The Chicago Fire is the first Major League Soccer club to have a fully integrated youth program running from Under-8 to an Under-23 squad playing in the Premier Development League, and now the club is expanding its reach by selling the Fire brand to youth clubs in Mississippi and Louisiana. The incentive for MLS clubs to increase their youth talent pool is spurred by the "homegrown" policy that allows a club to put young players.

image via RFCL (Check out the guy behind the fence going crazy! So cool!)

Nicholas "Niko" Gkionis is a friend of mine, a special guest Online Soccer Academy player, and has guest blogged and appeared for JMSocccer10.com a few times. Hopefully soon he will become a regular contributor to our blog.

What's most spectacular about this goal isn't the shot - pish, even Diego can do that - it's that it came in the waning minutes of a championship (high school of some sort in Louisiana - didn't know they had those there) where his team was down 1-0 - one his team eventually won in [...]

Chris Rolfe of the Chicago Fire and US National Team has been on MontzTV before but now he is going to talk to us on the Jared Montz Soccer Podcast this Thursday! The JMS Podcast has been on vacation the past month or two due to my wedding and move from Chicago to Louisiana, but I am back now and ready to get on the Internet airwaves again!

Of course I want my players to do well in soccer and go as far in the game as they want. But most importantly I want my players to succeed in life first and soccer second. I think many lessons taught on the soccer field can be directly translated into real life. One such important lesson is sportsmanship!

First off let me apologize for being so late on announcing the August Online Soccer Academy players of the month. I have been in the process of moving from Chicago to Louisiana and things have been very hectic. It never is an easy decision to pick the winners so I didn't want to rush my choices.