Former Celtic midfielder Paul Byrne is starting a new career in California with Temecula.
The 42-year-old had a colourful career with Celtic after signing for Liam Brady, getting his chance under Lou Macari and scoring twice against Rangers (IL) under Tommy Burns.
Byrne’s career continued to wonder after leaving Celtic for Southend but after running a soccer school in Spain and a spell managing in the Engish non-league with Hemel Hemstead he’s hoping to build a club at Temecula who currently play in the third tier of US football/soccer.
“I have had to travel 8,000 miles to get a job because no one in Ireland would give me a chance,” Byrne told the Herald.
“People still have an image of me when I was 21 or 22. They still think I am a messer, I will let them down, not turn up, that sort of stuff. Sadly, people still have that perception of me as a player.
“But I grew out of all that a long time ago, yet people haven’t given me a chance. I have done well as a coach and a manager when I am given a chance.
“A few years ago, I went to Hemel Hempstead in England, they were 13th in the table when I took over, I got them into the play-off finals where they just lost on penalties.
“So I have come here and I am building a club from scratch. It’s only a few games in, but we are making progress. At our first game this year, we more or less had one man and his dog watching the match, we played last weekend and we had a crowd of 500 there. That’s progress.”
Explaining his new role he added: “I am head coach of the side, but also overall director of coaching, they have given me full range of the club.
“We are getting more and more players in all the time, we have recruited around 100 players in the last while since I started putting on more sessions.
“People over here don’t understand soccer the way we know it, the way we were steeped in it. I have been putting on soccer education programmes for the parents to help them understand what the kids are going through.
“Parents here pay up to $2,000 a year for their kids to go in and play in what we would consider a normal schoolboy football career back home, they are paying that money for their kid to train on a Tuesday and Thursday and play on a Saturday. And they are not learning because, for such a massive country, they are not producing players.
“Here, the main aim for parents is for their kid to get a college scholarship, it’s not all about getting a professional football contract like at home, but the parents aren’t educated in the game and the kids are so often being told the wrong things, by coaches and parents.
“The area I am in now, around LA and Hollywood, it’s where lots of people have holiday homes, it’s a wealthy area, we are the first semi-professional soccer club in the area.”
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