FTBL Academy is a youth soccer academy in East Pasadena built on one idea: develop the player first, and the team takes care of itself. Here’s where that idea came from — and who’s behind it.
Recreational leagues offer community, but little coaching. Club soccer offers competition — often at the cost of the individual player, with roster politics, results pressure, and a bill that keeps growing. FTBL opened in 2020 as the third path: not a league, not a club, but a soccer education.
We call it formación — formation. A player isn’t built in a season; they’re formed over years of deliberate work on technique, understanding, and character. Six seasons in, that idea has grown into more than 300 players from 80-plus families across the San Gabriel Valley — most of whom found us the same way: parents searching for the best soccer training for their child.
Rafael — “Coach Rafa” to everyone at The Lab — founded FTBL in 2020 and still coaches on the field every week, from the youngest Foundation One group to Academy Teams. His own education in the game came from studying players like Zinedine Zidane: not the highlights, but the habits underneath them — the first touch, the scanning, the calm under pressure.
That study became a conviction: technique and understanding aren’t talents a player is born with. They can be taught — deliberately, patiently, to any player willing to work. FTBL is that conviction, built into an academy. He coaches in English and Spanish, and he wrote the standard every FTBL coach signs on to. It has a title: Still a Student.
Vision for the game.
Mastery of the ball.
Grit and growth.
Every FTBL coach is certified in-house through our own coach certification course before they lead a session — same curriculum, same language, same standards. Your player hears one voice no matter whose group they’re in. Our staff is bilingual, and several of our coaches came up inside the program.
A team can hide a player’s gaps for years — a weak foot, a habit of hiding from the ball, a first touch that only works with time and space. Individual development can’t be faked. So everything at FTBL is built to see one player clearly, and move them forward on purpose.
Our curriculum draws on the traditions we studied to build it — Coerver’s technical vocabulary, the Ajax school of spatial intelligence, the competitive character of Croatian development — unified into one way of coaching.
Every player is read through Technique, Insight, Personality, and Speed — the evaluation lens developed at Ajax’s academy. It’s how we see a player, and how we report to you.
White, Royal Blue, Navy Blue, Black. Progress a player can see and earn — measured against the game, not against the kid next to them.
A player is never finished.
First touches, coordination, confidence — where the journey begins.
The same skills at game speed, under pressure.
League play for players who’ve earned the Academy Standard.
Bring your player to a session, watch how we coach, and meet the staff. No cost, no commitment.
