cup. As if a four-figure prices for World Cup tickets weren't enough, the prospect of enduring traffic jams and lawn jams and then coughing up $100 plus dollars to park on someone's lawn or paying only $80 for a round-trip train ticket made the games feel even further out of reach. But then I heard about the Europeans who wandered on wondered on Reddit and asked whether they could walk the 12 miles from New York City to MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where eight World Cup matches are being held. New York officials were quick to dissuade the aspiring gamblers, pointed to hurdles like highways without sidewalks, mucky wetlands, and the big one, a ban on pedestrian access to the stadium for the duration of the games. There is no pedestrian ban in place here, though. The forecasts for the day at Foxboro's first game, Haiti versus Scotland, call for temperatures in the high eighties. So I left my apartment with Mark Zuckerberg amount of sun green applied to my face, an umbrella for added UV protection, and a backpack full of water and electrolyte packets. I didn't have a ticket, but that was fine. It was the journey I was interested in. My plan was to reach the stadium by 6 p.m. in order to mingle with the buses full of fans arriving ahead of the 9 p.m. game and then catch a bus back to Boston. Now as I set out, I had a hunch that somewhere along the route to Gillette, the joy of the World Cup would pop up in unexpected places. But in the first five miles from Forest Hills, up and over Bellevue Hill to Dedham, that tested that optimism. I had started early in the morning, but I still looked like I had been trekking through the rainforest through the midday. The sweat poured down my face as I crossed above I ninety five, less congested than I had expected for game day, and by the time I got to Norwood, I was struck by how quiet the walk had been so far. Everybody else appeared to be in the inside, sheltering from the heat. So I joined them, ducking into a pizza join for a slice and a rest. When I emerged to resume the pilgrimage, a flash of blue and red down the street grabbed my attention. Ten people grabbed and get garbed in Haiti team jerseys were gathering around a table set up on the sidewalk, laden with a multi-course feast. Two of the guys wore Haiti flags like capes. The enthusiasm of their game day celebration powered me through the next few miles of the walk. Still, even with regular breaks, I was getting tired, and mostly I was weary of walking by myself. But then I spotted a lone man in a kilt. As I got closer, I saw that the Scotsman was walking next to another sock event sporting a Haiti, sporting Haiti swag. The two strangers were strolling along the stadium from where they were staying at the Airbnb's, sipping beverages and shooting the breeze. It was around this point in Walpole Heights, three miles, three miles from Gillette Stadium, when the traffic on the road, pedestrian and cars, finally started stacking up. I caught up with more tartan army pedestrians dressed in navy and heading to the game on foot. The rich brogues and the crackling beer cans became an ubiquitous, ubiquitous as the sound of cars. Now when we reached the t the terminus of Washington Street, the road I had taken, more or less from Boston, where the cars veered left for Route 1 and the stadium, those of us on foot kept right and made our way to a wooded path at the end of Sheffield Road, which allowed for a more direct and admission-free passage to a parking lot directly across from the stadium. I had made it and right on time. Now as we reached the sidewalk directly across from Gillette, we were given a hero's welcome from the cheering Scots who had charted yellow school buses to get them from Providence to the stadium. Big Scottish flags were unfurled. A young lad handed me anarchanta tall boy though through one of the bus windows as it crept by. And after my first lukewarm gulp, it hit me. You can take the World Cup out of walkable places, but you can't take away the hard, wide urge to venture out on a game day, come together and take a rowdy walk downtown or uptown, or sometimes mile beyond the edge of town. My goodness, there's there's a hearty soul walking from Boston all the way to Gillette Stadium to uh to take part in the World Cup. We're gonna break for our last commercial break here on the GP Soccer Podcast, uh stories from the World Cup, and then we'll re-engage on the other side. Don't you dare go anywhere. It is time to bring back the game that teaches players how to think. Modern youth soccer is more organized than ever, yet many young players are missing one of the most powerful development tools in the game: unstructured free play. The importance of unstructured free play, coaching with a street soccer mentality, challenges coaches, parents, and player development leaders to rethink how young athletes learn. Drawing from decades of coaching experience, child development principles, and the timeless lessons of street soccer, author Giovanni Piccini shows why creativity, decision-making, resilience, joy, and soccer IQ grow when players are given space to explore the game. The importance of unstructured free play, coaching with a street soccer mentality, is a book for grassroots coaches, youth soccer directors, parents, educators, and anyone who believes that player development should produce more than organized drill followers. It offers a practical approach for balancing structure with freedom using guided learning, constraints, small set of games, reflection, and activity designs that let the game be the ultimate teacher. Order your copy of The Importance of Unstructured Free Play, Coaching with a Street Soccer Mentality on Amazon Today.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

Hey, this is Brad Knighton, goalkeeper coach for the New England Revolution 2. And you're listening to the GP Soccer Podcast with your host, Giovanni Piccini.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

And this next piece is from Nancy Armour. She's a columnist from USA Today. And this piece is entitled World Cup Brings Up the Best in the U.S. For us. It goes like this. The soccer, and the goodness of ordinary Americans, saved this World Cup. It began under such a dismal cloud, our government using it as an excuse to settle political scores, while FIFA, along with some local officials and businesses, took advantage of the opportunity to gouge fans. And then Lawrence, Kansas, out of its went out of its way to make Algeria feel at home. The Kansas band even learning how to play Lafenex national anthem. And the Boston area, rather than calling the cops on the unruly party that is Scotland's Tartan Army, rolled up the carpets, grabbed the glass of its own, and sent out for more snacks. Lionel Messi, ageless wonder that he is, had a hat trick in what has to be, maybe be, oh, who cares if he plays until he's 80, the last world, his last World Cup. And Little Cape Verde, with a smaller population than that any host cities that host cities in this tournament, and Congo improbably made the knockout rounds while two times World Cup champion Uruguay was sent packing. The World Cup has been everything it was intended to be, and nothing we feared it would ever become. Boston, you've embraced us like our long-lost cousins who turned up unannounced, drank all your beer, decorated your statues, and somehow remain welcome. You are all welcome back to ours to keep this party going, the Tartan Army said in a thank you note to Boston. This is the largest World Cup in history. Forty-eight teams up from 32, and for a good while, it seemed as if it was going to be the messiest. Surely, there would be blowouts with teams like Curacao ranked 82nd in the world, and Haiti, number 83, and New Zealand number 85 added to the mix. There was fear foreign fans would stay at home, made to feel unwelcome by a U.S. government that decided to be a bouncer rather than a host. FIFA made tickets prohibitively expensive. Hotel owners jacked up rates. New Jersey Transit tried to hike the price of the train to MetLife Stadium more than ten times the regular rate. But all those fears, all that angst, turned out to be overblown. Out of the 72 games in the group stage, only nine were blowouts, and most were wildly entertaining. K. Verd, playing in his first ever World Cup, held mighty Spain and Uruguay to draws. Eloy Room made 15 saves against Ecuador to earn Curacao its first ever point in the World Cup. Bosnia-Herzegovina staged an upset by tying co-host Canada in the team's opener. Iran and Egypt had two goals, four yellow cards, and a save penalty and a bicycle kick clearance in just the first half of their game. Congo scored twice against Uzbekistan after the 78th minute to secure its spot in the knockout round. While Messi leads the golden boot race, Killin Mbappe, Erlin Holland, and Usmani Dembele are not far behind. But it is the arms wide open welcome by the American people that has made this World Cup so enchanting. We are made to think that we are a country ripping apart at the seams far more to divide us than unite us. We are told we have to turn inward, the good natured openness that is uniquely American, a relic of the past. And yet we have thrown ourselves into our role as the world's host with gusto. One of the things that we really like and we learn from you is that the way that you approach life, said U.S. men's national team coach Mariso Pochettino, an Argentinian who has spent much of his adult life in Europe. People are very approachable and make you feel comfortable. It's very welcoming, Pochettino said. When you go around America, that for me was a massive surprise. All are different from different states and and everything. But you have the same sense of the human being. You always want to welcome people, you make you make people belong and quick to that to earn their place. What makes the World Cup so special, even more than the Olympics, is that fans are united around one thing. They take over cities and towns where their teams are staying and playing jovially, infusing it with their culture and traditions. Boston, I dare say, will never look at traffic cones the same way again. Rather than being annoyed at the disruptions, Americans have jumped at the opportunity to expand their worlds. We hopped on the bandwagons and became surrogate supporters. We looked for ways to make our new friends feel at home. And when foreign visitors were awestruck by our quirks and unique traditions, we didn't get angry or offended. We offered suggestions of other things that might amuse them. The tournament has not been perfect. The treatment of Iran's team was abysmal and will be the great shame of the World Cup. FIFA missed a real opportunity by pricing out so many fans. But the World Cup has not been the grim experience so many of us feared. That's partly because of the soccer, but it's largely because of us. Given the chance to welcome the world and embrace our shared humanity, we have not disappointed. The World Cup has brought out the best in us. So I I couldn't think of a better uh piece to end uh this week's uh episode of the GP Soccer Podcast. I think that sums it sums it all up. So there you have it today, folks, uh the GP Soccer Podcast. Stories from the World Cup. We've got uh after this week, a couple more weeks, and then we'll get into the summer uh best of the uh GP Soccer Podcast, and then we'll kick off again uh with regular episodes on September the 9th. So, as always, that's our show for today. If you like what you hear, please tell everyone and remember those likes matter, likes matter. Uh helps me, helps my sponsors. You can follow the GP Soccer Podcast all over social media, and new episodes are available every Wednesday morning. Don't forget, don't forget, to check out my website at GPSoccerpodcast.com. And if you're interested in advertising on the show, then email me at GP4Soccer, and that's the number four at Yahoo.com. This is your host, Giovanni Picini, and join the World Cup. And I will catch you later.