Joshua is an 11-year-old from California. Jason is his little brother. The 11-year-old and his family will move to Madrid at the end of August “to make Joshua’s dream happen,” his mother Jackie Pynadath said.Thrilled to have the opportunity to turn that dream into a reality, Joshua intends to make the most of his yearlong commitment to Real Madrid’s Alevin A team....Joshua and younger brother Jason – who will play on Real Madrid’s satellite team for his age group – will attend the American School of Madrid, according to Jackie. She expects the family to stay in Spain until at least next summer. http://www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/sports/192-soccer/45304- That article is pretty informative, so I encourage interested parties to check it out. Here's a blog Josh (or his family, or both) did on their Spain trip. http://jjpynadath.blogspot.com/2013/05/barcelona-update-may-23.html Yes, this boy is very young -- for context, I'm not sure U.S. Soccer has called in anyone born after 2001 to its youth programs, and he was born in 2002. (Even that 2001 callup was unusual since the player was, IIRC, two years younger than most of the pool of the players he joined.) Still, since the report was out there and he really does appear to be joining the academy (for at least a year) it seems worth at least noting for now. Best of luck to him and his family. ADD: It looks like he has been coached by Jeff Baicher, who earned a couple of caps and was a pretty darn good player in my opinion. The wheel keeps on turnin'...
Joshua is an 11 year old from Los Altos Hills, California. He had two trials with Real Madrid and he impressed enough in his 2nd one to be offered a spot at the academy. He's moving to Madrid with his family at the end of August. He will be part of Real Madrid's Alevin A team. From what I understand he will be there for at least a year and then see where they go from there. He also had a try-out with Barcelona. Article about the move: http://www.losaltosonline.com/news/sections/sports/192-soccer/45304-
Dude. https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/joshua-and-jason-pynadath-at-real-madrid.1991555/ But seriously -- a while back I floated the idea of subforums and I think we are getting close to the point where they are needed. On busy days, there are like five pages of active players threads in YA. My suggestion would be Europe and "Everywhere Else" though perhaps there is a better way to do it.
Oh my bad Dave. Should have done a quick search on BS before making this thread. Friedel'sAccent bungadiri Please lock this, thanks.
I've merged the duplicate threads. Dave Marino-Nachison : I'll raise the question of another YA subforum with the other mods. I know another poster has recommended it, too, about a year ago (I think).
Joshua: "In the video you'll see them try to slide tackle me from behind after I steal it and get a step on him."
1st Division/Lower Divisions or Professional/Youth Players would be better than Europe/Nothing else matters imo.
On a semi-related note, this kid is from the DeAnza youth club which is the best academy program in the Bay area which isn't a problem in itself except that it exposes the SJ Earthquakes poorly run academy for what it is. With the new stadium opening, I'd like to see SJ throw more resources at their academy and made DeAnza an offer they can't refuse and just absorb them into the Quakes' system.
You have to wonder how they can pull off the move to Spain. Pynadath seems to be an Indian name and it looks like mom works for a German software company and dad is a software sales VP at a similarly sized company. Both look like they were raised in the US. Should be easy to get work transfers or maybe take a yearlong sabbatical. And it is a small world. I share a connection with mom on LinkedIn and it's this fellow I hired as a temp one summer to work for me and he ended up finding a real technical niche and working his way up to a director level (we all worked for the same company, but I left before mom started).
He's on the Guardian website this morning. http://www.theguardian.com/football/video/2013/aug/02/real-madrid-11-year-old-american-prodigy-video
Between this video and the other one in this thread, this kid is super quick. He doesn't look slow by any means either but even the scrimmages against other RM kids, he was juking them out their shorts. Maybe one day in the not too distant future we'll have an El Clasico with an American on each side.
Yeah, kid is a different kind of player to Lederman. I actually think Lederman's skill set is more intriguing in the long run because the things he does won't be affected by puberty. Pynadath may not have the athleticism advantage he currently possesses over his peers once they all go through puberty. With that said Pynadath's ball skills are elite for his age regardless of his athleticism.
As a youth soccer referee in an area with some very talented youth teams, kids with that amount of talent are more common than one would think. At 10 or 11, our inferior coaching system hasn't really gotten in the way of most of them yet, and they are on par with kids everywhere else in the world. The only reason kids like Josh and Ben Lederman are famous (kind of) on these boards is that they have parents willing to move to Spain to further a 10 year old's dream and a US based club team with connections to get them the original trials. There is a good chance that neither of them will ever play for the US senior team, just based on them being so young. Edit: Just to be clear, what I'm saying is that Josh looks to be elite for his age, regardless of location. But he would most likely fare just as well against those other kids in the Real youth system as he would against most elite youth teams in his age group in the US, because at 10 years old, most of the damage our lack of soccer culture does has yet to occur.