Season’s Greetings to you from all of us at U.S. Soccer! We hope that in the next few weeks, you all are able to spend some quality time with your friends and loved ones. 
Like many of you, U.S. Soccer is closing during the holidays. Specifically, we will be closed from Dec. 24 – Jan. 1, reopening on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019.

While our office will be closed, many of us will look at emails during the break, so if you have an urgent issue, you can reach us; however, we do encourage everyone to take some much needed and deserved time off at the end of the year because we know all of you will hit the ground running next year.

The December Membership Call to discuss the information in the newsletter and answer any additional questions you may have will be held on Thursday, December 19 at 1 p.m. CT. You can find call-in information here.

2019 Monthly Update Schedule
Similar to last year, we planned ahead and created a schedule to send our Monthly Updates and Webinars for 2019. You can find the schedule here.

You’ll see that we generally stuck to mid-month, with February being an exception because of our AGM. As always, there is the possibility that the schedule will be altered due to unforeseen circumstances, but we will do our best to stick to this plan.

Additionally, we’re in the midst of reviewing the current membership email list since it was last updated December 2017. As a reminder, we send the update to the Presidents, Executive Director, Director of Coaching/Technical Director, State Referee Administrator and State Youth Referee Administrator for each organization member, and since those positions have likely changed for some members since last year, we want to update our list to properly reflect that.

REMINDER: Development Academy Age Groups for 2019
A quick reminder that we communicated updates to the Development Academy programming recently. First, on Nov. 29, we confirmed that beginning next season, there will no longer be a U-12 age group in the Boys DA. We then announced on Dec. 5 that the Girls DA would offer U-16 as a single age group for 2019-20 season.

Those changes mean there will be DA programming in the following age groups:

For any member who would like to offer standards-based U-12 programming, you can find the DA standards here.

WWC2019: WNT to play Chile, Sweden Thailand in Group F
The United States Women’s National Team learned its opponents for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup on Saturday, Dec. 8 during The Final Draw from Paris.

The U.S. will open Group F play against Thailand on June 11 (3 p.m. ET) at Auguste Delaune Stadium in Reims. The USA then faces Chile on June 16 (12 p.m. ET) at Parc des Princes in Paris, followed by Sweden on June 20 (3 p.m. ET) at Stade Océane in Le Havre. All games will be broadcast on the Fox Sports family of channels.

Before they head overseas to France, the WNT will play eight home games across the country in the Countdown to the Cup! You can see the full scheduled below, and tickets for all games are on sale now.

Gregg Berhalter Named New MNT Coach
On Dec. 2, two-time FIFA World Cup veteran Gregg Berhalter was appointed the new head coach of the U.S. Men’s National Team.

Berhalter, with 25 years of experience as a player and head coach for clubs in England, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden the United States, becomes the first U.S. World Cup veteran to take the reins of the U.S. Men’s National Team. In addition, he is the first U.S. MNT boss with experience as a player and a coach both domestically and internationally.

His first games at the helm will be on Jan. 27 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. Vs. Panama and then the team will move up north to San Jose, Calif. to play Costa Rica at Avaya Stadium on Feb. 2.

Other Information/Reminders: