On November 30, 2017, Nashville SC announced the signing of forward Robin Shroot from Norwegian club IL Hødd. The weird ø letter is pronounced like a short “o”, kinda like like the “eu” sound from the French word “bleu”, in case you were wondering*

*I”m probably wrong

Shroot, 29, was born in Hammersmith, London, and quickly began playing soccer, joining the Wimbledon youth system at 8 years old. From there, Shroot has played for many clubs, from England to Scandinavia. His path to Nashville is incredibly complicated, so to avoid leaving anything out, here’s a table that shows the clubs he played for:

So, clearly, based on the above table, Shroot has great movement (wow that was a terrible joke. Edit that out). In total, he made 211 caps for 11 different clubs in his 12-year career, and he scored 70 goals at all clubs. An interesting tidbit to note: From 2012 to 2013, the head coach of Stevenage was a certain Gary Smith. The very same Gary Smith who is not the head coach of Nashville SC. This is no coincidence! Smith has also brought other players he is familiar with to this club already: players he’s worked with before like Matt Pickens and Kosuke Kimura (more on Kimura will come later).

Now, let’s turn to Shroot’s statistics. Head Coach Smith said that Shroot “is a catalyst for creation with a high soccer IQ and a wonderful ability in front of goal” and wow is he right. As mentioned above, Shroot has scored 70 goals in his thirteen seasons of professional soccer. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Here’s him at Harrow Borough, in 2007:

Here’s more goal scoring highlights:

I could keep dropping more and more highlight videos, but here’s the last one I will throw at you. Below is a video showing some of his on the ball movement skills playing for Stevenage against Tottenham in the FA Cup:

This guy is good. He really does have a good soccer IQ; he knows where to position himself to receive crosses or other passes in the box, and he knows how to capitalize on those opportunities. We can expect to see him involved as the tip of the spear in Nashville’s attacks, and we can definitely expect to see him put the ball in the back of the net early and often when the season starts.

However, I posit that Shroot’s value will also extend to how he works off the field. With this being the first year of Nashville SC, and with the advent of MLS to Music City happening by 2020 (which is only two years away now. Let that sink in), Shroot has a skillset that can help the team off the pitch. Check out this video, called “Who is Robin Shroot”:

In the video, Shroot is shown training youngsters, and he even says “being involved in working with the youngsters in the club is so rewarding…to see them develop every week from things we work on…in a similar way to scoring a goal in my own game, it feels like that. Would I like to work in development and with junior teams? 100%.” I think that Shroot can be instrumental in getting new players up to speed with training, basic fundamentals, and can really help on the practice pitch. I think that this is where his value lies; off the pitch during training, in addition to him scoring lots of goals for the Blue and Gold.