While the boys in green have not travelled to North America for the World Cup this week, a group of young US players are preparing to cross the Atlantic to play in an Irish tournament.
Speaking from the sweltering Florida heat in his US home, children’s soccer coach Gavin Carlin recalls standing at the side of a rainy pitch in Strabane, Co Tyrone last July, the town where he spent the first three years of his life.
He was watching a group of Florida girls he coaches playing in Derry’s youth soccer tournament, the Foyle Cup, cheered on by parents and supporters. “I thought, ‘Jesus, they are actually here’,” he says. “If they’ll follow you from Ponte Vedra to Strabane, they’ll follow you to Mars,” he laughs, having retained his Donegal lilt after 14 years in the US.
Carlin will repeat the journey with boys and girls he trains again this year. This time, the number of players coming to the Derry youth soccer tournament has grown from 25 to 70. The six-day tournament kicks off on July 20th, the day after the World Cup final, and hosts 11,500 players aged 8-19.
RM Block
Carlin, who grew up across the border in Killygordan, Co Donegal, playing for Ireland at underage level and contracted for West Bromwich Albion at 16. But injury brought his premiership dreams to an end, and he moved Stateside in 2012 on a full scholarship as goalkeeper for Jacksonville University’s soccer team.
Soccer has long played second (or even fourth) fiddle in America’s crowded sporting landscape, up against American football, basketball and baseball.
However, in recent years soccer has seen enormous growth in the US, especially among younger people and migrant populations (one in four Florida residents was born in another country).
“When I arrived, you could barely get a soccer game on TV,” says Carlin. Since then, the NBC began airing the Premier League, with some of the early morning matches garnering millions of views.
Argentina’s Lionel Messi joining Inter Miami three years ago, took the sport to “another stratosphere”, says Carlin.
“Soccer is not ingrained in the culture here, it’s more of a top-down niche sport, like rugby,” says Carlin. About a quarter of Americans identify as fans, compared to half across the world, according to US media research firm Nielsen.
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The last time the World Cup was held in the US, 1994, Carlin was aged three. The tournament begins next week, with matches across the US, Canada and Mexico. Among the 16 host cities is Miami, Florida. The Donegal man hopes it will bring the sport in the US to “another level”.
He also hopes it will inspire the next generation for his thriving business, which mainly coaches children aged 8-12 in Ponte Vedra and Jacksonville. His firm, Good Lad Soccer, started 10 years ago and has since trained more than 1,400 players.
“I fell into coaching by mistake” says Carlin, explaining that after college he could barely afford the rent. When coaching at a local soccer club, a parent asked him to do a session with their child, handing him $40. “I thought ‘Oh my God he thinks my time is worth $40, maybe I can scale this thing’.”
Carlin saw an opportunity in summer camps, with very few indoor camps in Jacksonville, where July and August daytime temperatures are in the 30s. In 2016, Carlin took a risk using most of his and his American wife’s savings to rent a summer camp venue. “I didn’t think anyone would show up. Ninety kids did.”
However, Carlin has had to adapt his coaching style. “You don’t coach Floridian kids the way you coach the Irish, if I did, I’d be out of a business,” he says. They expect a “positive can-do style”. If you explain to US children what you are doing, why and how they can win “they’ll be eating out of the palm of your hands”, he says.
Nonetheless, Carlin feels it’s the Irish approach which sets him apart from the competition. “I can name all the kids, what club they play for,” he says. “The personal touch goes a long way in a country like America where you don’t always know your neighbour.”
He credits the Irish welcome for making last year’s trip to Ireland a “huge success”.
“The Derry people couldn’t have done enough,” he says. This year they are hoping to bring home some trophies. The Americans tend to be a “wee bit fitter”, he adds.
“Last year, we were nearly the star attraction, the Irish kids were asking the Americans for their Instagram handles,” he says, adding that the proliferation of US culture in Ireland helps. The games were “rough and tumble” but in the end they shook hands, he says.
Carlin hopes the benefits of the exchange will move beyond sport, giving families involved a deeper understanding of the north west of Ireland, its culture and history.
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For Carlin, it was moving to the US which made him appreciate being Irish, with many having an affiliation or ancestry.
“The Irish work ethic means you can make a great life for yourself over here” says the infectiously positive Carlin. “It is what it says on the tin, it’s a great country if you really go after it. Highs are highs and lows are lows.”
Now, raising his daughter (3) in Florida, he is excited that she is growing up somewhere that she knows she can “do whatever she wants, astronaut or brain surgeon”.
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