In this day and age where MLS clubs are setting up youth academies perhaps it is wise to look at an academy which produced MLS's all time leading goal scorer, Bolivia's Jaime Moreno.

BehindTheBadge.com does just that in a much longer article which explains the origins of the Tahuichi Academy, as well as its influence on its products, DC United's Marco Etcheverry and Jaimie Moreno. It also has a candid interview with Moreno. We've reprinted an excerpt of it below which you might find interesting:

Confessions of a greatful goalscorer
It’s been 12 years of living in the United States translated into goals in Major League Soccer (MLS), yet when you hear Jaime Moreno talk it’s clear he doesn’t forget his roots – still talking with that “camba” accent from eastern Bolivia – and much less his origins as a soccer player: “One of the things I always mention when people ask me where I came from is Tahuichi and the pride I feel from having been a part of that academy that taught me so much in order to grow as a person and as a player. Any time I’m in Santa Cruz I stop by for a visit. They’ve grown a lot; now they have their own ‘village’, dormitories, it’s really beautiful”. At the same time, D.C. United’s living legend makes sure to mention the academy’s founder: “Roly is a person who I’ll always remember; he supported us, helped us, gave us advice, and it’s because of him that Tahuichi got to where it has been and where it’s at.”

A testament of his sincerity, the all-time leading goalscorer in the MLS with 122 goals not only confesses that he didn’t keep track of his goals, but that at the beginning of his MLS career he wasn’t sure he had made the right decision: “I got to Washington on a Sunday, there was a home game that day and I was a substitute on the bench, even though I knew I wasn’t going to play. It was a disaster! ‘What did I do! What did I get myself into?!’ I would ask myself. I was coming from England and you didn’t live with the same intensity. I thought I had made the wrong decision, but thank God that wasn’t the case. Now it’s different because we have the best supporters’ groups in the League and between 18,000 to 20,000 people come out to our games. Besides I had signed a contract for two years and my plan was to go back to Europe...and look at me still here, after 12 years”.

Time goes by and while the Bolivian talks about his past with the academy, he remembers more memories and stories, one in particular very interesting, one of those worthy of a movie script: “When we got to Reading, England to play a supposed tournament, there was nothing and they person who was going to pay us had vanished. We stayed for a week so we could use our return plane tickets but we didn’t have a place to stay or anything. We had to sell our jerseys, ask for help at a home for the elderly and...even play for hamburgers with the kids from McDonald’s! If we scored more than ten goals on them, they’d give us two for each goal. We made like 15 because we were so hungry! We lost a few pounds those days, eating some cheese and a bottle of milk they’d give us for breakfast. It was very interesting and very hard too”.

Moreno could very well be a paradigm of the common saying ‘Nadie es profeta en su tierra’(No one is a prophet in their country). He admits it himself, although nowadays with internet and MLS matches being broadcast, everything is easier and in Bolivia you get news you didn’t get before. However, he still feels a little bit of resentment: “In my best years of soccer here, the National Team never gave me a chance and it hurt a lot. It was like this league didn’t exist. It hurts because, more than anything, everyone wants to play for their National Team, and I think maybe it was a little bit because once I said I didn’t want to play in La Paz anymore (3600 meters above sea level), simply because I didn’t want to go if I wasn’t going to play well so that’s why I would prefer if someone who was already adapted to those conditions played.

The Tahuichi Dream
Like many of the youngsters that knocked on the academy’s doors, Marco Etcheverry and Jaime Moreno came to Tahuichi and started showing signs of extraordinary talent with the ball from a very young age. “You could say that like Brazil has Pelé, and Argentina has Maradona, Bolivia has Etcheverry. He is the charismatic standard, a soccer player that came after many generations and marked an era of Bolivia’s soccer,” affirms Aguilera Gasser. About Moreno, he declares: “Similarly, he jumped into professional soccer at a very young age, with club Blooming, and immediately went abroad. Now we see how he has matured with D.C. United and the American league, becoming the leading goalscorer, a standard of greatness and surely a future hall of famer”. “Jaime, at the same time, is an example for children of how to lead a good family life because he has had real challenges; a player always has highs and low and he did: when he was in the lowest point he showed he could also reach the highest. I think that’s one of his great virtues, that spiritual force that makes him into a world-class man,” he added.

“Some players have soccer in their veins and Etcheverry is one of them. He played for fun and made the ball ‘small’; he’d get out of school and go play in the streets. Jaime, conversely, always wanted to play competitively, he wouldn’t give away anything. These are both traits of great soccer players who made it far and that’s how they won all kinds of titles,” says Ciro Medrano, current general manager of Tahuichi y former coach of two 10-year old kids named Etcheverry and Moreno.

All the kids at Tahuichi have someone to look up to. In fact, it’s almost pointless to ask who, since they always respond: “Marco Etcheverry”. That’s why it’s such a strong emotion for them to be able to hug these players they look up to and were once a “Tahuichi” like them. “The kids come to the academy with dreams. We call it ‘The Tahuichi Dream’, which is that chance of being a great star like Marco and Jaime. That’s why it’s so great for the kids when they visit us, because they really are seeing their idols, a person who spends time with them and motivates them to keep growing,” Aguilera Gasser said. And he added: “It’s important to always motivate youth through examples, and these athletes are examples for kids to always keep dreaming.”

Medrano also says that “we take on trainings with the idea of being the best. Once the kids put on a Tahuichi jersey and they start winning tournaments, they realize it’s worth the sacrifices of preparation and giving up certain things. Throughout our 30 years, if you wore a Tahuichi jersey, you felt like a champion.”

Much much more from the article here...

Each summer (in the U.S.; June and July are winter months in Bolivia), the Bolivians share their fields with 50 to 100 young players from North America under the "Tahuichi Way" program, headed by Cony Konstin and Ciro Medrano. The fees charged to the North Americans help support Tahuichi´s services to impoverished Bolivian children. About 1,700 North Americans have come through Tahuichi since 1992. For more about that go here.