Open Mic | Randy Waldrum from High School Coach to the World Cup

0:00Well, we are very excited for our next conversation here on Open Mike. Someone we have talked about having on. For a while, then we finally pulled the trigger and got it done. And we are so thankful to Randy Waldron for spending some time with us. The technical director right now, the University of Pittsburgh, women's soccer team, Randy. Thanks for being here. It's what happened to me, David. I appreciate it. And keep up doing all the great work you're doing for our sport. Well, we are enjoying watching some of your players and end up yourself. That's what we cover mostly week to week. Of course, Abudian injured now, but Sarah Shepansky having a great season once again. But we wanted to have you on talk about a lot of topics because we love talking about the global game. We love talking about college soccer. We love talking about the pro game. And you've sort of had a hand in all of it. If I had sat you down and done this 30 years ago, would you have thought you've been all the places you've been? No, not at all. I think when we all start out as young coaches,

1:02you kind of live in the present. And to ever have thought I would have coached in a World Cup, and I would have coached in Olympics and coached national teams and pro teams. I would have envisioned it. I do think one thing that I did have as a young coach is I did always have kind of a plan. And for a lot of coaches out there today, this might be interesting. But back when I was starting out coaching, club soccer was it like it is. Back when I was playing in my early years of coaching, you just kind of played for City Rec team, so to speak. And that's what everybody did. And I grew up in Irving, Texas, right outside of Dallas. So I was kind of oblivious to all the soccer going on in the country. We just kind of thought in the Dallas area, we knew what was going on. And but you know, you couldn't make a living in club soccer back in those days.

2:05It just hadn't started really. And so I got my degree in education and started teaching and coaching in high school because it was either to stay in it full time. We either had to be high school, you know, or collegiate soccer. It really wasn't a pro league. It was, you know, national teams weren't paying full time. So, but I had a goal to coach collegently. And then eventually someday I had hoped I could get involved at a national team level. And so I made my mind up. I was going to leave high school coaching after five years, whether I had another job or not. I didn't want to get labeled as a high school coach. By being there too long. And let me say there's not by saying there's anything wrong with being a high school coach. There's a lot of great coaches in high school that have made a career out of that. But I just knew I wanted to be at the collegiate level. And I was afraid if I stayed too long as a high school coach, that would be a hard step to take. So that's what I did after five years.

3:05I left my high school job and I took a part-time college job where, you know, I'm not even full time employed and picked up a little club team to make a little money on the side. So I wore a lot of hats when I was really young. And it got me a lot of coaching experience. I can say that. You've worn a lot of hats as you've gotten older too. You've got to have some teams on top of college. I can't sing for the hatch down. It seems to maybe be a bit of a work problem. But take us into a little bit what the college soccer scene looked like in the 90s and into the early 2000s where, you know, no pro league. But the 99 world cup happens around then. The US obviously we had Mary Harvey on a few weeks ago wins in 91 and then, you know, compete at a high level. What was the college scene like in that time? You know, when I first started coaching in college back in 1989, I had coached a few years part-time at places before that.

4:08But I coached many of us coach both programs, the men and the women. So that's what I did at the University of Tulsa. And so I had always been on the men's side. I made the decision to move into the women's side. Because at that time, the growth of women's college soccer was really just starting to boom. You know, some of the powerful conferences were starting women's programs at that time. And not men's programs. So I made the decision in the mid 90s to go full-time on the women's side because I thought really that was my best pathway to get into the national team levels and that kind of thing. The men's seemed to be kind of more of a good old boys' network and recycling the same coaches. So I moved to the women's game. It's changed so much since then. Back then we had probably 175 women's teams and maybe 125 men's teams, you know, back in those days or somewhere in that ballpark.

5:11But the Powerful Schools were just starting to add programs to it. You know, up until that point, Carolina just dominated everything. You know, that's where they won the majority of their 20-plus national championships when those early years. And then when more of the kind of the Powerful conferences started adding women's soccer, that's when things really started to change because they were putting money and resources into the programs. And that's when some schools like UCLA kind of came onto the scene and became a little bit more of a power. You know, Texas A&M back in the day, you know, had some really strong teams. And you really, I think that era from the late 90s to the early 2000s, you really saw a lot of growth on the women's game. Where it is now, it's just, we're in a different world now. You know, back then to me, college athletics were the way college athletics were supposed to be.

6:14You know, you recruited athletes, the freshmen saw more junior years and got them to commit, you know, and sign in the senior year. Then all of a sudden, somewhere along the way, we decided to speed the process up and we started recruiting juniors and, you know, and getting commitments then. And then it's morphed into now we're getting sophomores, right? And it's just, it's crazy how that landscape has changed. I don't know that it's better. In fact, I think it's probably not. I think, you know, if you think about the logic, we're recruiting sophomores now. And we can't talk to them until June 15th after their sophomore year. We can't have them on campus from our standpoint. They can come on their own, but we can't have any interaction, interaction with them, any conversations with them. And then on June 15th, we're all lining up to make these phone calls and offer full scholarship for kids. We haven't even talked to it, right? And so it really, when you think about it logically, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense with where we're headed in that direction.

7:20And then now I don't know how many of your listeners are familiar with the house settlement, the things that just happened, you know, in the last year or so. And it's drastically changed college athletics as a whole, not just, you know, not just the soccer from in and women, but collegiate athletics league in general. What went no longer in my eyes, what no longer collegiate athletics, what pro sports now? We're at different levels, but we're pro sports. When you're paying your quarterback, you know, a million dollars to two million dollars to on top of a scholarship, you know, to be a student athlete. We can hide it however we want, but we're pros, right? And I think what we're going to see, I don't honestly, I couldn't say to you today, we're going to be three, four years from now. You know, what's happening in our sport in particular is because of this house settlement. And now there's no roster, you know, there's a roster limit, which we've never had. We've always, all of us have operated on having a 14 scholarship limit and some schools, you know, funded that some didn't, but, but we knew everybody had 14.

8:28So we'll kind of play it under the same rules. Now there's a 28 player roster limit. So if you want to give 28 scholarships, you can. So what's happening are some schools are taking some of that house settlement Monday and they're trickling it down to women's soccer and some schools have 28 scholarship. Other schools have done nothing, you know, you know, we stayed at 14 here at Pitt. Some schools are given rev share to women, college soccer players. Other schools are not. So I think what we're going to see happen in the next couple of years is the power fours were already a little bit separated from the mid majors. You know, because we've had more money to recruit more money to, you know, to operate up programs than mid majors. Now I think what you're going to find happening is within the power four, you're going to find another level of those schools that are funding women's soccer at a higher level than the power fours that aren't.

9:29So I think you're going to get another division and quite frankly though, you know, Dave, I'm being honest. I don't know how this model is sustainable. Yeah. You know, when you're tasked with raising $20 million a year to pay your student athletes, I mean, how many times can you go to your donors year after year and say we need 20 million this year? And oh, next year, you know what, we need 20 million more. And what a lot of people don't understand and realize is that they put a penalty in place. If you went over that $20 million limit, which is what the NCAA put on us with the House settlement is you could raise $20 million to pay your athletes. Well, if you go over that, the fine for that is $500,000. Well, if you're raising $20 million, what's $500,000? So you look at the Texas and the Alabama's and the Oregon probably just raised $40 million and pay $500,000. Yeah. They're raising $40 million on the roster for the roster. So it's you're not going to, I mean, eventually you run out of donors and the other issue of that is with the portal the way it's structured.

10:41And NIO money and rev share money, you know, you might be paying a donor may help fund your your your star quarterback that's getting a million and a half and he has a great year and next year Texas swoops in and says we'll give you $4 million. And he transfers and that that donors left saying I just spent a million and a half donating to this player who's now turned around and left our program. Right. So it's just it's the Wild West, honestly out there. And I don't see this model being able to sustain itself very long. What's going to happen. I don't know. Let me ask this because you talked about the 90s and the early 2000s and the power for conferences really investing in the women soccer game. That was off the back of title night, right in the need to sort of match football and what it was. There's a fear and this is not expertise for me and a lot of our listeners, but we got the question. There's a fear of where women soccer will sit now going forward. Is there a worry that in this new sort of landscape that there will be a lack of investing and funding on the women's soccer side because it all ends up on a football or men's basketball side.

11:51I give an example here at home. We've already started cutting budgets of our Olympic sports just to pay for football at basketball. And we're not the only school. There's going to be a lot of schools doing that. If I were a female athlete, I would certainly be checking into title nine. I hate to say that, but that's the truth of it is because we're not in compliance with title nine with the House settlement. If all the money is going to men's basketball and football. Now, the work around with some of that is anything that's given in IO money is outside the purview of the universities because those are given by separate entities so they don't have to follow title nine per say, but any of the revshared that a school might give any of the scholarship increases and that kind of thing. I think there's going to be some title nine implications down the road as well as there should be. I'm saying that as a coach and a women's sport, I'm trying to fight for our kids rights as well.

12:53You mentioned sort of the comment you made as being technical director of it being professional sports now and not really trying to mask it. I've asked this to a couple of coaches. I've had some weird conversations around it. We've never actually really done it on the show, but do you think there's a world in which there are division one women's college soccer teams playing in a US open cup version on the women's side playing against us super league and W league and NWSL teams. Like, is there a world in which as things shift in chains that it just does become a professional league? I could see that happening for sure. I think we've already seen where US soccer is trying to come in on the men's side and help fund kind of a super league for the men to kind of more more into the developmental plan that you are so I want to see if that passes or not. So I could see this. I could actually see it going the other way too. I could see at some point the NCAA just becoming irrelevant and not a mood organization anymore and football kind of pulling and making their own set of rules and and maybe basketball falls in that and I could see a world where Olympic sports just become club sports at college again.

14:16And we're not held by the NCAA standards anymore. It's just going to be club soccer, club wrestling club, volleyball, whatever. And so I just that's my fear. As somebody that should be fighting to protect our sport, that's my fear is that we're if this money keeps going and keeps going into football, what's it going to do the other sports? Eventually we've already seen a few sports around the country, you know, cut. And I could see at some point going well, let's will have it. They won't become part of athletics anymore. They'll just be club activities that kids can still participate in when they want to come to a university, but we're not going to fund it. They have to fund it like any other club on campus. And so that would be the very bad end of Olympics sports. The other end might be to your point. It may become we're already paying the players. The NCAA really doesn't care about the rules anymore.

15:18Or we pulled away from the NCAA altogether. And, you know, we're we're competing in competitions that will help, you know, develop the women's game or the men's game and by playing in an open cup or, you know, those kind of events. So it's really hard to tell where we're headed. You obviously will talk about have experienced coaching with Nigerian women's national team, Tran Tobago. You've been around the game for a while. I wonder in this scenario, but talking about this. Just where the levels sit. Where would the ACC be as a global league? Like if the ACC, the women's teams in the ACC just existed as a league. Where would they compete in the echelon of the global players? Well, I'm I'm one obviously I'm very biased because I'm in the ACC, but I think history will show you if you go back over the last. Probably 20 years, maybe 15, 20 years. The ACC has been the power of women's college soccer. I mean, when you.

16:19When you look at the last few years alone, you know, I think we've had a year. We've had three multiple years. We've had three of the four final four teams in the college cup. I think we've had a year. We've had all four teams in the college cup. So I do think the quality and the level of the football being played at the ACC is is better than any of the other conferences around the country. And I would say me being around the world globally, just scouting recruiting for the various jobs that you mentioned and watching it. Look, the ACC right now could be they could be pro teams and a lot of the leagues around the world. You know, I've been I know the Swedish league very, very well in first division. We would be very competitive in that league. I know the you know in the super league here in the US and in the Canadian league, you know, which are relatively new leagues. So they're just getting going. But you could take any of the ACC teams and they'd be very, very competitive in those leagues.

17:23You know, probably maybe not the top of the French league where you have, you know, your PSG's and your the owns and your Paris FC's. But definitely with the bottom of that league, I think the ACC teams could compete. You know, I think it's I think there's a couple of leagues obviously with the NWSL and the WSL over in England. Those leagues are, you know, a step above and there's there's certainly above where any college conference is playing right now. But I think, you know, in a lot of leagues around the world, the teams in our league would stack up really well on the global stage. And you know, if you look at it, you'll see most of the players coming out of the ACC and really even a lot of the power for conferences. Most of the players that want to go play professionally, find a home somewhere, you know, it may be an Iceland, it may be in Denmark. But they're able to find a home to go play pro soccer and extend their career a little bit if they want to do that.

18:27So I think that speaks volumes as to, you know, what we're, what we're still producing at the collegial level. Last one on the college side, I want to move to the international stuff, but it's fascinating and it's overwhelming to an extent, but it's really interesting. You mentioned you as soccer. We had Sossar Serofski and Brian Weeson last year to talk about the future of men's college soccer. John Sheer this year as well. And then, you know, the idea is changing the calendar, expanding the season, shifting things around. Men's college soccer is in a place that women isn't, right? There's a strength in women's college soccer that doesn't exist on the men's side. What do you make, though, of the plan that they put together on the men's side and if it would make sense in the women's game in D1? Well, I've been very vocal about this for years and I'll start by saying the women's coaches for whatever reason aren't. I'm trying to look for the right word. They're not as open-minded to seeing the big picture of helping our sport grow and develop.

19:33And I don't know why. I don't know if that's, they want to protect what they have. I don't know if they're apathetic to working more. I mean, when you think about a college season right now, you know, it's, it's 90 days. It's three months. We really, you know, go, go, go and work in hard. And then the rest of the year you're recruiting and you're preparing. And some of the women's coaches will argue that you're developing players in the off season. And to an extent we are, we're all developing. Any time the players try and play with us, they're developing to an extent. But I think the women's coaches have always argued that they want to keep a spring season because that's what they do player development. But it's interesting. I'll share this very quickly with you a few years back when the men at first proposed the two semester model. I went back and I looked at all the power for schools and I had our players help us. We went and looked at the roster for the last five years of every power for school.

20:35And I said, tell me, let's pull out any player that came in as a freshman, played a little bit, played a little more as a sophomore, more as a junior, more as a senior, where you could see they developed and got more and more playing time. And I said, now take the goalkeepers out because that situation is a little different. You usually recruit every two years, you know, to have a starter that gets out and then they, you know, then the sophomore takes over in their junior year kind of thing. And I said, and then take out the injured, excuse me, the injured players, right. We found interesting enough. We found I think only one or two players throughout the entire entire power for that actually came in as freshmen and got a little bit more time each year. So if we're being honest, we're recruitment. Don't get me wrong, we're in it in the spring. We do work on player development, but the bottom line, what that showed me is that if you didn't come in prepared to play really in your freshman sophomore year, the odds are you weren't playing your junior and senior year.

21:45You just go recruit somebody to replace that player, you know, bring somebody in to go, look, I thought she was going to be better. She's still not quite good enough. So I got to go get somebody else. So we're not really developing players. So that argument doesn't hold water to me. The very scientific research that I did doesn't show that. So I'm for the two semester. I'm for extending the season. I'm for look, I never understood this word in college athletics. So the degree should be the first and foremost on the mind of everybody, right. You're at a collegiate institution. And if we're playing two games, two games a week on the road, you're gone five days a week. I mean, you're gone from Wednesday through Sunday. You're missing class, you know, you're missing, you're traveling around the country. And, and if we played one game a week and we extended it in the fall and the spring, we play, you know, we'd play one game a week. Your body would have time to recover. You would, you'd be there, you know, you out of seven days, you still have to give a mandatory day off. So you'd have, you know, six days to work with one of those days is a game. One is match day, minus one. So you'd still have four training days right now. We have one day a week to train because you play Thursday, Saturday.

23:03So Monday's typically everybody's off day, you train Tuesday. Now Wednesday's the day before the match and then Thursday's the match and then Friday's recovery and then Saturday's the day before the match. So if you're not playing as a freshman or as any level player, if you're not playing early in the year, the odds of you breaking the lineup pretty slim because you've only got one day a week really to prove yourself to the coaches, right. Because the games just are coming. If we played once a week, that you would have that opportunity to, you know, to watch her grow and develop and go, hey, these last two weeks, she's been really good in training. You know, we, we, so anyway, long, long, winded answer and we could dive into that. We can make a whole show on that. But for whatever reason our women's coaches haven't been for it. I just think, honestly, they enjoy the power for making the six figures and working. Part, you know, 90 days out of the year. I don't think they want to have to do this year round. And I think what would also happen is coaches would get exposed as to who can really coach. Yeah, because it becomes tactical because now it becomes tactical. You have to develop. You have to have a periodization plan. You know how to, how to have to really coach your team. If teams have a full week to prepare for you. Now all of a sudden, you better be a pretty good coach. Whereas right now, if I can recruit good players.

24:29I don't have to worry about the training and the coaching too much. I just, you know, it's like put my players on the field, try to get some organization. And that will win me a certain number amount of games. You're not really challenged as a coach. Right. So I like the men's model. I hope it works. Whether it's US soccer involvement, whether it's not, whether it's just a two, I hope they get it. Because then I would think that after a short period of time, the women would look at it go like that, that actually is pretty good. You know, we really should be doing this. And if we want the game to grow, we need to do it. Where's the power dynamic there? Does it fall then to athletic directors? Does it fall to US soccer? Like if it worked on the men's side. Where who would or would it have to be the women's soccer coaches coming to the table and saying, this is what we should flip. I think the women's soccer coaches would have to support it. Right now. Could it be forced on them eventually? Potentially because of this house settlement. Like right now, I think one of the thing that the men have gone for them is that US soccer is willing to fund.

25:35Right. The playoffs and that kind of thing and help or help with the funding. Well, right now in this day and age with us having to raise 20 million plus a year, athletic directors look at that go, oh, okay. Yeah. I'm more open to this now. Somebody else is willing to come in and take some of that financial burden off of me. You know, they're probably going to have a pretty good shot at getting this through from an athletic director standpoint. Right. And I think more of the men's coaches see the big picture and they they know that if they want to stay, if they want to stay important on the global stage, where college men's soccer is still as important with putting players into the national team and into MLS. I think they realized they need to be year round. And I think that's not where the women's coaches are. But I think they need to come to realization that women's college soccer still wants to remain a player and become important to women's to the women's national team in particular into the league.

26:35Then we better wake up and decide to do this because right now already the WSL has plans to put a second tier league in. And they're going to steal a lot of the players they've already put training camps and things in together and programs were already seeing more high school players going straight into the WSL and bypassing college. And that's only going to increase won't be long till the super league starts being able to attract those players from the stand that standpoint as well. So I think we've got to wake up on the women's side, but right now they're not close to wanting to do that. Now I assume if we go in and talk now about Trinidad and Tobago and Nigeria that the women's college soccer scene is a palace compared to some of what you've worked through. Let's talk about your international soccer experience stepping in to coach Trinidad and Tobago coming out of the college game.

27:36What did you think that challenge was going to be like and what what was the experience? Well, it's interesting. They're both were very similar in a lot of ways, but then different in a few ways. I actually took my first experience with Trinidad is I took the U 17s for about three months while I was still at Notre Dame. And just to try to short window when Jack Warner was the president of Trinidad and he was second in charge at FIFA, you know, behind bladder, bladder. And so I just came in for three months and you know, tried to get them there and that was kind of my first taste. I tell you a real quick funny story on that, you know, kept waiting to get paid. I had another US assistant. We were there for three months and we went through the whole three months and had still hadn't gotten paid. And so we're getting ready to leave the country the next day. So we both said we got to go get in Jack's office to make sure if we leave, we we may never get her right.

28:41So he went to Jack Warner's office, explained to him, we were leaving, we wanted to get to get paid. He brought out, had his secretary bring out a chest, you know, a box, you know, he opened the box. It is stacked with $100 bills. And they were paying me $30,000 and they were paying my assistant $15,000 for the three months to do that. They gave me $30,000 in cash. And Jack Warner, I can't remember him saying, now coaches, if you get stopped at immigration, you did not get this money for a while. Right. And I had never been so frightened in my life. I'm hiding money in folders and in books and in socks and trying to disperse it in different places and my lug is going like, I can see here I am leaving Trinidad Tobago and they're probably thinking I'm the biggest drug smuggler in the world right with this kind of cash. And fortunately we got we got through immigration with it. I assume you were less surprised when Jack Warner got in trouble and all the news came out.

29:45Oh, I already knew all the Jack stories, you know, the secret envelopes that he would pay the other criminal countries didn't get their votes. And that was that was pretty well known down there. So so yes, it was no surprise when that all hit the fan with Jack. But you know, it was a country that you know, at the end of the day, just like I did with Nigeria, you fall in love with the team and the kids are coaching. You see how little they have and you just want to help right and and that's why I went back to Trinidad, you know, with the senior team and trying to get them to qualify for a World Cup, which we were the last team out on the last game. We had drawn against Ecuador in Ecuador. We needed to win in Trinidad and we would have made the World Cup in 2015. And we got knocked out on a free kick in the 90 second minute of the game. And you know, but it was an experience I wouldn't say I'm still in touch with quite a few of those players I had back then.

30:49I send over money and boots and anything I can give soccer balls. One of them does a youth tournament over in Tobago every year. So I support her and a teammate of hers with you know, with some soccer balls and things for the youth tournament every year. And you know, it's just one of those things that they'll they'll be part of my family for the rest of my life now. And it's as hard as the times were there. You know, we we came a lot of people may or may not remember this, but we came to the US to try to qualify during ConquerCath. It was held in the US. And they sent us here a they came about a week before ConquerCath started. And I can remember getting a call. I was already here setting up the training camps and things in the States. I can remember our players calling and say it late at night, like one in the morning said coach, we arrived at the airport in Dallas. And I said, well, good, well, you know, get on the bus. I'll see you guys at breakfast in the morning and they go coach. There's no bus.

31:53So what do you mean the manager has a bus? She says coach, there's no manager. And I said, what? And I said, who's with you? And I said, we have 12 players. That was it. They left Trinidad with no money. No, no idea where they're going. No idea about the hotel. And I can remember telling my player it was a girl we call Yaya, a coordinator. And I told Yaya, I said, Yaya, I have a convertible. I can't come pick each of you up one at a time. And she said, well, one of the dads had given them their daughter $300. And they spent about 150 of it on a meal for the team in Miami. So they had about $150 left. I said, just go out and see if you can negotiate with some cab drivers back then. There wasn't even Uber, you know, get with some cab drivers and see if you can go shake getting you down to the hotel, which they did. And they got there at the hotel. So the next morning, I'm going, I've got a week before ConquerCast starts. There's no money. There's no manager. I only have 12 players. No soccer balls. Nothing. Right. What am I going to do? So I sent out this tweet, you know, about they expect us to qualify for World Cup yet we have nothing.

33:04And the flood of feedback we got from the soccer community was amazing. The American outlaws brought all kinds of drinks and snacks and things. We had restaurants reaching out saying, hey, we'll feed you. We'll take care of you. And, you know, had all these people around the world donating things to us. Of course, the Trident Indians weren't happy with me. You know, they wanted an apology letter to remove the tweet. And I said, I'm not apologizing for anything. You got to send your daughters over here from your country with nothing. And I'm the one taking care of them. Right. So, but it was a great run. We, you know, we almost got through. We were very, very close for a country that had nothing. So it's really, really good to see. And of course, you know, years later, I take on Nigeria. And as my friends say, you must be a glutton for punished. Right. You know, to take these kind of jobs on. Yeah. Let me ask you this. I've seen some interviews that you've done. When you got the Nigeria job. Did you know you had the Nigeria job? No, what really happened on that is I had been with the dash and had been let go. And I had a few months still were, you know, just looking for what my next move was going to be. And some of the old Galati who at the time was still the president of US soccer. Just to get the job done.

34:22You know, we've got a good relationship. And he called me and said, Hey, would you be interested? And this was probably late August mid August. He said, would you have an interest in coaching in Nigeria? I said, yeah, absolutely. And he said, well, I know the president. And he said, he's looking for a coach. So let me get back to him and letting know you're interested in, you know, we'll see where it falls. So I don't hear another word from anybody all through August. We get through September. I don't hear anything. And then maybe late September early October. I can't remember when I wake up one day. My phone's blowing up and people are congratulating me. Hey, congrats on the Nigeria job. And I saw your name had coach. And so now I'm getting social media and journalist in Nigeria, you know, reaching out. And I'm seeing all the news. All the newspapers in there, I read the Waldemps, the new head coach in Nigeria blah, blah, blah. Mind you, I haven't heard from Nigeria at all. Nothing. So I'm trying to reach now the president because I'm going to be the coach. I better work out a deal with the contract and more about this, right?

35:35So I'm emailing him directly from September till November. And I've gotten zero response. So about that time, the situation that pit came open. And so I start the interview process with pit. And this was late November, maybe early December. And finally, you know, pit off of the job in December. And I was like, I've not heard a word from Nigeria. So I accepted the pit job. And then I reached out to the president and said, just won't let you know since I haven't heard from you guys in three months. I went ahead and accepted a job at the university within immediately. It's like no, you know, responded. No coach. We're ready. We got a how we got everything set up for you here. And we're ready to go. And I said, I'm sorry. I've already committed to. To pit. So they hired another coach, Thomas dinner, be from Sweden. And he took them through the world cup in 2019. And then didn't like the way things were going. I guess or whatever. And he left during the Olympic qualifications for 2020.

36:43So they came back to me 2020. Now mind you. It was the COVID, you know, COVID had come out at that time too. So they basically kind of came out and did the same thing as me. If I'd be interested. And I said, yeah, I would be interested again. But, you know, I said, I'm not, you know, leaving my job at pit. I would, you know, I would, I would do it in conjunction with pit. And, you know, they, they again announced it before we ever did a contract that we had done it again. Now I think they were more open to doing it that way because of COVID and they wouldn't have to pay as much money and that kind of thing. And. So the timing of that would just hit right in my AD was very open to, you know, we're really big and it pit with service and community service and helping, you know, those that need help. And we saw this as a great not only recruiting tool, but a great way to kind of help young Nigerians. And of course, since then we, we've had three or four Nigerians here with us at pit and hope to continue to keep helping them in that way. Yeah.

37:48So when they reach back out the second time, you said, yeah, you hadn't over the last two years been like, this is ridiculous. I got named. I never got a contract. Why would I work for them? Like you actually were still interested. I was still interested in probably selfishly for two reasons. One is what coach doesn't dream of going to a world cup. Right. And I knew that was coming up in that next cycle. And. And then selfishly for a program here at pit to open a door, you know, connections and knowing the young players that were coming up. So selfishly for those two reasons that kind of outweigh the fact that, you know, what it happened before. So, you know, so yeah, yeah, I took it on and. You know, and then the story really began, you know, after that with a lot of ups and downs and. But the good news is we took a group of young women that. Really only had 10 days to prepare for the world cup while everybody else had five weeks to prepare. And you know, we, we, we actually, if you look at it, we never lost a game in regulation. You know, we true.

39:00We drew Canada, who were the defending Olympic gold medalist. We beat Australia, who was the host nation. I think number 10 in the world. I think Canada was number six or seven in the world. We drew against Ireland. So we got out of the group as a second place team. And then we draw the European champions, England, number three in the world. And we drew that game 00 and lost in penalties. Yeah. And so, you know, how to probably historically the best world cup that they've ever had. And a lot of people don't realize that we were supposed to have had a five week camp to prepare like everybody else. And then due to whatever funding, whatever was going on in Nigeria, they decided we couldn't do a five week camp. So we literally only had 10 days in Australia to prepare for the world cup. And so I thought we. We all did not just me, but the players did an amazing job to have that kind of success with such minimal preparation.

40:01The Australia game 50,000 people, the host country, you know, they were one of the big stories of that world cup and you go and beat them. And what is the energy around an experience like that? Well, you know, I guess let me take you back to Canada first because with only 10 days of preparation, I really felt there was a good chance we could get beat by multiple goals. Right. By many of the teams we were facing in the group, it just, you know, no coach would think you could get this done in 10 days. So what we really did is. I knew with Canada and Australia, we weren't going to be able to play this beautiful attractive passing possession base football that we all want to play. Because we couldn't get it done in 10 days. So I knew we were athletic fast, strong creative individually, but we needed to be organized offensively. So for 10 days, we just worked on a defensive block.

41:04And getting it really tight. So we weren't going to concede space. And then we worked on counter attacking out of that using our speed and our athleticism. And we kind of grew into the Canada game, you know, it was really rocky start. Yeah, they were all over us, but we were defending well. And then we kind of grew into the game, you know, as we stayed 00, we grew into the game and we probably had a real big moment at about the 60 minute mark in that game. We gave away a penalty. And Sinclair stepped up to take it and, you know, I think it was going to allow her to be the first player to score a goal in six World Cups. And our goalkeeper makes the save and she doesn't score and we go on and we draw. So I think that gave us a lot of confidence going into Australia. And then I think another big moment in the Australia game was we, we defended again really well. We played a little better. With the ball that we had against Canada, we had a little bit more of the ball than we did. But we were still, you know, basically defending well and we conceded with about five minutes before half a goal.

42:13And that's usually a kiss of death, you know, it's, you can see late and then how they go into halftime with all the momentum. But there were two or three minutes or three or four minutes or so of added time in the first half and we get the goal back. So now we've flipped the momentum. Right. Now instead of going in with them having all the momentum, we go in with the momentum and then came out in the second half. And I can remember talking to Kyle quickly who was a saver for me because he was a coach. They just brought on for the World Cup and the rest of the staff. I had quite frankly weren't good enough to be of any help at that level. And so Colin, I can remember looking at Australia before the game and all their coaches come out. All of everyone of them have an iPad. Everyone of them have everything you need, you know, from a technology standpoint. And I said, look at them. I said, they will have had every coach would have had two or three players of hours assigned to scout, find strengths, find weaknesses.

43:21And I said, look at what we have. I've got my clipboard from pit in a piece of paper and you know, we're like, I mean, we almost joked about it before, right? And I just going like, well, let's hope for the best. And then the second half and we had just scored our third goal. So we're up three, one. Yeah. And I can remember Colin, I look at each other going night is this real and seeing those 40, you know, that 45 that whatever it was in the stadium plus fans just being silent. And so, right? And and us looking around going, Colin, is this really just really happening right? Yeah. We're up three, one really in this game. And then, you know, they got a, they got a second one in the added time. And we got a bit lucky because once we went up three, they just threw the kitchen sink at us, which they had nothing to lose, right? So we kind of went to five bags and just tried to hold, you know, tried to hold on.

44:21And I can remember there was 11 minutes of stoppage time. And they scored in the 10th minute to make it three, two. And I'm thinking probably if they'd scored a first or second minute, we might not have won, you know, with everything they threw at us. And so we held on and, you know, and got that win, which was massive for the players confidence. And then, you know, the, the Ireland game was a little tricky because it's coached those games to play at the same time. Yeah. Because I don't want you knowing, you know, what's going on in the other game to make you change how you play. And so we were listening to the other game. So we had it coming down, you know, into a speaker. We knew that game was close early. So, you know, if we won, we would win the group. If we drew, depending on the other game, we would be second in the group. But if we lost, we could be out altogether. And so you had to play it still somewhat conservatively, yet still, you know, try to get a result if you can, but you couldn't lose it, right?

45:29And the late in the game with about 15 minutes left, we got word that Australia had really opened it up on Canada. So we were going to go through them, gold differential, you know, regardless. At that point. So we really tried to go for it in the last 15 minutes, but that's hard in a state, you know, in a stadium full of people to get that message out to your team. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing. And so, you know, we draw that game, but an interesting thing for the coaches listening to us here today, we got in to prepare for England now. And I had watched England play China in the last group game. And China set in a low block in England, just play through them like homes. They won, I think, five or six zero. So Colin, I put our heads together. It's like, you know what? Nobody expected us to get out of this group anyway. So let's just go for it in this game. They're going to expect us to sit in a low block. And they were, they had switched to a three back.

46:29They, the first game they played a four back against Haiti and they didn't play very well. They, they only won that game like one zero. So the last two games in the group, they, they went to a three back. And so I said, look, they're so good up front with Russo and with Lauren James and hemp and, and then having Rachel daily flying down the flanks and Lucy bronze flying down the flank as they're so good up front. I said, let's really press their three backs and their two defensive mids and see if we can, can kind of cut the service off. Instead of worrying about the front players, let's try to deny the service, you know, from their back end. And it worked great. I mean, we, we outshot them, I think 20 to 12. We hit the post twice in the game. They got Lauren James frustrated and ejected right at the end of the game. So we played a man up, you know, in the extra time, which actually ironically, this is where go back to where the preparation kind of lack of preparation hurt us because we were worse.

47:36In the 30 minutes with a man advantage, then we were when we were playing 11 against 11. And that normally is not what you would expect. Right. You had the man up, you would be over. But what happened with only 10 days, we had in the classroom gone through situation play. You know, what do you do if you're losing the last, you know, 15 minutes, what do you do if you're winning the last 15? What do you do if you're man up? What do you do if you're man down? Those scenarios we, we went through in the classroom. But we never really had the time because of the lack of number of days there. We never really had the time to do it on the field. And I think that really caught up to us, you know, in the England game. I mean, we had bigger, we had to get there far. Right. So we had more things we had to do at the beginning to get that done. So, so yeah, that's, that was kind of the way it was. Rachel Daley, I had drafted her when I was the dash coach and she came up to me up the game. She said, Randy, you guys number one, you deserve the win. She's number two.

48:37You guys just out coached us. She said, we trained all week for playing a low block. We just want prepared for this at all, you know, and so even though we lost, it was a nice compliment to hear. You mentioned the lack of the training camp fully coming into it and what's going on. As you went through the two plus years, how do you sort of as the coach and leader of the group deal with the chaos behind you and the federation, keeping sort of trying to keep it out of the locker room and keep the team sort of moving forward? Well, it that's difficult because the players are in the middle of it. In fact, going into the world cup, they had already filed agreements with with FIFA about backwages and bonus monies that weren't paid. So they already had a case going to FIFA, FIFA pro, right, to the legal department. So they had been in it from the jump. We had had some situations where players, when we were at the, the Waffcon to qualify for the World Cup,

49:44after we had qualified for the World Cup and we had gotten knocked out in the semifinal against Morocco, which was a whole reward effort. We had two players ejected in the game. We had to play an hour, two players down to just get a penalty kicks, which we did and we lost. But after that, they refused to play the third place game because they hadn't been paid. And so the federation came in and paid them a little bit and finally got them to come out of the rooms and play. But we didn't do any training and any recovery after that. So these were just common problems that you always were dealing with. So what we did when we got to Australia with those 10 days, we just pulled the players aside and said, look, and I had already gone public on a podcast. Finally, just laying it all out there, what happened because I had always protected the federation over the four years. All these things that were happening behind the scenes, I never publicly talked about it because I'm working for a federation.

50:44I felt I had to protect them, right? But our players knew I would do everything I could to fight for them with the federation. And I think that was important. So you know, I had done this podcast and kind of laid it all out there because I knew I would be the one blame if we failed in the World Cup. And people back in Nigeria wouldn't know the backstory, right? Or even people here for that matter, it would just, and I already was getting ripped in the mean. In Africa, it's the worst coach ever, blah, blah, blah. But nobody knew really what was going on behind the scenes. So I just said, you know, I'm not going to take this myself. I'm going to just put it out there. And then we're going to go to the World Cup and do the best we can, right? So at least people will know. So when we got to Australia, I basically just told the players, I said, you've submitted your grievance with FIFA. So let that go. Let FIFA take care of it. I've gone out publicly.

51:45I've said what I've said, I'm going to let that go. Let's spend this time at the World Cup focusing on just the football. I said, because you're going to get asked in the media about why I said in public, you're going to get asked about your grievance that you've found. I said, deflect those questions and just say, I don't only answer questions about football. And I thought they did a really, really good job of doing that. So they just really honed in and laser focused on the performance piece. The big picture, you went to a Afcon. You obviously in Morocco, which we are seeing this investment and hosting all of these tournaments in a row. But outside of that, we're seeing some shifts in the African game, Malawi coming onto the scene and qualifying for a World Cup, Zambia and the talent they've had. But would you make it the landscape overall of the African game and sort of where it can go? Well, one of the reasons I got involved with it too is I had watched them.

52:45We mentioned the 99 World Cup and the 91 and the 99 World Cup. Of course, I remember watching Nigeria and the 99 World Cup here at home. And I always felt they had the talent. It was just a matter of the organization, the tactical piece of the puzzle. So I had hoped I could go over there and not only do what we did with the team, but maybe implement some things in the youth system to help change, right? To get it a lot more organized. And what I saw when I was in Africa is whichever country, not just Nigeria, the talent is there. It's just a lack of organization. It's a lack of funding. We all know, I think the corruption is in some of the federations is pretty common knowledge. And you know, and one of the things I tried to warn Nigeria about when I first took the job is like if we continue down this path, there's going to come a day where we're not going to qualify for a World Cup.

53:48And Morocco, as you said, if you've ever been to their National Training Center, it's one of the best in the world I've seen. I mean, it is an amazing facility. The investment that they're putting into men and women's football, of course, we see what the men have done in the past two World Cup. The women qualifying for the World Cups, they're starting to play a really good brand of football right now. You see Ghana and you see South Africa and some of these start to put a little bit more. And I think Nigeria always has taken the approach that when I was there, they were nine time champions. So it almost is like they had this idea that it's a birthright, that they're just the top team in Africa. And they have been. But I kept trying to warn that everybody else is investing and we're not. And it's going to come a day. And I hate to say it, but it's true. Now they've missed out on the World Cup. The men have missed out on two World Cups in a row. And who would have thought that with Nigeria, you know, just as a power? So I know they're going through some transition now.

54:51There's, you know, they have the president and the general secretary of the board has all stepped down. FIFA has come in now and started to do a kind of what they call what they didn't treat it at a formalization committee. Trying to put some people in place now to run the federation, which should be run. So you hope you hope you hope changes coming, but we'll see. Well, we could do this forever. The it's been awesome talking to you. We didn't even fully dig into the ACC, but we'll get there one day. Maybe we'll have you back for five of these other shows. But I really appreciate you taking the time to talk. We enjoy watching your team's play and we'll have to do this again sometimes. Try and have me. I really enjoy it. Let's let's let's for sure do it again. Sounds great.