The NSCAA Convention is good for a lot of things. Absorbing the miniature nation-state that is the convention floor every year is among them. This year, for me anyway, the pinnacle was getting to sit down with former Bayern Munich legend Paul Breitner, who scored for West Germany in the triumphant final of the 1974 World Cup. I once ran into a goalpost during a rec game, so we’ll call it even.

Breitner’s currently an advisor and brand ambassador for Bayern, which means he travels the world and parses Bayern’s massive operation into edible bites for the masses. As far as I was concerned, a chance to talk with Breitner was a chance to talk development. Not like Germany just won the World Cup or anything on the back of a comically massive development initiative.

Late last year, Bayern announced a “youth partnership” with northeastern development program GPS just three months after opening their New York City office. That was their first official foray into the American soccer market, and the initiative only figures to grow. But the end goal (or even short-term purpose) of it was notably murky. So what are Bayern’s plans for development in America? How do they plan to go about it?

Without further ado, my sit-down with Breitner.

Bayern recently partnered with GPS, a development program in the Northeast. From Bayern’s perspective, what’s the goal, the long-term vision there?

“The goal is to hope that we will become a brand, an important brand in U.S. soccer. We’ve not come to search for easy money, fast money, as maybe other people are doing. We think that soccer in the U.S. is right now becoming more and more popular, interesting. And we have many supporters here. We want to be present, and we think we can help improve instruction of kids. To improve the soccer. What can we do? We can offer a lot of experience, our strategy, and the way our coaches instruct kids or adult players.

“I think the impression we got here, I think this is a very important point for soccer in the U.S., to become one of maybe five or six or seven dominating football nations. You have millions and millions of kids playing soccer, but we are convinced you need to send your coaches to Europe, to Latin America, to learn, to get new ideas. We can send, during the year, a lot of coaches to instruct coaches. We want to help to understand soccer as a different sport to American football, baseball. We want to try to help the people understand that a soccer player isn’t by far an athlete. And we want to try to help people learn to understand that there is no chance to switch an American football player, an athlete, into a soccer player.

“Our goal in our academy is always to send the best coaches to the youngest. Many many clubs make the mistake that they send the best coaches to the players of the age of 16, 17, 18 to prepare them to become hopefully a professional player. But we send them to the kids of 6 or 7. Right now in Germany we start to instruct them at the age of 4. We do start to play competition games at the age of 4 and 5. Because we know that different to other sports, you have to learn your skills and all you need to know about tactics from the age of 6 to 12. Later on, you only can modify your technique. You need to instruct it at the highest level to become maybe a very good football player.

“After the age of 12, you can modify a player by 70, 75 percent. No more. And therefore these years are the most important years, educating, coaching, instructing kids.”

For Bayern in the future in the U.S., is there a desire to expand into more clubs in America?

“Let’s wait and see. We have time. We’ve always said to take your time. Now we are here. We opened our office in New York in August to learn. To understand the world of U.S. soccer. We have to learn the way soccer is running here. We have our ideas, but to enter a market like the U.S., you have to learn. We are able and ready to learn, and on the other hand, I tried to express that Bayern Munich is one of the most serious clubs in the world. We are educated to live in partnership, by giving and taking. Not just by taking, money and ideas. In the future, we respect that a good deal is only a deal if its a good deal for both sides, not just for one.

“These are our aims. We try to reach here, to present us as a serious partner. And then we are convinced that we can do a lot of help.”

The opening of the New York office signaled a real interest in diving into the U.S. market. How did that come about, and why the final decision to do it?

“We decided to go to the U.S. because we are convinced that the U.S. will become a very strong, important soccer nation. We entered also China. We will play two or three games this summer in China to enter the market there, to be present there. Especially because in China we are number one. We know we are number one. Bayern is the most popular football club in China. We hope to become the same popular club in the U.S.

“We have right now nearly 4,000 fan clubs. Every day we get between five and 10 new clubs around the world. We have to live with the supporters, with the members of the fan clubs. You have to say, ‘Hey, we are your team. We are your club.’ We have to move, not the supporters, not the fans.”

As you guys have come to terms with development in America, have you identified anything that you feel Bayern specifically wants to improve upon?

“Yeah (emphatically). We have seen a lot of moments. We are trying to convince people to make some changes. A very important change would be to change the way the kids are treated in the academies and on the field. I mean that you have to forget that you have to be a commander during an entire game. Commanding, ordering every pass, ordering every move, every ball control. To change and become a partner of the kids, not a commander. Especially in years from 6 to 10, as a second father. They need confidence. They need space to breathe free. You have to give the kids as early as possible a feeling for their position in which they have to move in both ways. Attacking in the way which is totally free and defending in the order of the total defense.

“They have to learn some kind of responsibility for their position. But not by getting order and demands. By getting freedom. Free space, free air. Because soccer is determined by spirit, intuition, spontenaity, and not by just over-coaching. This is for me the most important step, the way kids have to be instructed. Give them space. Give them air to breathe. Don’t be always on their side and tell them what they have to do every second. Let them make mistakes. Give them a chance to correct their mistakes, to learn by making mistakes. This is what a soccer player needs to learn.”

Is that kind of coaching, in your experience, something that’s held back the American development of high quality international players?

“They’re too interactive. Sometimes I get the impression that the coaches are members of the team on the field. They interact as they would play, as they would stand on the field. They should come back to the sideline. Let the young kids develop as kids. This is a very point of view for me because we in Europe, we see baseball, American football for example, and we got the impression that this is a special kind of sport. American football, I’m sorry, you don’t need many skills. You have to run, and catch the ball. It’s athleticism, nothing else. You can’t borrow anything from American football, from baseball, to soccer.

“We are a kind of artist. You have to realize it. And then I think you get the right feeling, the right understanding.”

In terms of embedding in the U.S., the Development Academy has emerged as the preeminent way for young club players to find quality games year-round. Could Bayern eventually have a team in the DA?

“I have no idea. Let’s wait and see. We are open for many things. We are open to many ideas. But we are not here to say right now we want this or that. We are here to learn, to be able to react, and we want to present us as perfect partners. The more partners we get, the better for us, and the better for U.S. soccer.”