EPL side Southampton is set to announce a "major coaching initiative in North America that will bring the club's methods and brand up to 100,000 players a year," according to Matt Slater of the BBC. The "soccer schools" plan will be launched at a football coaching convention in Baltimore in January. Saints Chair Ralph Krueger said, "We just love to teach the game." With Premier League clubs all "greedily eyeing the rapidly expanding North American football market," Krueger said that the south coast team wanted to do something "innovative" that built on its deserved reputation for developing young talent. Krueger: "If you do any market research on the Premier League we are near the top, if not at the top, when it comes to teaching the game. ... James Ward-Prowse comes as a child and is now captain of the England Under-21 team, Morgan Schneiderlin plays a decade with us and is now the centerpiece of the Manchester United team." But those are just the players in the equivalent of British football's elite academies: "Krueger wants the Southampton method to work at every level of the pyramid," and with 20 million players and 1 million coaches in the U.S., the "potential is obvious" (BBC, 11/18).
