Olosunde aiming for first team debut with Manchester United
Trenton native promoting youth soccer initiative in the city
TRENTON » Matthew Olosunde admitted he’s never signed so many autographs or smiled for so many photos in one place.
Consider it practice for the very near future.
“It’s pretty new,” Olosunde said with a laugh inside Trenton’s City Hall building.
Olosunde, a defender for English Premier League giant Manchester United, met with city leaders, including Mayor Eric Jackson, and residents on Thursday morning to help promote soccer in Trenton.
The city’s Division of Recreation is teaming up with the PLAY SOCCER initiative to get more youths on the field. Starting July 10 through Aug. 9 from 9-11 a.m. at George Page Park, Cooper Field, Capital City Sports Complex and Cadwalader Park children can register to be part of the program.
“Soccer is very big and very popular in the city of Trenton,” said Andrew Carten, a planning and development community consultant working with PLAY SOCCER. “The Boys & Girls Club has an active soccer program going on, and what we’ve been doing this year is an after school program that has been very well attended. We recognize for the high school team to succeed, we need to reestablish the feeder system.”
Olosunde is the city’s shining star. He got his start at age six with Mooch Soccer — run by Rider University head coach Charlie Inverso and Mike Van Wagner — when he showed up at Cadwalader Park for a tryout.
“I don’t think I would have been able to mature and grow as a player if I didn’t really have a strong base to start at,” Olosunde said. “It really helped me a lot.”
He’s just one of the success stories from the Mooch program. Emmanuel Temeh starred at Trenton Catholic and then St. Joseph’s and Gerson Leiva played at Peddie before graduating from Princeton University last year.
They are all examples for players like Trenton Central’s Dantouma ‘Ya-Ya’ Toure, who is coming off a freshman campaign in which he led the CVC with 28 goals.
“I heard about (Olosunde), but I didn’t know who he was and then they told me his father was African, so I was like, ‘he’s from where I’m from, and that’s what we do, we play soccer everyday,’” Toure said.
“Every day I run 6 o’clock in the morning to train, and every time I’m running while I’m tired I think of how badly I want it and where I want to get at one day.”
Olosunde, 19, has already learned there is no real offseason for a professional soccer player. The English season ended in May and after a week and a half off, he was running in order to regain fitness.
He flies back to Manchester on Friday to get ready for preseason.
“It was my first full season playing with the (under) 23, it was pretty great,” Olosunde said. “I really enjoyed it and had a pretty successful season for the most part. I really grew as a player and being able to get called up to the first team a couple times was a great experience.”
Manchester United qualified for the lucrative UEFA Champions League this season and along with league and cup matches, there’s plenty of games to go around.
His goal?
“To make my debut,” he said. “I hope to achieve that this season. If I can make a couple more appearances after that and maybe stay as a steady option for the first team.”
Olosunde also had some advice for young players in Trenton.
“No matter how hard it gets, just keep going,” he said. “When you want to stop, that’s when you should do it even more. That’s when you should train harder, do more gym. That’s where the mental part of it starts, and that’s one of the most important parts, as is to keep with school.”