Yesterday, Jillian and I had a conversation with United States Youth National player and current Union 2 center back, Neil Pierre. The episode will premier on Friday, May 8 at 6:00AM. However, we have decided to share a few things from the conversation that stood out to the both of us.

Topics in the interview include: growing up and finding soccer, the Union’s Academy, his rise from the academy to getting first team minutes in the 2024 preseason, what his goals are in the future, and just some personal stories he shares as well.

Getting into soccer

It was not always soccer that Neil wanted to do growing up. In fact, like his sister, he was more into basketball. “I feel like I was kind of more into basketball. It was like my brother and dad were all soccer and I was kind of growing up basketball mainly because my sister played basketball when she was in high school. And she was… I guess she was one of the stars. She won four state titles. So I kind of like was like, okay, I want to do basketball. But then I was like, let me give soccer a try too because my dad and brother were nagging me about playing soccer, and it kind of went from there.”

The difference in training with the first team vs. the second team

Neil had some experience with the Union’s first team this past offseason and even appeared in the Union’s 2-0 loss to Flamengo in their first preseason game. We asked him what the differences are between the first and second team. “I would say they’re similar in the way how I guess we approach training in the game, like if you practice hard practice how you play, feel like they come into a training session with a good mindset, and hold their players to a very high standard. And I feel like I guess the difference is since second team is usually more Academy players coming through and really young guys. It’s more like, I guess we stop and talk about like the situation if we mess up or something like that, rather than first team. Like these are like pro pro players. So it’s play like if you make a mistake, you have to watch it back after.”

National Team goals?

Finally we asked him what his goals are for his career moving forward into the future. “I’ll probably say, for my goals for youth national team is like to go through the age groups and hopefully make my debut, of course with the national team first team.”

The full interview will be available on Youtube, all podcasting platforms, and on theoneteamweagreeon.com tomorrow morning. As always, we would love to hear your thoughts on the interview, so make sure to comment and let us know.