Winning isn’t everything, and for Vice President of FC Dallas Youth Club Chris Hayden that's a point of emphasis.
Although FCD sees tremendous accomplishments on the field with its results, Hayden doesn’t measure FCD’s success in wins. He looks to continue building more than a championship team with pre-academy trials beginning Monday for players born in 2002, 2001 and 2000.
“We’re trying to develop individual players,” Hayden said. “The teams can be successful and win a lot, but if we’re not producing players or helping players get to the first team, then probably [the academy] is not a success. We’re helping kids with their pathways to college and we’re helping them with their habits and training habits, but the goal of the program is really to produce professionals.“
And FC Dallas has done well in reaching its goal, leading the league with the most Homegrown signings and also with seven former-academy players currently on the roster.
“We’ve been pretty fortunate that we’ve had talented kids be a part of our program, and we have clear examples of kids that we’ve signed to the first team,” Hayden said. “It’s easy for a young player with a lot of talent to see that there is a pathway to pro soccer here and that we can help facilitate that.”
Hayden said high technical ability, technique that can be applied to make good soccer decisions and personality are a few of the traits he and his staff are looking for in players for its pre-academy teams.
“We’re with them every day,” Hayden said. “A lot of the responsibility falls on them to utilize the program that’s given to them to better themselves so we want a kid that has that kind of determination and fight and desire and commitment.”
The FCD staff is able to see its pre-academy players everyday through the school program, which affords the club to have its kids train and then be at home in the evening to study and eat better, Hayden said.
“They’re training more and at times of the day when they are fresher and then they can recover faster,” he said. “We feel like not only can we train frequently, but the quality of the training is better.”
Hayden said the teams have a lot of kids inside the club who want to play with academy, and the teams also have attention from players locally who are not with the club and people who want to move to Dallas to be a part of the MLS pathway.
“In all of those areas, I think kids feel like there’s a real connection between what we’re doing at the youth level and what’s happening at the first team level,” Hayden said. “Never have we been stronger in that connection.”
The trials for U-13 and U-14 academy begin Monday and run through June 10. Trials for the U-15s will begin June 24.
