USL PRO Feature
Thursday, January 3, 2013
In a bid to find the type of player that can push a team to a title, USL PRO clubs will go far and wide in the offseason to look for talent.
Charleston’s Mike Anhaeuser and Andrew Bell make a regular trip to Jamaica, which has seen players such as Dane Kelly and Navion Boyd join the Battery to great success. VSI Tampa Bay FC has been in Brazil, looking for players who can help make a difference in its inaugural season, while Orlando City’s Adrian Heath visited Senegal and Ghana last September hoping to find another Adama Mbengue.
Of all the clubs in the league, however, no-one might see more players in an offseason than the Wilmington Hammerheads’ David Irving. And this weekend, Irving will be back in his native England at the Football Association’s new training facility at St. Georges Park in Burton hoping to find players that can help his side return to the USL PRO Championship Game for a second consecutive season.
Teaming with Pro Soccer Consulting, which helps teams organize combines throughout the world, the Hammerheads will have the chance to scout players who regularly contact the team from Europe, looking for a chance to break into soccer in the United States.
“Paul Taylor and his son run [PSC], and they’re located in the Midlands,” Irving said recently. “Every day or so I get an email, or most coaches will get an email, from players in England, Europe, wanting to try out, wanting to try the American experience, so we put our heads together and said, ‘well maybe we can do one in England, so they don’t have to pay the airfare and get the visa and so on,’ so it’s a little experiment, we’ll try it and see what we can do.”
The Hammerheads have also had offseason combines in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and have continued their relationship with the PDL’s Ventura County Fusion, who will hold their own professional combine on January 19-20 in California. Building those relationships, which has helped players such as Hagop Chirishian, Manny Guzman and Dylan Riley make the jump to the professional ranks, has proven key to the Hammerheads’ success in the past two seasons.
“Over the years, your record stands for itself if you’ve got an eye for talent,” Irving said. “You’ve got to put it together and try to make it work, sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong, but over the course of my career, my percentage has been pretty good. There’s bumps in the road sometimes, because this league is tough. You’ve got teams like Orlando, they’re a quality side, Charleston, Rochester, you’ve got new teams coming in like Tampa and Phoenix, everybody’s got their own resources of players.”
Irving is hoping that the club’s new venture with PSC will become a new resource for the Hammerheads. With the world-class facility having opened in the past six months, the opportunity to impress Irving and his assistant coach Mark Briggs is one every player attending this weekend hopes to take advantage of.
“We’re staying on site, so we’ll have meetings and I’ll get to know the players,” Irving said. “It’s a wonderful facility, it’s just opened in the last six months, so it’s something that we’re able to do and time will tell if it’s a success. We’re excited about it, and hopefully we can get some players who can help the Hammerheads for 2013.”
Whatever this weekend brings, though, Irving will soon be off to find more pieces of the puzzle as he builds a squad for the new season.
“We can’t just rest on our laurels, sit back and say here we are,” he said. “It don’t work like that, you’ve got to get off your behind and go and shake the trees a little bit and see what you can find. That’s the challenge of it. Is it easy? No, it isn’t easy, but you’ve got to have a network and a system, you’ve got to have contacts and relationships that you build and develop over the years.”