Houston Dynamo Academy Director of Goalkeeping Jason Grubb has been invited to join the coaching staff under new head coach Mikey Varas for the upcoming U.S. U-20 Men’s National Team’s Revelations Cup in Celaya, Mexico from Nov. 7-17, where they will take on Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.
This is the U-20 USMNT’s first training camp in the run-up to the 2022 CONCACAF Men's U-20 Championship. That tournament will serve as qualification to the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup and the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Houston Dynamo Academy Director Paul Holocher said that the opportunity to coach some of the nation’s top young soccer prospects is a well-deserved honor for Grubb.
“Jason is excellent developer of young goalkeepers as his work in the Houston Dynamo Academy is showing,” Holocher said. “We are excited for him to have this opportunity to work with U.S. Soccer and some of the top young goalkeepers in the country and to continue learning and growing from the experience. It is always a terrific honor to be called in by our U.S. national teams, as a player or as a coach.”
The Revelations Cup will be the first international action for the U-20 USMNT since it faced Mexico in two friendlies in January 2020. The 2020 CONCACAF U-20 Championship and 2021 FIFA U-20 World Cup were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grubb has been with the Dynamo since Aug. 2016. Prior to coming to Houston, Grubb served as goalkeeping coach at IMG Academy and Quinnipiac University. While Grubb was humbled by the call-up, he was quick to deflect credit to Houston Dynamo goalkeeping coach Paul Rogers for helping him develop into the coach he has become.
“Having someone like Paul Rogers to work underneath has been a great opportunity. Paul’s been a tremendous mentor for me since coming into the club. He’s provided me with a lot of professional development when it comes to goalkeeping and coaching education, but he’s also given me the opportunity to experience football at the first team level,” Grubb said. “He’s given me the opportunity to work directly underneath him and with the first team goalkeepers and that’s been able to give me the experience I’ve needed to come back down into the environment I work in on a day-to-day basis, whether it be the U-23s, the U-17s or U-15s, and be able to implement some of those key traits to be a professional within the academy.”
The first game of the Revelations Cup for the U-20 USMNT will take place on Nov. 10 at 5 p.m. Central Time when they take on Brazil. The team’s three matches will be broadcast on TUDN.
