From First Touch to First Team

About the podcast

What does the pathway to professional football really look like?

Launch post: There is no single path to the pro game. Some make it young. Some make it late. Some take the long way around.

From First Touch to First Team is a football podcast of honest conversations with current and former professional players, coaches and the people who built careers in the game. Each episode follows one journey from grassroots to the professional game, including the parts that usually stay out of the highlight reel.

Why the show exists

No two paths into professional football look the same. Some players make it young, some make it late and some take the long way around. Setbacks are part of almost every story, and there are many routes into and around the game that young players and their families never hear about.

The show gives young players and their parents the education, the honest stories and the perspective to find their own way through it.

Real stories. Real setbacks. Real breakthroughs.

From players, coaches and the people who built careers in the game.

Marcus Younis, episode 4: “Don’t try and be good at everything. Be perfect at your strengths, because that’s what makes you special and what gives you that X factor. If you’re good at 1v1, perfect it, because you’ll know that every game you’ll be the best on the pitch at 1v1”Open episode 4

Who you will hear from

Guests come from the A-League, the NPL, German football, the English Championship, the NWSL and beyond. So far that includes a player who went from Leipzig to Wolfsburg, the Champions League and the Western Sydney Wanderers, a player who went from NPL 2 to the English Championship, a goalkeeper coach in the NWSL who never played professionally, and people who built full-time careers in football without a playing contract.

18 guests have shared their journey across 20 episodes. Meet all the guests.

Who it is for

Young players

See how many different routes lead into the professional game.

Parents

Understand the pathway and learn what kind of support actually helps.

Coaches and scouts

Hear how players describe development, selection and the years in between.

Many families listen together in the car on the way to training or a game.

Nicolai Müller, episode 2: “Enjoy and love the game. That’s the most important thing for me, because you have to love it. You have to love to work hard, to give everything. To make it happen, there is a lot of sacrifice”Open episode 2
Jan Schmidt coaching a young player

Your host

Jan Schmidt grew up in Frankfurt and studied at the German Sport University Cologne. He has coached since the age of 17, with experience at Fortuna Köln, Bayer Leverkusen and the German Football Association (DFB), and now lives in Sydney.

Away from the podcast, Jan runs Eleade Fussball, a player development business in Sydney. The podcast is an independent show with its own guests and its own direction.

How to listen

A new episode comes out every Monday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Get involved

Know someone with a story young players should hear, or interested in partnering with the show? Get in touch.