Player development has become one of the most critical pillars for success in modern-day professional soccer, shaping not only a club's future, but its identity, sustainability, and competitive trajectory. Club Roots is a series dedicated to exploring how the Portland Timbers have built that foundation by examining the people, philosophies, and pathways that will guide the next generation of Timbers players – from early potential to their readiness to compete at the professional level.
Part 1 features my recent conversation with Timbers technical director Jack Dodd, who oversees scouting, player development, and long-term roster strategy alongside general manager Ned Grabavoy. Before his arrival in the Rose City Dodd spent nearly a decade with Toronto FC, where he held the role of Assistant General Manager of Player Personnel and Scouting, having spent the early stages of his career as a scout at English Premier League clubs Crystal Palace and Liverpool FC. In our conversation today, Jack and I spoke about his role as technical director, player development, and the organizational alignment that shapes the club from the academy to the first team.
Stumptown Footy: How would you describe your roles and responsibilities?
Jack Dodd: "I think it varies; the title exists in different forms in different clubs. In some places, a technical director might have the same role as what we understand the traditional GM to have, or a sporting director.
As far as my role at the Timbers is concerned, in the sporting side of things, I'm Ned's right hand. I am assisting him in a lot of his roles, but primarily I focus on the scouting department, the second team, and the academy. I'd group all of those things together and classify that as kind of anything that has a route into the first team for players.
So our pathway through the academy to the professional level, you know, from recruiting at the second team level, through the draft and through other avenues and players up through the second team. And then, obviously, the kind of main work is in terms of recruiting to the first team within our scouting department."
STF: How do you feel your previous experiences and roles have helped prepare you for your role here in Portland?
Dodd: "Yeah, fairly well, I guess– one role led nicely to the other, as a lot of career paths do. The role in Liverpool was with the academy recruitment department, and then I was part of a senior recruitment department at Crystal Palace for a brief period, and then in Toronto was within senior recruitment, but as the head of that department. From there, the last three years or so in Toronto, as assistant GM, and then technical director here.
Each piece has added a little bit onto the last; it set me up perfectly. I think my experiences in Toronto in particular probably saw the highest of highs and the lowest of lows at times, which I think gives you interesting perspective, I suppose, to bring to a new job, seeing things done ways that you know work and you would want to see replicated again.
Seeing things done in ways that didn't work so well, and that you know you either tried yourself and wouldn't try again, or you saw others, others attempt to do and wouldn't want to replicate yourself. And so I think that it's set me up pretty well for the role that I have here right now."
STF: Over the last few years, the club has seen expansion across the whole developmental pathway, with the addition of a U-15 Academy team coming back, the Timbers Discovery Program, and then the incorporation of homegrowns, like Sawyer Jura for example, into the first team environment this season. What's been the driving vision behind that?
Dodd: "I think if you look at a lot of clubs all around the world, the real benefits of having an academy and bringing players through the academy is a connection it creates with the community, right?
Everybody wants to see their own people in the team.
To have fans who sat in the Timbers Army, who could also have grown up and played for the team and things like that, it has hugely beneficial impacts on the salary cap. If you can produce one or two of your own in the early years of their careers, they sit almost off (salary) cap at times.
The faster they develop and the better they become, the quicker they can accelerate through different contracts and earn more money. But generally speaking, as a budget mechanism, it's really beneficial to have one or two who can crack that sort of core team, players that you use regularly who sit off your salary cap. It allows you to then spread the rest of your money out and get deeper, and have more quality and depth through an MLS roster.
I think generally speaking, we enjoy seeing any player, whether they're local or whether they've come from outside, go up through that pathway towards the first team, which we all enjoy. Seeing them go that route, go through the team and succeed, I think it's tremendously rewarding, particularly for the staff who have worked with them for long periods of time.
You mentioned Sawyer Jura – He's been here since he was probably 12-13 years old, gone through every age group of the academy, and gone on and represented his country. He's played for T2 now, probably 50-something times, and he's been on the field for the first team a couple of times in MLS, once in the Open Cup. He's back in the U-19 2006 group at the national team level. Again, the reward that the staff take, it's fantastic, and it's as big a driver, I think, for people in terms of their jobs as developmental coaches, to see the players go on that journey and come out the other end as well."
STF: How do you imagine the developmental player for a young Oregonian who dreams of wearing the Timbers green and gold one day?
Dodd: "I think the earlier the players start playing at any level, even if it's just kicking around with your mum or your dad or your brother or sister or whoever, in your living room or going out to a local park, the earlier people get into the game and grow a love for playing and consuming the game the more beneficial that is in terms of their development.
Because ultimately if you enjoy doing something you're going to stick with it.
And if you stick with it, you're going to get better at it, and the better you get, the closer you're going to get to doing something with it. At a professional level, as far as the pathway in terms of the teams is concerned, a young player is probably looking at playing in one of the better local teams, where we scout quite regularly in terms of bringing players into the Discovery Program.
Obviously, the Discovery Program is where we hope to kick-start their involvement with the club, and their love of being involved in the club as well. That then leads into the full-time Academy, under 15, under 16, under 18. [The Under 18s] It is usually a two-year cycle after the under-16s. We're probably 18 months into that before we start to really hone in on which of these players we're going to target for T2 and beyond, and then, look at how we can really develop them with the first team in mind.
The one thing that we find with the pathway that we have is it's very developmental focused through to a team, but once we get to T2, we're starting to put an emphasis on trying to win games as well. We think that learning to win is one of the key things that bridges the gap between between the Academy and the first team. That's what T2 is primarily for, so we can get guys who are in there now – they're earning money to be here, to really compete, to win games, and compete with each other for that next step and so on."
STF: What are the non-negotiable qualities that players must have at the academy/T2 level to have a chance at progressing to the first team?
Dodd: "I don't think there's necessarily any non negotiable. There's a commitment that's required to doing it, but it's not necessarily a 'Oh, you know, go out and try really hard.' Obviously, that's almost a given, but there's almost a wider commitment to it in terms of the players and their families – They're in here three, four times a week at least.
The travel that's involved in the away games that they go to, balancing that with school and those types of things – there's a level of commitment to just being an academy player, regardless of the actual football component of it, that you find out quite quickly. It's a real test for the families.
I think the families of Academy players probably the world over don't get enough credit that they deserve. The amount of miles that they clock up, the amount of hours they put in – I left here yesterday at 5:30 and the 16s were just going on, the 15th was just going on the field. Those parents are sitting in the parking lot in their cars for an hour and a half, two hours, while the kids are here under our guidance ... and then they've got a drive home [that] might take another hour those times of days.
So that might be a three- to four-hour commitment in their day, two, three, four times a week, during the nights, and then the games at the weekend. Some parents like to travel to the away games too. It's a huge undertaking for a family, let alone just the player. I think a lot of them find out quite quickly what's involved in that for the players.
Good football players come in every shape, size, and color, and especially a younger age, there's probably no discriminating factor that keeps somebody out. Obviously, we want to make sure that we've got good people through the club, so behavior is something that we take seriously here. But generally speaking, we don't want to be exclusive.
We really don't want to be exclusive, because the next best player could come from from any walk of life, from any part of the city, from wherever, and we don't want to have a setup that makes it too hard or prohibitive for those players to be in our environment, so that we can actually figure out what it is they really do well, how we can help them build off of that, and how we can work on the things that they need to work on.
Ultimately when you get to the MLS level there's an athletic component to it, but there is in football all over the world. But then look, Lionel Messi is what? Five-foot six? At some point, talent speaks for itself, and the rest falls short. I think ultimately, as long as the players are talented and committed there's a way for them to succeed if we help them."
STF: Organizations will often have an identity or a defining set of principles that govern their play style. How do you ensure that players align with these principles while focusing on development, regardless of the level of the organization?
Dodd: "It's a real challenge for the coaching staff through the academy and second team, that's where it's important for us to make sure that the staff understand that ... We're looking to develop players who can [align with Phil Neville's] style of play through first team, second team, to the Academy.
In some instances, we do want versatility in terms of how we work with the players. [At] my previous club we went through – from 2020 when Greg Vanney left Toronto, to Chris Armas coming in, to an interim head coach for six months, to Bob Bradley coming in – we went through three different styles of play. It's hard to change an academy in terms of the way that they approach the game that often, but it's a reality of football at the top end of the game ... that results drive coaching, hiring and firing, ultimately, and a lot of clubs have to be conscious of that.
You're hiring coaches to a particular identity as well, but then that identity has to produce results at the first team. So we need to be conscious, with the academy players in particular, that we're not necessarily just pigeon hole-ing them into one way of playing, but we do also need to make sure that, 'Okay, if this player in the under eighteens goes up to T2 mirroring the first team,' that when he goes into that training session he understands the language, some of the cues, and the things that he's going [need] to be prepared.
He's going to need to be ready to take on board .. And that we're giving him the best chance to succeed, right? Because each time a player moves up an age group or a level, the game goes that bit faster – it's that bit more intense. So as long as they've got some foundation in terms of the way that the game is played by those teams, then we've set them up, at least, to have taken care of that part.
Then just worry about them individually, coping with the speed of play, but knowing that things at one stage won't look dramatically different to the other. It's a bit of a roundabout to answer the question, I suppose, but it is: Alignment is important.
As we get further down the academy levels, it's probably more important that we're focused on the individual and their development rather than the team's style of play. The big challenge for the coaches is, 'Can they coach team principles whilst taking into account individual development?' While ... having players work on their weaknesses without knowing that they're doing it, and also the team growing as a collective as well. It's not an easy thing to achieve, I don't envy the people that we actually have in those positions having to pull that off."
STF: With football being an ever-changing sport, how do you envision the next generation of Portland Timbers talent will develop?
Dodd: Good question. If you go back and look at the great teams of 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, the game gets faster and faster. Now, there's probably a limit to how how fast the game can go really, [but] the emphasis will always be on how well you can execute technically, at the highest possible speed.
Paris Saint-Germain winning the Champions League last year was a perfect example of a combination of a team that's incredibly athletic and also technically very, very, very good indeed. That, for me, is probably the blueprint, at least in the short term.
The game's probably moving a little bit more back towards being end-to-end, and a bit more direct than maybe possession-based, as it has been through the last probably 10 years. What comes after that? ... I don't really know. Whatever those changes are, you start to see the impact of those trickle down to, you know, 'Whatever's happening in the Premier League will eventually come to MLS.' Whatever's happening in MLS will then go down through the academies and the second team.
So those trends, I think, are probably still to be determined. Ultimately, the game will always come back to being an athletic sport, and how well you can technically handle the ball. Those two components will always be there. So anybody coming through the pathway [are] going to need to maximize whatever capacity they have in both of those elements."
