During the U.S. men’s national team’s pre-camp at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida this week, Texas United Head Coach Arez Ardalani took advantage of a rare opportunity. USMNT Head Coach Gregg Berhalter invited Ardalani to attend the national team’s training sessions and to speak with him one-on-one about philosophy and tactics. But as incredible an experience as it was, it was one that took Ardalani by surprise — he found out he was invited to the camp just two days before it started, and immediately booked a flight to Florida.

“I had a friend that had [Berhalter's] contact information, and fortunately I had reached out to this friend that I was interested in doing some continued education during our offseason,” said Ardalani of how the opportunity came about. “He forwarded me this contact info and I reached out to Gregg [Berhalter], and like a professional Gregg reached back out immediately. We just settled the schedule from there. It was just such a great opportunity and such a last minute trip, I was just really honored to be picked out for this.”

At the camp, Ardalani was far from a spectator. Berhalter invited him to be on the sidelines during the team’s training sessions, at times standing with Ardalani to show him his plans and notes. Ardalani was also given the chance to present some of his ideas to Berhalter after one session.

“We talked about the system in our conference in USL League Two,” said Ardalani of his talk with Berhalter. “We just started talking about some tactical trends that I’ve noticed and the schedule that we play. We play two or three games per week sometimes, and we talked about what we can do tactically to prepare ourselves in a scheduling environment like that. It was a great conversation.”