A Pro-Level Soccer Team in Orange County?

The elite French Soccer Institute, a European-style soccer club and school that aims to shepherd local young talent into the pros, may locate in Orange County.

With the potential construction of a $25-million youth soccer academy on empty land at Steed Park in San Clemente, Alexis Gallice of the institute hopes to create a laboratory to change the course of pro soccer in the U.S. and maybe even build an Orange County-based, pro-level team from scratch. Modeled after the European system, the academy would, in part, be a full-time school that molds young athletes into professional players.

"If the community wants one, we want to build a [National Premier Soccer League] team here," Gallice said. "It's to show that maybe this is the way to develop soccer in the United States."

The National Premier Soccer League is a nascent secondary U.S. league as opposed to Major League Soccer. Formed in 2002, the league aims to act as sort of a minor league for the MLS, according to the NPSL's website.

But that's a vague and faraway goal, at this point. The San Clemente City Council just last month approved staffers to negotiate terms of a possible lease with FSI.

Though FSI is a for-profit company, Gallice said his main focus is the young, pro-aspiring players he hopes to draw from Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles counties. Developing players that are confident and intelligent is the best way to ensure success on the field.

"You have to concentrate first on the player,” he said. “You get the results later.” 

France and Europe, he explained, don't use the school and university systems as farms for their sports players as we do in the U.S. Instead, soccer clubs in cities around each country shepherd kids through their early careers, offering academic instruction as part of a regimen of intense training that ultimately makes them prospects for the pros.

But Gallice said the French Soccer Institute doesn't want to just copy the European model, which has been criticized for de-emphasizing academics and operating inefficiently.

"It would be a bad thing to copy-paste the European product," he said.

Gallice said he hopes to work with local high school coaches to offer them pro-level training as coaches and to share players.

For instance, a San Clemente Triton soccer player might train with FSI for two days per week and the high school team for two days per week. They could play in all the high school season games with San Clemente, and with FSI during the summer, Gallice said.

Still, he admits there may be some friction with prep sports coaches -- he compared it to the friction in France between the national team and the club teams throughout the country.

Gallice said he and his investors -- mostly retired European soccer pros -- want to build an interim grass field in the undeveloped meadow area of the Vista Hermosa sports park while the $25-million, two-field facility at Steed Park was under construction.

After FSI moved into their permanent facility, ownership of the Vista Hermosa field would revert to the city, according to the plan.

Why San Clemente? The beach community markets well to prospective students who would board from out-of-town. Perhaps more importantly, it's smack in the middle of the huge population centers of San Diego and Los Angeles, a big pool from which to draw talent, Gallice said.

Sharon Heider, San Clemente's beaches, parks and recreation director, has told city advisors and council members that the FSI organization is a start-up club, but it appears legitimate, according to her research.

She mentioned that not only does the city not have the money to develop the Steed Park land FSI is eyeing for its facility, but the city could get a free sports field and steady, long-term lease money for the foreseeable future to help operate the city's sprawling and expensive beaches, parks and rec infrastructure.

In the meantime, the city developed a subcommittee this week to handle the early lease negotiations, which the city council will ultimately have to approve for the project to move forward.

And Gallice said FSI was working to organize community outreach events later this month and some soccer clinics run by pros for local kids in August.