Photo credit: Industry Global (TOMA Event)
Some of the most interesting new ideas in American youth soccer right now are not coming from federation white papers or league or club board rooms. They are coming from the kids who just lived the system and decided to build something different. I spoke with one of them recently – 21-year-old New Yorker Brando Babini, who is still a player himself — and who has spent the last five years quietly constructing a player-led alternative called Youth 4 Youth FC.
Babini grew up inside the New York City academy ecosystem, playing at places like Brooklyn FC and Met Oval, and watching talented teammates fall through the cracks because there were not enough truly free, fully resourced programs. In a recent Sports Business Journal op-ed, he argued that in a post-2026 World Cup landscape, U.S. Soccer has a simple job: use the coming windfall to expand fully-funded pathways rather than piling on more paywalls. As he put it there, the country doesn’t just have a soccer business opportunity, it has “an access problem” that cannot be solved player by player.
Youth 4 Youth FC is his attempt to flip the script from the ground up — and crucially, to flip it in ways that might help parents and players, not just investors and executives.
A Player Still Inside the System
Unlike many people opining about youth soccer, Babini is still inside the grind. He founded Youth 4 Youth FC as a teenager; today, he continues to train and play at a high level while running what has grown into a multi-layered player development platform. Oh, and he’s a student at Brown University too. In our conversation, he was careful to frame everything he’s building as rooted in his own experience “as a player, as an academy player,” similar to how we are operating from our experiences as soccer parents.
That dual identity matters. It shapes how Brando thinks about power. We talked about and agreed that “parents and athletes don’t have a seat at the table,” as I like to put it. He added, “we’re trying to flip that…we’re trying to flip that switch.” The underlying premise is that the people most affected by the system — kids and their families — should have more say in how pathways are designed, priced, and governed. Youth 4 Youth is his vehicle for giving them some of that leverage, instead of waiting for changes at the federation level.
What Youth 4 Youth FC Actually Is (and Isn’t)
Babini is clear that Youth 4 Youth FC is not a traditional club. “We run all things supplemental,” he explained, “completely run by active pro and college players, with the goal of getting all the players into the same positions and beyond.” The idea is not to replace a player’s current team, but to sit alongside it: extra training, real mentorship, and targeted exposure opportunities.
The intake process is unusually transparent. In 2025, he said, Y4Y received about 4,000 applications, which funneled down to roughly 1,000 players they worked with. Older players are expected to submit video; the Y4Y staff — largely current college and pro players — review that film before inviting them into training or showcases. Younger players get more leniency; many are invited first to open sessions because Babini knows most 11- or 12-year-olds do not have polished highlight reels.
Geographically, the hub is New York City. Most on-field work happens in and around the city, with players commuting from across the metro area and neighboring states. But the interest map is national: they track where applications come from and are already seeing meaningful clusters in places like California, Texas, and Florida, which will inform where Youth 4 Youth goes next. In his words, “New York is 20 cities,” and he wants to get the model right there — down to the neighborhood level — before scaling it across the country.
For parents, the first question is usually what does this cost, and who gets in?
On pricing, Babini described a simple, blunt protocol. When Y4Y decide they want a player in one of their ongoing training groups, they start by asking whether the family can pay the full fee. If not, they ask if 50 percent is possible. If not, they drop to zero. “It’s pretty much the protocol,” he said. There is no formal scholarship application process, no financial aid essay, and no need for families to prove hardship. If Y4Y believes a player belongs in the cohort, they try to make the finances fit around that decision rather than the other way around.
Exposure events are treated even more starkly – and refreshingly. For college showcases, Nike-backed tournaments, and similar platforms, Babini’s stance is that “a player should never pay for exposure.” Those events are free to all invited players, regardless of family resources. He talked about the “ID camp industry” — the carousel of paid college ID camps that can easily run to four figures a year once travel is included — and made it clear that Youth 4 Youth is trying to create the opposite: high-level ID opportunities in a player’s backyard at zero cost. If a player can’t get to a showcase, they will even work on transportation. “If we want a player to be there, we make that possible,” he said.
From a parent’s perspective, that philosophy shows up in another way: how much they are paying for access versus how much they are paying for training. Y4Y charges reasonably for ongoing training blocks the way most supplemental programs do. But they treat visibility — getting in front of decision-makers — as a right, not a premium product.
Daily Training, Real Mentorship
The core of Youth 4 Youth FC is still on the field. Weekends are heavy with age-group sessions — U12, U15, U19 — and weekdays are filled with semi-private and private sessions. That volume surprised me, given how often Babini stresses that they are “complementary” to clubs, but he explained that many players train five days a week with their team and then come to Y4Y two more times.
The difference is what’s wrapped around those sessions. Every player in the program, he said, has his direct contact information. They can call him after a Sunday match and say, “I want to talk about the game.” He’ll hop on a 15–20 minute Zoom the next day to break it down. That kind of access is intentionally “not scalable” in the Silicon Valley sense. Private equity is not the target though. He referenced Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 true fans” concept and argued there is value (to players, that is) in staying close enough to the ground that he can still pick up the phone when something needs to be elevated.
Mentorship is not just a brand word here; it is built into how Youth 4 Youth FC expects its staff to show up. Coaches are current players who remember what it felt like to be 14 or 16 and overwhelmed. The mentorship is both in-person and virtual, but not purely abstract; as Babini put it, “what happens on the pitch…informs everything that we talk about.”
For parents like Gloria and I, who watched their own young players navigate this alone — or with only well-meaning, imperfect guidance from adults who never lived the current recruiting landscape — that is a tangible point of differentiation.
The Free Academy Mandate and the World Cup Moment
In his SBJ column, Babini argued that the World Cup co-hosting cycle will deliver a significant influx of money into the U.S. soccer system, and that in his mind, the federation (USSF) has one real job post-World Cup: use that windfall to make elite development more accessible. He wrote that the country does not just need better facilities or branding; it needs to expand truly free pathways at scale.
This is where a big idea comes. While MLS has a free academy system, Brando points to more than 40 USL clubs that could, in his view, should be running free pro academies but are not as they do not have adequate funds. The free academy mandate is an attempt to imagine what it would look like if that ethos were written into the rules for every pro organization in the country.
He was careful to say it feels “above my pay grade” to tell professional clubs what to do, but he was equally clear that this is not a problem clubs can solve by themselves. “You need the Federation to step in,” he said. You need that World Cup money to go into player access, not just balance sheets.
We agree about the Federation needing to assert itself, and alluded to this in a piece we wrote about another big idea (counterintuitively, one more “elite” league – but for real, at the very top of every major region or state – and free for players). For ideas like this, there is too much complexity and too many interests vested in the status quo for major change to take hold. Without a push from the top, even positive steps unfold at a glacial pace, and mostly in local pockets.
There is tremendous parent dissatisfaction (and confusion) around the state of U.S. Youth Soccer. We see it all the time. The family cost burden is a big part of the pain, but also, results – U.S. Soccer is not producing the number of world-class players it should be. What we don’t see much of are constructive ideas about how to fix the system. Kudos to Brando and Youth 4 Youth FC for digging in and doing the work.
Looking Ahead
Youth 4 Youth FC is already a successful operation (so much so that it’s already attracted Nike as a partner and sponsor) but it can also be seen as a prototype: a player-run, more flexible, more humane development layer that sits inside of an imperfect system, but presents a true alternative approach.
If a parent is interested in Youth 4 Youth FC after reading this, Babini’s advice is to start by getting grounded. First, talk honestly with your child about goals: are they aiming at college, professional opportunities, or simply maximizing their development over the next few years? Youth 4 Youth FC is best suited for players who are serious, self-motivated, and ready for honest feedback but I was surprised, and gratified, to learn not all their players are targeting college or pro, at least not yet. For some, love of the game, desire to grow and improve and put in the work are enough.
Three steps if looking to get engaged:
- Spend time with their content — not just viral clips, but longer pieces — to get a feel for the culture and expectations. This means not just you, but your player – that’s where the interest and motivation must start, as always.
- If it feels like a fit, submit an application through their site, being realistic about level and including video if your player is old enough.
- Treat whatever response you get as learning: if they invite your child, great; if they don’t, any feedback is insight into how someone outside your bubble sees your player. (Editor note: This is always good advice)
The bigger picture, though, goes beyond one program. As federations, leagues, and clubs decide what to do with the World Cup dividend, parents can watch for whose proposals assume kids will keep paying, and whose start from the premise that talent should not be gated by family income or mailing address.
Youth 4 Youth FC will not be the only answer. But it is a fantastic case study in what happens when the people designing the pathway are the same people walking it — and when parents and players finally start to get that seat at the table.
Ron Stitt
Co-Founder, U.S. Soccer Parent