The U.S. professional soccer season has now wound down for the holidays, but people are still talking about the Orlando Pride’s first-ever NWSL championship win, coupled with their NWSL Shield win.
The men’s performance wasn’t too shabby, either, with Orlando City appearing in its first-ever Eastern Conference final, though they ultimately fell to the New York Red Bulls.
But it appears that soccer fever is here to stay in the City Beautiful, and for many these days, it starts hitting pretty young.
As more and more children are turning to the sport here in the U.S., and with programs offering competitive play around Central Florida, what’s the best way to give your child a chance to rise to the top?
For that answer, I had to go to a man with a deep roots in Central Florida soccer — Mark Dillon.
WHO IS MARK DILLON?
It may have taken nearly 40 years for Orlando to really make its mark on professional soccer in America, but nearly 30 years before Orlando City and the Orlando Pride, there was the Orlando Lions.
In 1985, Dillon founded the first professional soccer team in Orlando.
“I’ve been deeply passionate about the game for as long as my memory lasts,” Dillon said. “And you know, I evolved from being a player to being a coach. When I moved to Central Florida in 1983, it was to be the head coach at Rollins College. And I loved the job.”
That role was short-lived because of differences of opinion with the athletic department, but his time there helped Dillon realize that Central Florida was missing something.
“I was out playing, as a matter of fact, in Winter Park. And there’s some really good players, guys that had played college, and some had been ex-pros, and I said, ‘There’s nothing for these guys to do other than a Sunday afternoon drinking league. So why don’t we start one? Why don’t we look at trying to create something that the really high-performance players have an opportunity to participate in?’” said Dillon. “There was not even a professional league in America at the time. This was 1985. But I said, ‘OK, let’s build a team and maybe the league will come, or the competition will come, but let’s get the team, let’s put the organization in place and try to get it going.’”
Get it going, he did. Dillon said in the first year, he was able to put together a schedule of games from visiting teams around the world: teams from Hamburg, Ireland, Scotland, England, among others, and the players loved it.
“They thrived on it. Rent the stadium, and we’d sell tickets, and we’d have a little bit of merchandise and stuff like that, but it was the very, very early days of all this. And then we did this for two full years of playing these type of games,” said Dillon. “The third year, we were part of an initiative to reform the American Soccer League, and that came out of New York, and it resurrected teams like Tampa Bay Rowdies, Fort Lauderdale Strikers, Washington Diplomats, Philadelphia Atoms. It was primarily an East Coast League, but that was the start of what ultimately became MLS.”
The original Orlando Lions eventually failed, Dillon said, like every other pro team at the time.
“It was 100%, every pro soccer team that that launched throughout that period went out of business at some point, regardless of how deep their pockets were, how strong their ownership groups were, the market wasn’t ready to sustain it at that level.”
DILLON & SOCCER TODAY
Today, you could say the Orlando City Soccer Club’s future looks a lot brighter. Forbes estimated the Club’s revenue for 2024 at $475 million, and Sportico estimates Orlando City’s value at $505 million, which ranks 25th in the MLS.
Dillon said the reason for the staying power this time around is likely contributed to several factors.
“The game itself has been a long process of death, rebirth, death and rebirth. And with each rebirth, reincarnation, it got a little bit stronger. And meanwhile, at the under the surface there, the youth game kept on improving and kept on getting better. And more coaches started emerging that actually played the game. The coaching education system improved a lot. So you’re actually able to get coaches with better understanding about how kids learn how they how to teach them, how to manage them. So that helped a lot,” said Dillon. “Then cable TV came in and the internet came in, and suddenly kids were able to see the bigger picture of the game, the exposure. We have good weather, we have pretty good facilities. We’ve had communities that were willing to invest in facilities. We have a lot of soccer players in this town who are adults, and they’re promoting the game and I think there’s kind of a there’s kind of a buzz, there’s kind of a vibe now around the game that didn’t exist before. The amount of media attention now, and the availability is just, it’s night and day, and it’s bringing kids into the global community of soccer, and it’s quite exciting.”
More children enter the world of competitive soccer all the time as there are dozens of programs with varying levels of play across Central Florida.
But Dillon said despite the growth in popularity around the U.S., the training in America still falls behind what kids and teens in other countries, namely in Europe, are able to learn at a young age.
“I think that there’s a lot of things broken in the U.S. development system for young players, and that’s evident by the fact that our standard players coming through are not competitive at international levels,” said Dillon. “And I think we should be with the level of athleticism, the level of support, the sheer number of players that are coming through, and we are getting a lot better. I don’t want to put down anything domestically, but if you ask a kid who’s their favorite team, they’re going to say Man United. They’re going to say Man City, they’re going to say Liverpool, they’re going to say Barcelona, the Rea Madrid, or a European team, because that’s what they watch on the weekends. They also know that development in Europe is a lot better because the standards are a lot higher, the pace is a lot faster, and it’s just a richer development environment.”
Dillon said the sweet spot — to take a talented player to a level of development that they can succeed in a highly competitive professional arena — is from 14 to 18 years old.
“There’s a window of development. And if you miss that, it’s gone, it’s gone forever. And so if you say, ‘OK, well, I want to wait. I got my high school team, we have a chance to win it all. And I got my club team, and I’ve got the junior prom.’ Fine, that’s perfectly OK, but the chances of them actually reaching their potential shrink about 90%, and because the kids in Europe are in a unbelievable environment over here to learn and develop, they can’t compete against that if they don’t immerse themselves in it as early as possible. That learning window shuts down,” Dillon said.
Dillon recommends any parent with a highly performing child to find the highest level of training possible, preferably in Europe.
But he said there’s just one problem with that. FIFA, the international governing body for soccer, has strict regulations on players transferring to European clubs under the age of 18, unless they have an EU passport.
So Dillon created a solution: The Talentprojekt.
“If we have the greatest player in the world in Orlando, Florida, and he’s 15 years old, he can’t go to Europe. so he’s stuck in the American system, which is deficient. So I was looking for a way to get American players into the benefits of the European environment, without getting into trouble with FIFA law,” said Dillon. “I created the Talentprojekt as a study abroad program, which allowed players that I could select from the area, all around the country, to come into Europe for a full school year where they would learn the language, they learn the culture, they develop the much higher standards, development standards that they have in Europe.”
The facility is in Bad Aibling, which is southeast of Munich, Germany. The 10-month program is essentially like a boarding school experience, where students can either opt for academics locally in Germany or virtually from their home school—and then, of course, there’s a huge focus on soccer development.
“They play against top level teams, and they grow as a person,” said Dillon. “That’s the genesis of the program, and we’re well into our sixth season over here, and we’re defying all the odds in terms of the results that we’re getting. So we’re showing that American kids can do it. If you give them the right environment, the right opportunities, American kids can do it.”
Dillon said after the program, some students get opportunities with European teams right away if they have dual passports with a European nation. Others may return to the U.S. for college and then go back to play in Europe after they turn 18. Several students are with The Talentprojekt for their third year.
They started with a boys’ program in 2019, but they’re currently recruiting for girls for the 2025-26 school year.
In order to be a part of The Talentprojekt, Dillon said students should be between the ages of 15 and 18. They must apply and go through a screening process—and the program itself is not cheap. Costs run between $30,000 to $40,000, but he said it’s so much more than just a board and train.
“We look for soccer talent, but not just that, we look for character. We look for personality, we look for hunger. By that, I mean players that really, really want to play. They really want an opportunity to do something more than they have at home. And when you see that and you speak to them, and you can validate that through interviews and that’s the sort of player that we want,” said Dillon. “So they come in and they thrive. You know, instead of training twice a week or three times a week, they’re training 10 times a week. They’re playing against top level teams. They’re learning another language. They’re learning how to navigate through a different type of culture. They’re learning to see the world differently. They’re learning to manage problems. They’re learning to develop leadership skills. They’re learning better communication skills. They’re learning that they can survive and thrive without mom and dad on their shoulders, and that’s part of developing that self-confidence, that we want them to live a more successful life, live their best life.”
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A US SOCCER CLUB
Of course, The Talentprojekt may not be an option for everyone, or at least not right now if your child is younger.
Luckily, there are many options parents can explore for good training in Central Florida. But what criteria should you be considering to select the right fit for your child?
Here’s a list of the key things Dillon recommends looking for:
1. Are they having fun?
“I think the biggest thing is that, does the child look forward to being there? Do they enjoy the game? Do they do they look forward to the next game? Do they look forward to the next training session and, and that’s probably your best barometer for it.”
2. Do they have good teammates?
“You need good teammates to improve. That’s one of the problems that we have in soccer in America, that really American players don’t develop as well as Europeans, because they very often put kids together in super teams, and which is great, because then you have good teammates to play With, but then there’s nobody good to play against. Or you get players that might be like a superstar in a weaker team, because he or she helps the team win. But unfortunately, their development flat lines or goes backwards, so that’s why having that balance is really important.”
3. Is the coach only focused on one or two “superstars”?
“You got kids that might be biologically ahead of the curve. They’re early developers. They’re bigger and stronger, and they don’t have to do things well, they just have to do things stronger and faster, and they’re going to win games. Unfortunately, what happens is, the kid that’s maybe smaller but equally talented gets put on another team or a second team that that doesn’t have the same level of players, that doesn’t have the same level of coaching, doesn’t have the same level of competitive games to play, and they’re pushed aside until it’s too late. We’re seeing that size and athleticism is really dictating much of how soccer players are evaluated and developed and that’s all wrong, because the game is cognitive, and it’s a game of time and space. It’s game of timing. It’s game of all these things that are basically played between that five-inch space between the ears. And if you don’t get that language of time and space, sometimes the smaller ones are more technical and as they start to hit puberty, they get stronger. The ones that are smaller or maybe overlook tend to have a much better cognitive view of the game, and they go sailing past the ones that were superstars earlier on. But they’ve missed out on an important time of development when they were younger because they were overlooked.”
4. What are the coach’s qualifications?
“You want to know who’s coaching and what the qualifications are, what the objectives are. You have to trust somebody, that they’re providing the right kind of environment that’s educational, it’s nurturing, that’s motivating and makes them want to continue on.”
5. Is the coach focusing on technique or wins?
“If you get the wrong type of coach that attaches his or her ego to the competitive results on the weekend, that’s a problem. And you might be saying, ‘Okay, well, we’re winning, we’re winning, we’re winning, we’re winning,’ but you know, they could be winning by doing everything wrong. Ultimately, they pay for that later on, by not developing the real skills or the real understanding and the real techniques that you need to be successful later on, or they just burn out.”
Dillon also mentioned a few things parents SHOULDN’T do:
1. Don’t be too worried about winning and losing, especially then they’re still in grade school.
“We are a hyper-competitive country for sports, and we tend to view success whether we’re good or whether we’re not good based on competitive results on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, that if you’re winning, you’re doing everything right. If you’re losing, you’re doing everything wrong. Well, that’s the farthest thing from the truth, because, particularly in soccer, as I mentioned before, you can win by doing everything wrong, completely wrong.”
2. Don’t stress your child out.
“They say that the most psychological damage happens to a young player the first five minutes they get into a car after a game or practice, if they have an overbearing parent asking ‘Why did you do this? How did you screw that up? You missed the pass, and why did you make that kind of decision?’ and stuff like that. So it’s not a healthy environment to develop in. They can ruin their kids with the best of intentions, they can develop the sort of player that nobody wants to be on their team. And they can also do a lot of psychological damage on the way and just burn the kid out.”
3. Don’t berate your child’s coach—or the referees.
“As a professional myself, I was always very, very tolerant with my kids’ coaches. You know, they knew that Mark Dillon was over on the sidelines, over there watching, but they also knew that he was keeping his mouth shut. He wasn’t berating referees, he wasn’t questioning lineups, he wasn’t questioning tactics, and he wasn’t trying to influence other parents on the sidelines. I’m here to watch my kid. I just want to watch my kids play. That’s all I’m here for.”
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