Play Your Game Andrea Benton and Alvaro de Almeida

With Covid continuing around the world, this episode is more timely than ever. There is a need to "let" athletes go the right way that will not dampen their love of sport.

In this episode Alvaro and I talked to Lauren Sulz, PhD. She is an Assistant Professor,  within the Department of Secondary Education, Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. She co-wrote a paper called Best Practices on Cutting Athletes From School Sports Teams. It was published in 2018 in the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

All of the best practices that we talked about during this interview can be applied to both youth sports organizations and schools. 

Thank you to Lauren for being on our show! This episode is, definitely, one of our favourites.

Due to Covid futsal has been hit particularly hard. The FA made the decision to cut funding to futsal on Sept 24, 2020. They then decided to withdraw the Men's National team from the UEFA Euro Qualifiers on Oct 31, 2020. You can read more here.

Both Alvaro and I talk about this recent situation and what it means for futsal.

FA Futsal Cuts - https://www.thefa.com/news/2020/sep/24/statement-futsal-240920

Futsal Men's Team Withdraws - https://www.thefa.com/news/2020/oct/30/uefa-futsal-euro-play-off-update-301020

We would love to talk to someone from England about this. Feel free to DM us via IG to be on our podcast.  https://www.instagram.com/playyourgamepodcast/?hl=en

Are you a player or a coach or a parent looking to work on your football skills? 

This is our second episode in our three part technology series. In this episode, Alvaro and I interviewed Simon McGeough from the Just Football app. It's a fantastic use of technology that is keeping players motivated and  active through gamification. It's, particularly, applicable during Covid. 

We talked about the history of the app, how it works and what's upcoming for the app. We interviewed Simon back in July 2020 as you'll be able to hear from the interview. 

Also, there were some crackling sounds on my end of the interview so please keep that in mind when you listen to it.

Thank you again Simon for being on our podcast!

To learn more about the app, go to https://justfootball.app/

Looking to build confidence in your football/soccer player or team? In this episode, we talked to Alex Elliott, President of TOCA Canada. He talked about the origins of TOCA in Canada, it's new technology, the benefits of TOCA, how technology is neutral so kids/players can just focus on developing a specific skill and what's upcoming with TOCA.  

This was also a fun episode because Alvaro and Alex have played together on the futsal court so there was some good banter about Alvaro's playing style. Thank you Alex for being on the podcast ~ much appreciated!

To learn more about TOCA Canada, visit - https://toca.ca/

And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast. 

This is our first futsal club profile. Both Alvaro and I want to showcase the amazing futsal clubs that are in North America and around the world.

We talked to Mike Scarff, the Executive Director of Stars FC in Maryland. He shared his thoughts on his futsal coaching philosophy, his Club's success stories (they are amazing!!), how he sells futsal to soccer players/parents and the state of US futsal. Thank you Mike for being on our podcast!

If you live in Maryland, check out Stars FC at www.starsfcusa.com.

We're always looking for futsal clubs to interview so contact us. DM us on IG @playyourgamepodcast.

This interview is both inspiring and motivational. For both Alvaro and I, it's already one of our top 10 interviews.  

In this episode with Michael D'Agostino, we talked about his professional playing career, the sports businesses he's involved in, Soccer Canada, futsal and how he made the transition from being a player to a sports entrepreneur. Plus we put him in hot seat and asked him about his future plans.