Jogo Bonito Training Academy

I hear people say all the time “I’m gonna teach my kid the value of a dollar.” As if that’s the best and most important thing you can teach a kid. Nah not me. You can’t get any more utterly and obscenely wealthy than IMG Academies and Marbella, Spain. I have see wealth so extravagant and opulent it literally made me want to puke. It was like eating an 8 course meal of straight candy. The value of a dollar fluctuates based on person to person so you can never trust it. I’ve met 14 year olds rocking 50K Rolexes and so much money in their TrustFunds they could party on their private yacht in Ibiza until the day they reach the coffin and I have friends so poor they eat out of a garbage can. So I’m gonna teach my kid the value of an hour and the value of doing things you don’t get paid to do. I’m going to teach my kid that a Life dedicated to the Pursuit of Excellence is never gonna be a waste of time or a waste of Life. Hour by hour, rep by painful rep, sweat drops followed by blood drops, I EARNED every last inch the skill in my feet across those holy white lines. I put STUDS IN THE DIRT every day out there on that Gridiron and not a drop of energy burned off was wasted effort. With a ball at my feet I learned all about dedication, discipline, desire, devotion, and diligence. I learned how to win with grace and lose with dignity. I learned to be fearless in the face of severe adversity and how to conquer obstacles with an insatiable, relentless, and indomitable will. I learned how to dedicate every breath I sucked into my lungs towards a worthy cause. In my time on I Earth I have won Championships, lost more games that I’d like to admit, and made Bonds of Brotherhood with guys I Love with all my heart and forged battle bonds in the FIRE of live action combat so deep they’re now blood relations. My advice: don’t chase money. Complete and utter WASTE OF TIME. Coming from somebody who comes from that Upper Class World, trust me, it’s NOT WORTH IT. My advice is to pursue Excellence, chase Greatness, learn to Master a Craft, and build your Life around a skill set that you can than pass and sell to the next one in line. If I can teach my kid the value of an hour and the value of practicing whatever he is gifted at he’ll be juuuust fine financially. Just my two cents 😤

Great Falls soccer pro aims to help kids learn the sport Reporter James Rolin talks with Dylan Gillaspie, who has played soccer for several teams in Europe and now lives in Great Falls.

I would like to make something very clear. The level that I am preparing The Elites for is a cold, brutal, and harsh world where some of the things that happen is borderline child abuse and in order to prepare them for the next level I am going to have to be hard on them. They are going to need to understand that their playing time and their success in this program and in LIFE is based entirely on THEM and their ability to take a hit on the chin and keep moving. If you are not made of steel at the Elite Level you will be CRUSHED so yes I am going to scream at them, I am probably going to even have to curse at them because if I don’t than I will FAIL to prepare them for a college coach who DOES. But I make this promise to all the athletes under my care: They will never leave the field less confident in themselves, their abilities, and their future than when they stepped on the field. It will be my primary goal to BREAK them physically and mentally because at the next level the game is FIRE and they’re gonna need practice in taking hits but if I blow up and lose it on a player I’m gonna be right next to them talking it out and building them back up. Coaches at the next level won’t do that. They won’t make that promise but I can promise you that that everything that I do will build day by day, rep by rep, and game by game into new heights of confidence with the understanding that I will have to tear them down like a muscle tears during physical strengthening to come back built STRONGER BETTER AND FASTER. You have my word that from me that I am here to build them, to prepare them for the next level and for life after the game. There are going to be STANDARDS and if they aren’t performing I will get to the bottom of why. That’s my promise

I’ll never forget Nick Bollettieri. Nick is a Tennis Legend and was the founder of IMG Academies which has a current market value of 1.25 BILLION USD and was ranked in the Top 3 high schools in THE WORLD. He has trained the likes of Serena and Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, in addition to the hundreds of other Tennis players of lower divisions that paid 950$ per hour for his instruction. IMG is at the absolute Apex of Youth and World Class Sport in literally every Sports Program it offers and it was all Nick that started it. He gave the Soccer Academy a speech about Excellence at the beginning of the year and I’ll never forget a single word because it’s been burned into my Mind and Heart. It was Nick Bollettieri that set the Standard for what was, and is, his spirit of Excellence and Competition that permeates the IMG Ascender Mentality. He said to us 80 players ‘Gentlemen, welcome to The Cauldron of Elite Athletics. IMG’s nickname is aptly named “The World’s Toughest Playground” and over the course of this year and your future career here you will come to profoundly understand why. Let me explain something to you boys. I have built you a temple for the World Class Athlete. Everything you see and experience is 100% 5 Stars. The facilities, teammates, nutrition, equipment, teachers, coaches, and other sports experts are the absolute BEST we could find and pay six figures for. If there are better people available for the position we will find them, and match whatever their salary is anywhere else. Absolutely NO expense has been spared in building you this Disneyland for the Elite and MasterClass Athlete. IMG is the TOP FLIGHT, the MasterClass, the Apex of Sport not only in America but globally as well. You are some of the best young Athletes in the country and you will be expected to act and train like it. You are Living the fairytale of every aspiring young Athlete in the country and you are now Elite Athletes, and you need to understand something about why we are called Ascenders. Perfection will not be expected or demanded from you. Hitting a new technique 10/10 is perfect and it is impossible. Even Ronaldo and Messi make minor mistakes in virtually every single game they play and even Sharapova and Federer struggle when training their muscles to execute a new technique but failure is treated differently by an Ascender. It is tolerated in increasingly short increments and as Ascenders we understand that our limit today will be not be tolerated tomorrow. The minimum bar of acceptance is treated differently by an Ascender. It is not the floor that we walk on or the bar that we crawl under; it is the concrete ceiling that with FIRE in our eyes and fists of made of steel that we hit until that pavement shatters like a glass chandelier dropped off a skyscraper. Perfection will never be expected of you, but Excellence will DEMANDED every time you step across those white lines. Perfection in its totality is, and always will, out of the reach of even the BEST of the BEST so we will not expect it out of you; but Excellence, however will be. Excellence is being able to execute the technique perfectly 9/10 times. The bar set for you Gentleman is extremely high in this Disneyland for the Modern Athlete and over my dead body will we ever lower it for any Young or MasterClass Athlete wearing our jersey. Maybe today a certain level of Excellence is too high for you and you are simply technically unable to execute with flawless consistency but tomorrow or the next day you will rise and ASCEND to that level and that is why we are called ASCENDERS. The Pursuit of Excellence is a never ending journey and no matter how good you get you can always do one more rep, one more sprint, and that one more that you do comes down to a tenth of an inch, a 100th of a second, and that one more rep you did that one time in training allowed the most minute of changes and just by that 10th of an inch, that 100th of a second, you execute at the most dire time and with flawless ex*****on you win a Championship. You will be molded by the Fire of Competition and you will be taught The Way of the Ascender every, single, day. As Ascenders you will be taught to be fearless in the face of extreme Adversity and answer every failure with indomitable will, unstoppable Courage, with ice in your veins and Fire in your eyes. This is the Cauldron of Elite Athletics Gentleman, this is the WORLD CLASS, you can’t get any higher, and here we not only train you like Professionals and Grown Men, we treat you like Grown Men because this World is cruel, hard, and harsh and boys don’t survive here, only Men do. Good luck and Godspeed Gentleman, I wish you nothing but the best and success in your Career here at IMG and beyond.

We are IMG Academy We rise every morning with the promise of today. We are students, we are athletes, and we are leaders. Welcome to IMG Academy, a place where legends are made...

I want to tell a story about how to take criticism from coaches about a time where I EARNED my place on the bench. It was early my sophomore year in England and I was still adjusting to the culture-shock and my performance simply wasn’t acceptable for that level. Dai Jones was the U-21 English National Team scout that is responsible for talents like Jack Wilshere and Raheem Sterling and he had some hard words for me to hear that morning. He takes one look at me and says to me “Dylan, you have not improved AT ALL since last year. Some of the first years are miles ahead you lad, MILES ahead of you. You had better start showing improvement or you might as well take a plane across the Atlantic because you’re just wasting your time and our time with the way you’ve been playing.” And I’ll admit it was hard to hear but I had a CHOICE in how I received his criticism. So I finished lacing my boots, stood up, looked him right in the eye and said “Thanks for the honest Dai. It’s refreshing.” And than I BALLED it up that session. At the end of the training session Dai gathered everyone around and said “There was a bloke years back and I had a conversation with his father and he was really pumping the lad up to me and so I was thinking ‘he might be a special talent but he’s likely to believe the hype his father was telling him and than something happened that showed his character. Everybody else f*cked off after training and he stayed and picked up the balls and that’s when I knew he had what it takes to get to the next level. That player’s name? Raheem Sterling. Today I slammed Dylan and instead of whining that I was being hard on him he took what I said, used it, and today he played with some fire in his gut. Take a lesson from Dylan lads. When we tell you these things we’re not picking on you and to be honest we could give a toss if we like you off the field. Once you cross those white lines the only thing that matters is performance.” Know this: At the Elite Level NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR PERSONALITY. I could HATE a player off the field but if he performs HE’S GETTING THE MINUTES. END OF.

Just to give you an idea of what the Elite Level looks like, what is expected of you, and just how real and RAW that world is I will tell you the story of how I met the U-18 Academy Director. IMG is EXTREMELY expensive and everything from the facilities, to the coaches, to the teachers are all THE BEST money can buy. I was a 14 year old kid away from home and we were sat in the clubhouse and all of the coaches and supplementary staff got up and did their introductions. The U-18 Academy Director kept his Oakley’s on inside the building with his arms crossed apparently didn’t want to be there. I’m looking around at about 45-50 kids aged U-15/16 and I’d say a good 25-30 of those kids were Hispanic from Spain, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, etc. So this Academy Director gets up and this is the first thing he says to us as a group of 50 players. He says “Okay BEAN—S. We speak ENGLISH on the field. Okay BEAN—S! You are in AMERICA now. You don’t speak bean speak on the field.” And I was blown away at the audacity of that being the very first thing he said to us and what that was is it was letting us know how things were going to be. And let me tell you something, not a single kid in that room went and told his parents about that story because he knew he had something that we all needed: D-1 College referrals and if we went and complained to our parents about our coach being overtly and brazenly racist on the first day he wouldn’t lift a finger to help us. The Elite Level is a no holds barred fist fight and if you play hard and live that life you go to sleep with bloody knuckles. High demands are placed upon you and you have to perform. END OF.

When deciding on the kit sponsor for the academy I went with Emporio Armani because nothing says CLASS like Armani. I got the idea from Italian Scudetto Champions Napoli whose kit sponsor is Armani. Only the 10 Elites will have the honor of pulling on an Armani jacket because this, like everything good and valuable in life, is EARNED. Never given

I am all about what makes this game BEAUTIFUL and one of the most beautiful things about it is that its a poverty sport. More than just being a pipe dream for these impoverished kids to make it out of the ghetto it’s the only moments of Joy and Happiness they ever experience. I truly believe in the power that sport has and I believe that this game’s heritage belongs to everybody, especially the poor and downtrodden. I dislike charging anything for my services because to me I don’t think you should ever have to pay to play this Beautiful Game and Zlatan agrees. This Game belongs to EVERYONE and it is in that spirit that I make a solemn promise that eventually this will be FREE as soon as I can make ends meet with other business endeavors. We will be filing shortly for our 501C3 status as soon as we are up and running and the first people that it will be totally free for will be the people who paid the most. I make this solemn promise that I will NEVER turn away a kid who has the Passion in his Heart to play this Beautiful Game because of an inability to pay.

Shattuck-St. Mary’s is where I attended my junior and senior year of high school and it is the BEST school in the WORLD for hockey. Our soccer program is a great deal younger than our hockey program that has won over 30 National Championships with over 100 NHL Alumni including Sidney Crosby, Amanda Kessel, Blayre Turnbull, Nathan Mackinnon, and Parise. At Shattuck there is a culture of Excellence and the lessons that I learned being a Sabre Alumni about creating a culture of Excellence is what we will apply to the Joga Bonito Training Academy. It is the culture of success and Excellence that makes SSM such a powerhouse in the world of sports and it is a model that we will carefully follow in building this program.

The Shattuck Way Documentary-- Extended Version ssm

Ronaldinho is the epitome of what I want this academy to be. This Game is SERIOUS and I will only train serious athletes but I never want to lose focus of the purest essence of The Beautiful Game. Ronaldinho did what I could not and that is finding JOY in The Game even at the most serious level. Ronaldinho said he wants to be remembered as “The happiest man alive playing football.” I truly believe that players will play their best game when they are playing with JOY in their Hearts. We will take it serious while at the same time not losing that childlike Joy an creativity. (We do not own the rights to the video)

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The fundamental goal of this academy is to provide young aspiring players with the skills of an Elite Footballer. These 11 Rules of Survival I took a picture of outside of Blackburn’s U-19 Youth Academy locker room and it sums up how that world is. Beginning in the summer I will be hand selecting 10 players ages 14-18 to undergo a 3 month long boot camp geared towards preparing them for the high school season. These players will be selected based purely on their skill. Their personality does not apply in any way shape or form. Dual sport athletes are not encouraged to apply. It is extremely difficult next to impossible to be Elite at two sports. I am looking for 10 kids that want to make Football their cornerstone to build their future around. Rule #8 “There is no such thing as weekend breaks, Christmas or Easter Holidays in Football. There are no half measures either. Do you want to go on a holiday or do you want to be a Footballer?” The thing you have to understand about this world that you want into is that it is a BRUTAL reality shock if you come with only a half measure attitude. This game is SERIOUS and if you don’t come prepared to bring EVERY SINGLE DAY this program isn’t for you. I would encourage you to read through these rules and ask yourself “Do I really want it bad enough to SACRIFICE for it?” In the end, it’s on YOU. You think you got what it takes? COME SHOW ME. VAMOS!