It can only happen one step at a time, but in the transition from a centrally-based setup for elite youth players to one with multiple high-level opportunities for our best young men, the things being done at FC Dallas make for a good model.

Player Development Director Oscar Pareja, a former professional player with FC Dallas as well as a Colombian international, is seeing the club’s academy and overall youth setup as a chance to advance the game in this country, as well as to help the club meet its goals.

Speaking exclusively to TopDrawerSoccer.com, Pareja said his experience as an assistant coach at the U17 Men’s National Team’s Bradenton Residency program helped form his perspective with the setup at FC Dallas, where he has been on board for 18 months.

{mosimage:300}“When I went to Bradenton and saw the model and what they have there, I saw it is very important for this country. I understood why it is important to have 40 players who are committed 100 percent to the game, with no other distractions from soccer and school. It is a key part of the development of U.S. soccer players,” Pareja said. “After I moved back to Dallas, I think we can duplicate what they have in Bradenton. There are more players who are committed to the game and really want to go to the next level. They want to be more professional. We can give that to them and take the money part out of the equation for the sake of the club and the players. The residency program the Federation has is important and I think we can help them and create more top programs and players who can go on to be in things like the national team.”

The FC Dallas program is beginning to attract top players from areas other than North Texas, but Pareja acknowledged there is an advantage to a top prospect being able to stay with his family as he develops. He cited his own professional youth development in Colombia, noting that even as he made regional and national selections and was with a top pro club’s youth setup, he never left his family home.

He said professionalism is perhaps the single biggest draw his club’s youth program, highlighted by a pair of USSF Development Academy teams, has going for it.

“What the players are seeing, and I want to be respectful to the clubs here in Dallas and in Texas, but we are dedicating a lot of time to do things in a professional way,” he said. “That is attractive for the players first. The facilities and fields are an attraction as well and so is the access to all the things we do for players, but we’re very proud of the mentality we’ve developed in the program, to take teams and players to the next level. We know they are not a professional yet, but we want to treat them like that and want them to feel like that, then I want those players to give me back the commitment and treat the program in a professional way. When everybody is thinking like that it is a special thing and people start to get somewhere. Everybody is motivated for that.”

Pareja added that while younger age groups have difficulty in replicating that (and certainly those teams are not expense free to the players the way the academy program is), he and the coaching staff still aim to set it apart.

“We try to bring up kids from an early age with that approach, to understand about being a professional and being in touch more with the game,” he said. “When they are 9, 10 years old, they are already starting to talk about the professional team and players and talking more about themselves, talking about Barcelona, Real Madrid and Man United. It’s something honestly, I didn’t see before. You go and talk with kids, well before they didn’t know much about the game itself. Now we have players and coaches who are involved with the professional side of things and understand the passion and ability it takes to be successful. That’s what we want more of, so everybody has that mentality.”

Pareja disagrees with those who say that American players are good physically but not technically or tactically at young ages.

“I’ve discovered many players who have very good technique, but we don’t train with enough frequency here. If we do that we can produce very good players who are technical and just as importantly, who know the game. Knowing the game is not just knowing the basics, but knowing how to feel the game. It’s an important part of development and all of the coaches here are trying to produce those kinds of players. That is the core of development and insight.”

Pareja spoke happily about ongoing programs in which FC Dallas players and staff go into areas of the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area and, while reaching out to the community, have also discovered promising youth players they are able to bring into their program and with it provide much greater prospects for playing college soccer than they would have had.

Another success story is recent FC Dallas signing Bryan Leyva. While the 17-year old wasn’t discovered by the club (he was a U14 Boys National Team standout and then had brief stints in Spain and Mexico), he has played for more than a year with FC Dallas and now has become one of the very first legitimate signings by an MLS club of a youth player. Whether he makes it is yet to be seen, but of course no MLS youth professional will make it if none of them ever sign – now Leyva has.

“FC Dallas gave Bryan a routine that he needed, and he didn’t have to leave his family to do it,” Pareja said. “We want to be realistic, but for those players who have a hope and are dreaming about pro soccer, we want to give them a chance if they show that kind of ability.”

Other staff members Pareja cited as part of the FC Dallas approach to you are overall youth director John Ellinger, academy director Chris Clarke, director of youth coaching Chris Hayden, plus coaches Francisco Arias, Marco Feruzzi and Bobby Rhine. The club has teams as young as U7 and 50 teams in the Dallas Academy setup (ages U7 to U10).