Trailer: Chasing the Game – Youth Soccer in America

Soccer. Everywhere else, it’s four cones and a ball. In America, it’s spreadsheets, flights, and hotel bills.

Chasing the Game is a new podcast from Liron Unreich and Matt Tartaglia, two soccer dads trying to understand how the world’s simplest game got so complicated in the U.S.

Each week, they talk with the people who’ve lived it, from Ben Olsen and Luis Robles to Noah Ross of NYCFC’s Youth Academy — unpacking the culture, costs, and chaos of youth soccer in America.

Join us as we chase the game, one story, one season, one sideline at a time.

What is Chasing the Game - Youth Soccer in America?

Chasing the Game: Youth Soccer in America is a weekly podcast for soccer parents, coaches, and players who want to understand how youth soccer development really works in the United States.
Hosted by two dads, filmmaker Liron Unreich and investor Matt Tartaglia, the show covers everything from grassroots soccer to elite pathways like MLS NEXT and ECNL. Combining data, real experience, and expert insights from academy directors, college coaches, and former pros, each episode explains what families truly need to know.

Weekly episodes focus on the core aspects of youth soccer: player development, coaching culture, college recruiting, tryouts, travel costs, and the challenges of youth sports parenting in today’s competitive environment.

For families navigating youth soccer’s complex system, Chasing the Game offers practical advice, credible voices, and relatable stories from two dads working to make sense of American player development, one episode at a time.

Chasing the Game – Trailer Transcript

Liron:
Soccer. Everywhere else, a ball, four cones, twenty-two kids.
Total expense: about eight euros.

Matt:
Soccer in America? Registration fees, uniforms, flights, hotels, private trainers, gas, tolls, spreadsheets.
Total expense — your weekend, your paycheck, maybe your sanity.

Liron:
This is Chasing the Game.
I’m Liron.

Matt:
I’m Matt.
We’re just two dads trying to figure out how the world’s simplest game got lost in translation in America.

Liron:
Every week, we talk to people who’ve lived it — coaches, scouts, parents — to try to figure out how the game got so complicated, and what it really takes for our kids to thrive.
And maybe, just maybe, help you make sense of it too. Because honestly, we’re figuring it out alongside you.

Matt:
From American soccer legends like Ben Olsen…

Ben Olsen:
Be prepared for it. Relish it. If you can get in that mentality — almost be excited about some of the hiccups — I know it’s a hard place to get to.

Liron:
To former pro and current MLS NEXT Technical Director Luis Robles, who told us:

Luis Robles:
How do we make MLS NEXT the top youth development center in the world?
How do we make Major League Soccer the best league in the world?
It’s going to take time and some really great people to do it — but it’s worth it.

Matt:
And to the people quietly shaping the next wave, like Noah Ross, head scout of NYCFC’s Youth Academy.

Noah Ross:
With top, top, top talent, you can sometimes see it in fifteen seconds — just a couple of actions.

Liron:
That’s what we’re chasing, Matt — the love of the game, and the families behind it.
The system that somehow turned four cones and a ball into a big American adventure.

Matt:
Join us as we try to untangle it — and maybe get some free therapy — one story, one season, one sideline at a time.

Liron:
New episodes every week.
This is Chasing the Game.