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Former Tangerine says link-up with his old club perfect place to blood young American talent
By Bryan Kay
Brian Welsh with Dundee United back in 1993
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BRIAN Welsh was more or less finished with Scottish football when he departed for a new life in the United States seven years ago. One too many political battles and frustration with the direction of the game at home coincided with an opportunity to set up his family on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Except for one little corner he can’t quite shake off, the place where it all began straight out of school, the scene of his greatest achievements as a player –Dundee United.
Now owner and manager of
a lower league club in the US, Welsh wants to harness his current position Stateside to help the club he fell in love with after arriving in the City of Discovery nearly 35 years ago.
And he has a bold message for United’s new American owner, Mark Ogren, who has owned baseball and ice hockey teams in his homeland but is a neophyte in the world of football: The game in Ogren’s own backyard is swimming with young talent all too often lost to a broken
US soccer system, the 49-year-old says.
And right now, Welsh points out, he occupies a uniquely opportune position at the helm of Northern Virginia United, where he operates in the same sort of hybrid role as former Dundee United chairman and manager Jim McLean during his own time on Tayside, to deliver the Tangerines a feeder club with which to plunder the US market.
“Every club is desperate to get into the US. Every club,” the Tannadice club’s 1994 Scottish Cup-winning centre-back said. “Dundee United could basically have a club – have a club with me. There you go, on a plate.”
Welsh, based in the Washington DC area, sees a lot wrong with the football set-up in the United States: the closed professional leagues, a faulty youth development model and a college game that stifles young players at a key age. But he has never lost faith in the potential wrapped up in the young American player.
“This country is absolutely stacked with talent up to a certain age,” says Welsh, who had a successful spell as Livingston’s head of youth before leaving Scotland in 2012.
These days, an increasing number of young Americans are forgoing the college soccer game and leaving the country at an earlier age. Celtic’s recent loan capture from Paris Saint-Germain, 18-year-old American striker Timothy Weah, is a top-end example.
Welsh has watched on with dismay at United’s struggles in the Ladbrokes Championship over the last couple of years and sees huge potential for them to capture some of the top talent that falls through the US system’s cracks.
“I’ve got the perfect vehicle to move them even before they go to college,” he says. “At the moment we’re a summer team but the league’s going pro.
“The club’s got ambitions to be pro for a variety of reasons. MLS is killing US soccer in the way that they’re not getting youngsters through. There’s no clubs where youngsters can go and play first-team football and be sold on in a way that clubs can survive.
“You couldn’t be a Crewe Alexandra or a Livingston in America. Maybe Northern Virginia United can become that club, and if that’s the case I’d quite gladly stick all my best ones – if they don’t have passport issues – to United because it’s been painful watching from afar for the last four or five years. They shouldn’t be in that division. It’s a joke.”
Welsh’s Northern Virginia United compete in the semi-pro National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), currently confined to a short summer season and designed as a shop window for some of the better young players the country has to offer.
The US set-up is less a pyramid than a mass of free standing leagues given de facto divisional designations, with MLS the top tier in a system that does not incorporate promotion and relegation. But this year the NPSL, which has made noises in the past about exploring promotion and relegation on its own, intends to launch a fully pro league.
It is within that set-up Welsh sees potential for a link-up with his old club, as an ideal place to blood young Americans with enough potential early.
“That’s my speciality, getting kids at maybe 16 or 17 and getting them ready for the first team,” he says. “Passing players on. I see NPSL Pro as being that kind of league where you can train these kids full-time. I see that tying in with the new American owners, Dundee United, I think it all comes together that I can help.”
One of the enduring lessons from his time on Tayside, where he spent 11 seasons, was a culture of accountability inculcated by disciplinarian McLean. Welsh has tried to adapt a version of that sort of ethos into his work with youngsters at the youth development level in the US and at Northern Virginia United, whose name and club crest – which contains a lion – were in part inspired by Welsh’s affection for the Terrors.
“Right off the top of my head, I could send Dundee United a right winger, two centre-backs and an attacking midfielder right now. All with European passports, young kids, quality players. They have unbelievable potential. But they’re not going to fulfill it here.
“They might be with someone like me five days a week, with a team like Northern Virginia going into NPSL Pro where they can play against adults. But they’re not going to do it in an MLS academy up till the under-18s then going to college and, if they’re lucky, making it into the actual MLS.
“This type of link-up would be win-win for Dundee United and Northern Virginia United. It can even be worked without investment but it needs a little push. For me, it’s a no-brainer.”
Originally Posted by Brian_Welsh_is_magic
