Dave Kasper chat transcript

This is a very good question. Let’s start at the very early stages of youth soccer player’s development. I don’t believe that we’re focusing enough time on developing basic skills and fostering young soccer players to fall in love with the game and have passion for the game. Instead, all we seem to care about is winning and how many goals my son or daughter is scoring compared to yours. This problem has been identified and hopefully, after time, will be fixed.

I do believe that MLS Academies have to be at the forefront for the development of serious soccer players. This has to be not only in our local markets, but we need to find top talent in this country and bring those kids to D.C. United to live and breath the game in a professional environment. This is how it’s done everywhere in the world. When we played at Pachuca last year, I visited their academy and they had about 30 young soccer players in residency. One of those players was Jose Torres who was scooped up from our soil and put into the Pachuca system. There are other American players there, as well as players from Mexico and other parts of the world. This is where we need to be. We have planted the seeds for our year-round D.C. United Academy to succeed and I’m pleased with the direction we are heading.

Rob – We have until September 15 to finalize our roster for the current year. As you’re aware, we continue to build depth so that we’re able to compete in all competitions. At the same time, we’re constantly monitoring players in our database and seeking out new players. For example, with our recent trip to Honduras, we were able to accomplish both of these elements. As the college season kicks off, we will also be scouting college players, as well.

We’re not able to comment on issues related to the current discussions with respect to new collective bargaining agreement. We’re all working hard to make our League more successful and we’ve made big strides in this regard. We all realize that we need to have MLS teams win CONCACAF Champions League. As I alluded to in a earlier response, this competition is a priority for all of us and there are ongoing discussions on how we can get there.

The first half of my day is spent with the coaching staff, the technical staff and dealing with player-related and competition-related issues. As you can imagine, there are many moving parts that go along with working for a professional soccer team. At different times of the year there are different focuses, including roster management, player identification and acquisitions, trades within the League, etc. We want to make our team better each and every day and there’s a lot of behind the scenes work and coordination amongst our technical staff to make this happen.

Once the players and team staff leave and things get normal and I have a quiet minute, I'm usually following up on player leads, trades and/or beating up on my favorite agents. I also spend a fair amount of time working with our youth staff, with respect to our academy program.

We’re currently tied for first in MLS with the most goals scored. With this said, the roster freeze date is September 15 and we are always looking to make our team better in all areas.