I’m Not Santa Barbara’s Ted Lasso

My soccer coaching career began with an email to the parents of kids I’d never met, assuring them that their 5-year-old boys would be safe under my watch and that — despite no experience on the pitch since I spent games picking flowers as a 10-year-old — I may even be able to teach them how to kick a ball. 

My rationale was that I’d watched plenty of soccer since ditching the sport nearly three decades earlier, including many World Cups (one in person!), a few Olympics, and the occasional Premier or Champions league match when nothing else was on TV. More critically, I mentioned that the sport ran a bit in my blood, since my cousin played professional soccer for a few years before marrying Aly Wagner. Far better-known than he, Aly spent about a decade winning gold medals and World Cups with the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team, and went on to become an even more famous commentator — the first woman to announce a male World Cup match in American broadcast history, in fact. 

Though my cousin was skeptical of my tactics — or, as he replied sternly via email, “Do not associate us with your soccer coaching!” — the parents obliged, bringing seven kids to our first practice at a very lumpy ankle-breaker of a field. Like my own son, this was their first foray into organized sport, a role that soccer plays for so many Americans, myself included. It’s also where parents like me break into coaching, after much cajoling from the league about how the season may not start unless enough coaches sign up. With no stakes on the line — they don’t even keep score at that age — I figured this was my best chance to check that parenting responsibility box, and, hey, maybe I’d even be good at it. Only one of those notions proved true.