New pro development soccer team, New Jersey Teamsters Football Club (NJ Teamsters FC) has named Javier Velasco as head coach and held its second tryout on Saturday at the Stephen R. Gregg Park in Bayonne, New Jersey, to identify and hire the top players from New Jersey and abroad.
The United Premier Soccer League (UPSL) announced the hiring of Coach Velasco on Aug. 2, and Northeastern Conference Owner Alex Geraldino, a certified United States soccer agent and former NFL – Europe Cornerback confirmed the news on the teams site and said, ” We are excited that Javier Velasco has accepted a head coach position with New Jersey Teamsters FC. Javier has a USSF credentials and is a NSCAA member who’s committed the sport of soccer. He is a New Jersey native who has many years of experience recruiting, training and coaching players, and evaluating and assessing opponents. He’s a good fit for us.”
Players from Great Britain, Venezuela, Africa, Haiti, Brazil, Colombia and the New York metropolitan area came out to audition for the fastest growing sport in America and for a team that is not a Major League Soccer team. The Wall Street Journal wrote a descriptive subtitle, apart of a broader story about various levels within professional soccer that read, “Beyond Major League Soccer, there is explosive growth in the lower rungs of American professional soccer.”
The team held it’s first tryout at late July at Pennington Park in Paterson, New Jersey and will hold tryouts all month until they find players that can play football at the professional level. Coach Velasco told The Knockturnal, “Our second tryout was a success, we had about 45 players. We will bring most of them back next Sunday and invite some experienced professional players that will make the level more demanding, and will give the new players an idea of where we need to be to compete at the highest level.”
So far, the NJ Teamsters FC is off to a great start. They secured practice and home fields for matches and will host international friends and exhibitions. “We’re a new team and we’re off to a great start. This month we’re holding tryouts, next month we’re delegates at SoccerEx – the largest soccer convention in the world with over 450 team front office staff members, so our goal is to team up with a European premier team” and ” As a soccer owner, I’m looking toward Europe and South America. We are fortunate to be members of UPSL, a league that promotes and relegates. This is an important element for pro soccer and we are the only US league that has this concept, which is the popular concept all around the world, except the U.S.A. Promotion and relegation is what makes fans go crazy about soccer and this is one of our goals. Our Director of Operations, Joe Santella, Head Coach Velasco and I are on the same page. The first goal is to identify and develop the best talent, and then it’s to win soccer matches, go on to compete at a high level at the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup and borrow and loan out players.” Film and coaching company S.A.C.C. WOLVES was therefor the play by plays.
We’ll stay tuned, as the MLS has major competition with other American soccer leagues. They’ll all compete against one another at the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, the Super Bowl of Soccer!