NORTH AMERICAN SOCCER EXPO
The North American Soccer Expo (NASE) delivers a comprehensive three-day experience for soccer professionals across North America. Hosted at the expansive Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, this landmark event brings together directors, coaches, and industry leaders to focus on education, innovation, and community building. This highly anticipated program promises a collaborative, high-energy environment featuring top-tier coaching education, hands-on tactical demonstrations, and unparalleled networking opportunities to elevate the sport for future generations.
Target Audience & Attendees
The North American Soccer Expo welcomes soccer professionals and administrators who are eager to kickstart or advance their organizational and coaching journeys. Registration is currently open for the following groups:
Coaches & Directors: Grassroots, competitive, and elite-level coaches.
Administrators & Staff: Club administrators, tournament directors, and fundraising coordinators.
Industry Professionals: Soccer brands, technology providers, and media professionals.
Expo Benefits & Key Features
NASE is designed to provide an exceptional educational and networking experience for coaches, club leaders, and businesses. Here's what makes the expo special:
Cutting-Edge Education: Gain valuable insights through dedicated coaching education sessions, expert-led lectures, and off-field seminars tailored for all levels of play.
Field Demonstrations & Tactics: Experience hands-on tactical demonstrations directly on the field, led by top professionals, including specialized sessions conducted by US Youth Soccer staff.
Massive Industry Expo Floor: Explore an expanded Exhibit Hall featuring over 60 exhibitors showcasing the latest innovations in soccer technology, gear, equipment, and facilities.
Leadership & Club Development: Participate in specialized leadership panels and club development workshops designed to elevate teams, clubs, leagues, and youth soccer as a whole.
Extensive Networking: Connect with influential brands, exchange ideas with peers, and build relationships on "Media Row" that extend far beyond the weekend.
NORTH AMERICAN SOCCER EXPO TESTIMONIALS
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Douglas Macaulay
Coach
What brought you to the North American Soccer Expo this year.
I was at the North American Expo, just like I was last year. Great experience, very good educators, great people, and would definitely go back next year.
What was the one session, conversation, or moment that made this Expo worth it for you?
It would have to be Ian Donnelly, one of my favorite presenters. I have seen him everywhere from Anaheim in California to Philadelphia. And I have done the talent identification classes. It's always informative, and I have done a special one this year on coaching the coaches, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Got a lot out of it, a lot of takeaways and also great to meet him [Ian Donnelly] in person as well as many others. And to have good conversations off the field.
What's one idea or connection you're taking back to your club — and how will it help your players or program?
Definitely the Ian Donnelley session on coaching behavior. I'll certainly be taking back some ideas to the club to help the coaches within. The main thing I gathered was coaching behavior, analyzing, revisiting, evaluating. And many, many people coach and never revisit their sessions, but it's definitely something that we all need to do. We all have strengths and weaknesses, we all have things that we can improve on, and it's certainly a way that I'll be using video and analyzing, watching coaches and help them observe themselves and learn from the moments.
Every coach and director has a 'why.' What's yours — and how does an event like this fit into your journey?
The why for me would definitely be I love coach education. I have been at every coaching convention with the United Soccer Coaches since 2008 in Baltimore. It's just been on a local doorstep with so many top names, not just names, some great names and coaches, sharing all their information. It's so close to home in Michigan, and it was fantastic. Really enjoyed it. I have had personal conversations with Ian Barker, Peter Vernase, Ronnie Mullenstein. Many more, as well as many great local legends. So it's a fantastic time, and we'd certainly go back.
If you were talking to a coach or director who's on the fence about 2027, what would you tell them?
Yeah, I would certainly say that anybody who's on the fence about attending these coach educations, especially guys from Michigan, it's right here, it's on your doorstep. As I said earlier, it's all top coach educators, ex-players from all over the world. If you can't learn from that, then you'll never learn, but being out there, being a sponge, listening to every word and just really enjoying the experience as well as the social aspects and seeing a lot of local guys and saying hello and catching up on all their stories and achievements and many from the World Cup this year. So, yeah, if you're on the fence, especially if you live in Michigan, even if you don't, I would definitely get down there and take it in, enjoy it, and, we love the game. There's nothing better than listening to good people.
Jonathan Muehlke
Coach
What brought you to the North American Soccer Expo this year?
I'm coach Jonathan Mulkey. I came to the North American Soccer Expo because I wanted to get another perspective right before the season started. I currently coach here in Northern Virginia. I have my own private training, small business, but I mainly do work with Vienna Youth Soccer. Where I have two academy teams. I had just completed the USSFB license too, so it's really great to network with some of the coach educators, so the directors and the coaches who aren't just on the field and doing admin work and leadership, really important work there, but those who are helping grow the next generation of professional coaches and understanding their philosophies, pedagogies. Anything from IDP to helping newer coaches on board into our US system so we can grow really and make the United States the preeminent world class place to play soccer whether you're a kid or maybe one day you rise to the ranks and are an MLS pro.
What was the one session, conversation, or moment that made this Expo worth it for you?
So one session, conversation, or moment that made this expo worth it, there were so many, and this is such a hard question to answer because there's just some really amazingly brilliant, smart, talented people who are leading our game, who are stewards and ambassadors of our game. But I would say in terms of alignment to USSF and the youth national teams. We had Ben Bartlett, who leads the pro course, come out and give not only a live demonstration at the expo, but also had, it was called a constraints-based approach to coaching, but he also gave sort of a talk about his previous work with talent development, and I asked him a question of what does the pro course look like. So for me, just interested in continuing my relationship with the federation, growing with their coach educators and seeing what that's like as I contemplate ways to improve my coaching practices and be in service to my teams. But I've got to say there were so many other incredible conversations, but Ben Bartlett is one name that really made it worth it.
What's one idea or connection you're taking back to your club — and how will it help your players or program?
What's one idea or connection you're taking back to your club and how will it help your players or program? I think it's not only improving your network with professional coaches, directors, coach educators, and learning more about the pro player pathway and pipeline, but one idea is that there's just so much amazing talent that we often cannot see. Especially if we're operating within just a one state jurisdiction or within sort of a regional area, one thing I'm taking back is, it makes sense to travel, to go to these expos, to visit other parts of the United States if you don't travel much because there's more to learn and they're interesting people to meet. They're educators. They're directors. So I think having that intellectual humility but curiosity to discover other perspectives really keeps coaches in a mode where they're continuously improving and gives you an array of ideas of how diverse our profession is and there's so many different ways to coach. Oftentimes at the club level it's sort of they have a specific system, a specific philosophy, and it's about falling in line with that. But while that's important, you also need to respect the diversity of different approaches, whether that's how we grow the game here in the United States or how they grow it in another country too. So I think having that intellectual humility and openness to continue to learn is really important as a professional coach and especially the coach educators.
Every coach and director has a 'why.' What's yours — and how does an event like this fit into your journey?
Yeah, so every coach, coach, educator, and director has a why. What's mine? And how does an event like the North American Soccer Expo fit into my journey? I think the why. Why travel? Why invest time, energy, and effort to learn from other individuals? Because I think at the end of the day soccer is a team sport. You can't win by yourself, and you need help when you're defending. You need help to advance the ball with other people. So I think understanding that you need to work in collaboration with other people to advance your own journey is a big part of the why. But I think a big thing is just for me just to experience something new, to put myself in a situation that maybe I'm not as familiar with, but it's something that I know will be valuable. I think even a week before I drove up to Michigan from Virginia, I just looked at some of the speakers, on the panel, and I was like, wow, this is really kind of an amazing lineup of individuals. And not only do you have an amazing lineup, but you can sort of choose your own adventure because there are 5 or 6 sessions going on concurrently, so you can almost program your own route to how you want to do your own professional development, and that's very unique.
If you were talking to a coach or director who's on the fence about 2027, what would you tell them?
So if I'm talking to a coach or director who's on the fence about 2027, I'd just encourage them if they have the time, energy, to plan ahead and try to show up. I don't know who the speakers are for next year, but if they get the same, some of the same individuals and the same quality and level of discussion and conversation. Definitely put it there on your map. So I would definitely prioritize this. I was really pleasantly surprised how warm and welcoming very high level individuals were. So at first, I didn't know what to expect, but everyone was really nice and a lot of people are just willing to talk to me and it's just really great. It was a great experience, definitely worth it.