When I joined San Diego Surf SC, I knew that this was a club with a reputation and history of success, and there was the great potential to build on that. One thing that great international youth academies like Barcelona and Ajax have in common is a standard system of play throughout their teams. This is one of our goals at Surf – to bring a standard system to the club.

We will use the 4-2-3-1 system of play, the most popular system at professional level throughout the world now. This system, which was used by Spain to win the 2008 and 2012 European Championships and the 2010 FIFA World Cup, is a fluid, attack-minded system also used by Arsenal, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and many others. With this in mind, we will also teach the players alternate systems of play to suit particular moments in game, all developing from the 4-2-3-1.