Boston College Athletics
Photo by: John Quackenbos
From Massachusetts to Croatia and Poland - And Now Back Home
September 19, 2019 | Men's Soccer, #ForBoston Files
Amos Shapiro-Thompson is home - and Leading BC's elite freshmen class.
The international soccer structure is unlike anything experienced in traditional American sport. Associations across the world invest in athletes through training academies designed to essentially raise athletes from young ages. It's an internal development system geared at breaking homegrown players into the professional ranks, incorporating everyone into a competitive structure of first, second and development teams.
The structure finally began bleeding into the United States soccer pyramid when Major League Soccer clubs began opening academies, helping the Americans join a whole new class of international athlete. It helped create opportunities for native-born players, all of whom could now train under professional clubs with the intention of catching on internationally. They could then either turn pro under a federation's umbrella or remain amateur, potentially returning to American to compete at the NCAA level.
For Amos Shapiro-Thompson, it provided a roadmap that ended back at Boston College as a product of the revamped American soccer pyramid that helped stamp his passport with both domestic and international success.
"It's massive for me to represent Boston on a national scale," he said. "I want to help BC get back to where we feel like we belong. It means more to me than other people who take it for granted. I've had the support of a community that understands me as a person and as a player. It's a crazy story, and it's a totally unique path that I took. It feels like its coming full circle being back here (to Massachusetts)."
The freshman's story began on a local scale at Milton Academy, where the Worthington, Mass. native played for an undefeated, 23-0 ISL and NEPSAC Tournament champion. It caught the eye of both the New England Revolution and the United States national development programs, and he joined both the United States Men's National U-14 and U-15 teams while playing for the Revolution's youth teams through tenth grade.
It was an entry point to his professional hopes. In 2017, Shapiro-Thompson moved to Croatia to train with Dinamo Zagreb, an elite-level international club with over 35 domestic youth league championships. He moved in 2018 to Poland to play with Legia Warsaw, an academy directed by Polish national assistant coach Jacek Zielinski.
But after training overseas with internationally-branded mega clubs, Shapiro-Thompson made an important decision. He wanted to come home and go to college; it led him to Ed Kelly and a recruitment that made him an Eagle for this season.
"Those places prepared me for anything," Shapiro-Thompson said. "When you go out and live on your own when you're 16 or 17, with a new language, new culture and new people, there are different expectations. It makes you feel like coming to college isn't a step up in terms of independence. Transitioning back helped me by having that experience. I felt a little bit removed from the traditional freshman experience because of what I'd already lived, but in general, everything was good."
His return to the U.S. provided an opportunity for Boston College to add a dynamic player. Shapiro-Thompson is a midfielder but creates plays offensively; he scored a goal in his first career game against Quinnipiac, then added a breakaway strike against Rhode Island. Against Holy Cross, he scored a go-ahead goal in an emotional 3-2 win as BC pushed its record to 4-0 to start the season.
"Against Holy Cross, I was able to play closer to Western Massachusetts, where I'm from," he said. "It was the first game my dad saw me play in two and a half years. So when I scored that goal, I was able to blow kisses to the crowd. Eight guys who were seniors during my sophomore year at Milton Academy came to BU to watch me play. I felt like I had almost disappeared, but now I'm back."
He is most definitely back, and he is a part of a freshman class currently leading BC through a dominant start to its season. The Eagles won their first four games, including the game against URI, with a lineup featuring upwards of six freshmen. It's a trend that continued through the ACC openers against NC State and Pittsburgh, and it will likely continue in the team's next game at home against UMass.
"We have a pretty interesting class," Shapiro-Thompson said. "It's a phenomenal class, football-wise, but it's also a very diverse class. Everyone is slightly different, and we are learning a lot from each other. We have some really good players. Stefan (Sigurdarson) is a really good player, and he was college-ready from the start. Alejandro (Zimmermann) has a professional mindset coming out of Costa Rica. We have a couple of local guys; Mike (Suski)Â and I played on the same circuit growing up, and now it's coming full circle with us playing together again."
It's creating an energetic culture built on tactical intelligence for this year's team. The incoming freshmen differ in age because of varied international experience, and there's a general understanding of how winning and losing impacts players at a different level. It's a mentality breaking down age and class structures, and it's creating a more fluid BC team capable of competing with anyone at any time.
"When you train overseas, players are full professionals and have their own families," Shapiro-Thompson said. "That brings a very different mentality, especially when things aren't going so well. I feel like there's a need to win because I've experienced the other side of seeing people break into the professional game.
"People (at BC) aren't focusing on being great in the future," he continued. "We want to be great now. I think we have to play, regardless of who is a freshman or not, because we're mature and have experience at high levels. People aren't thinking about (who is what year). We're thinking about who does the best training and who is ready to play, you know, saying 'let's kill it.'"
For Shapiro-Thompson, it's exactly what he hoped for when he committed to Boston College. He's competed within the international soccer structure for the better part of his life, but he's back where it all began, wearing the Maroon and Gold. He's home, a place that feels comfortable and a place embracing him for exactly who he is and why he's here.
"Every time I went to a new place to train, I went through a period of wondering why I was there," he said. "I asked what the community wanted from me and what I was there for. Coming to BC, that's so immediate to feel like I'm home. People are around that really root for me and support me so we can do something special for the program. It's a feeling and a different vibe."
BC hosts Merrimack on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at Newton Campus. The game can be seen via the ACC Network Extra on ESPN online.
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The structure finally began bleeding into the United States soccer pyramid when Major League Soccer clubs began opening academies, helping the Americans join a whole new class of international athlete. It helped create opportunities for native-born players, all of whom could now train under professional clubs with the intention of catching on internationally. They could then either turn pro under a federation's umbrella or remain amateur, potentially returning to American to compete at the NCAA level.
For Amos Shapiro-Thompson, it provided a roadmap that ended back at Boston College as a product of the revamped American soccer pyramid that helped stamp his passport with both domestic and international success.
"It's massive for me to represent Boston on a national scale," he said. "I want to help BC get back to where we feel like we belong. It means more to me than other people who take it for granted. I've had the support of a community that understands me as a person and as a player. It's a crazy story, and it's a totally unique path that I took. It feels like its coming full circle being back here (to Massachusetts)."
The freshman's story began on a local scale at Milton Academy, where the Worthington, Mass. native played for an undefeated, 23-0 ISL and NEPSAC Tournament champion. It caught the eye of both the New England Revolution and the United States national development programs, and he joined both the United States Men's National U-14 and U-15 teams while playing for the Revolution's youth teams through tenth grade.
It was an entry point to his professional hopes. In 2017, Shapiro-Thompson moved to Croatia to train with Dinamo Zagreb, an elite-level international club with over 35 domestic youth league championships. He moved in 2018 to Poland to play with Legia Warsaw, an academy directed by Polish national assistant coach Jacek Zielinski.
But after training overseas with internationally-branded mega clubs, Shapiro-Thompson made an important decision. He wanted to come home and go to college; it led him to Ed Kelly and a recruitment that made him an Eagle for this season.
"Those places prepared me for anything," Shapiro-Thompson said. "When you go out and live on your own when you're 16 or 17, with a new language, new culture and new people, there are different expectations. It makes you feel like coming to college isn't a step up in terms of independence. Transitioning back helped me by having that experience. I felt a little bit removed from the traditional freshman experience because of what I'd already lived, but in general, everything was good."
His return to the U.S. provided an opportunity for Boston College to add a dynamic player. Shapiro-Thompson is a midfielder but creates plays offensively; he scored a goal in his first career game against Quinnipiac, then added a breakaway strike against Rhode Island. Against Holy Cross, he scored a go-ahead goal in an emotional 3-2 win as BC pushed its record to 4-0 to start the season.
"Against Holy Cross, I was able to play closer to Western Massachusetts, where I'm from," he said. "It was the first game my dad saw me play in two and a half years. So when I scored that goal, I was able to blow kisses to the crowd. Eight guys who were seniors during my sophomore year at Milton Academy came to BU to watch me play. I felt like I had almost disappeared, but now I'm back."
He is most definitely back, and he is a part of a freshman class currently leading BC through a dominant start to its season. The Eagles won their first four games, including the game against URI, with a lineup featuring upwards of six freshmen. It's a trend that continued through the ACC openers against NC State and Pittsburgh, and it will likely continue in the team's next game at home against UMass.
"We have a pretty interesting class," Shapiro-Thompson said. "It's a phenomenal class, football-wise, but it's also a very diverse class. Everyone is slightly different, and we are learning a lot from each other. We have some really good players. Stefan (Sigurdarson) is a really good player, and he was college-ready from the start. Alejandro (Zimmermann) has a professional mindset coming out of Costa Rica. We have a couple of local guys; Mike (Suski)Â and I played on the same circuit growing up, and now it's coming full circle with us playing together again."
It's creating an energetic culture built on tactical intelligence for this year's team. The incoming freshmen differ in age because of varied international experience, and there's a general understanding of how winning and losing impacts players at a different level. It's a mentality breaking down age and class structures, and it's creating a more fluid BC team capable of competing with anyone at any time.
"When you train overseas, players are full professionals and have their own families," Shapiro-Thompson said. "That brings a very different mentality, especially when things aren't going so well. I feel like there's a need to win because I've experienced the other side of seeing people break into the professional game.
"People (at BC) aren't focusing on being great in the future," he continued. "We want to be great now. I think we have to play, regardless of who is a freshman or not, because we're mature and have experience at high levels. People aren't thinking about (who is what year). We're thinking about who does the best training and who is ready to play, you know, saying 'let's kill it.'"
For Shapiro-Thompson, it's exactly what he hoped for when he committed to Boston College. He's competed within the international soccer structure for the better part of his life, but he's back where it all began, wearing the Maroon and Gold. He's home, a place that feels comfortable and a place embracing him for exactly who he is and why he's here.
"Every time I went to a new place to train, I went through a period of wondering why I was there," he said. "I asked what the community wanted from me and what I was there for. Coming to BC, that's so immediate to feel like I'm home. People are around that really root for me and support me so we can do something special for the program. It's a feeling and a different vibe."
BC hosts Merrimack on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at Newton Campus. The game can be seen via the ACC Network Extra on ESPN online.
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Players Mentioned
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