Matty Waters had a problem.

Here he was standing in front of U.S. Customs with his passport and visa in hand, but his I-20 form tucked away in his suitcase being loaded onto the plane at Manchester Airport.

"Do you have an online copy?" the agent asked him. He frantically searched through his phone hoping he had taken a photo of it, but all he could find was a picture of the blank form before he had filled it out. The woman thought about it for what seemed like an eternity.

"I'm going to do you a massive favor here and let you in," she told him. "But you're not making a good first impression to our country."

One transatlantic flight, and a huge sigh of relief, later Matty touched down in the United States ready to begin his journey as a college soccer player in America.

Things have gone pretty well since.

The fullback is one of three players from England's Knutsford Academy who now call Central Maine Community College home, joining fellow first-year Mitch Cameron and sophomore center back Alfie Bashford.

The Mustangs are off to a 13-1-1 start and have wrapped up an undefeated run in Yankee Small College Conference play. CMCC went 9-0-0 and outscored conference opponents 47-2 on its way to claiming the #1 seed in the YSCC Tournament. The squad has its eyes on a fourth straight championship and trip to the USCAA National Tournament.

The trio have all played a large part in the team's success. But how did three players out of the same Knutsford program end up playing together in Maine?



Knutsford Academy is a secondary school in the town of Knutsford, England in Cheshire county. It's located about 15 miles southwest of Manchester near England's west coast. Alfie, Matty, and Mitch all joined the academy as sixth form students, continuing their education and pursuing A-levels while at the same time joining Knutsford's football program.

"You have to do two years of further education," said Cameron. "Not everyone wants to stay in the classroom the whole time, so at Knutsford you get a nice balance of studying while getting to play football alongside that as well."

The academy team is managed by Paul Butler, a retired Premier League player and former captain at Leeds United. The players get classroom time where they do video analysis and game preparation, team activities, training sessions, and of course play league and cup games. All three described Butler as an "old school" style of coach.

"Because he is an ex-professional, that style of coaching is shown in the program," said Waters. "Punctuality is a big deal, if you're not on time there's punishments, there's forfeits. Professionalism is definitely part of the program."

Being a year ahead of the other two, Bashford was part of a team that won the double of the North West Colleges Sports Leagues Central Conference in 2022, as well as the U18 John Sleight Cheshire County Schools Cup. The squad scored 42 goals while only conceding six. Cameron and Waters didn't do too badly themselves winning the county cup for a third straight season.

Tom Horner doubles as the Football Academy Coordinator and the Head of Year 10 at the school. "Watching Alfie, Mitch, and Matty grow as players has been a privilege for all of us," Horner said via email. "We're so proud of their hard work, determination, and continued development. Everyone at Knutsford Academy are very proud of them."

The secondary school route for football is a different path than say going through a Premier League team's academy where kids as young as eight years old might sign and start working their way through the ranks. In a football obsessed country like England, the odds of making it through and actually signing a professional contract are pretty slim.

"From all the kids that play football in the country, 1% of them will sign with an academy and only 1% of that group will ever sign a professional contract," explained Bashford. "So it's somewhere like one in 100,000. A great portion of the country plays that one sport and everyone is competing for those so few spots in a squad. It's a savage business."

"Kids will have their whole childhood devoted to being a footballer," added Waters. "If they don't make it a lot of them don't have anything to fall back on."

"I think that's what is so good about Knutsford," said Cameron. "We've come out with qualifications. So if we decided we don't want to play football anymore, we could get a job, we could go to university. Whereas the kids from professional academies they might come out with one qualification and it wouldn't be a very good one."

That isn't to say that the three didn't play soccer outside of school. Bashford and Waters grew up playing at Egerton Football Club from when they were four years old, and Cameron joined the club later on.

Egerton F.C. founded in 2002, is also based in Knutsford and sits at the 11^th level of the English Football Pyramid (the top four levels of which are considered full-time professional). It was a great place for the developing footballers to hone their skills in an environment that included some high-profile players, with chairman Tom O'Donnell and player-manager Jim Cherneski bringing in the likes of former Premier Leaguers Jlloyd Samuel, Emile Heskey and Nathan Ellington for spells at the club late in their careers.

"It's always been a really nice setup there," said Bashford. "The chairman has close ties with other clubs and they've produced some good players who have gone on to bigger clubs because of those connections."

There was another benefit to being in the Knutsford area that helped all three eventually make their way to America, a company called Soccer Scholar USA that works with Knutsford Academy.

Soccer Scholar USA is run by Jim Conroy and his son Ryan. Their company helps student athletes get noticed and recruited by coaches in America with the ultimate goal of obtaining a scholarship to play and study at a college or university in the U.S. The pair have helped more than 300 students do just that over 25 years, and pride themselves on being a small organization that works with students without the extortionate fees charged by some other companies.

During so many years spent in the greater Manchester area they developed a relationship with Horner and Butler, which led to them working with the Knutsford Academy football team. Ryan believes the partnership works because all of them genuinely want what's best for their students.

"All three boys were a joy to work with," he said via email. "Impeccable manners and complete focus on achieving their goal."

"We were very lucky that Soccer Scholar worked with our school," said Cameron. "Jim and Ryan Conroy run it so well and know so many people out here. They just made it so much easier for us."

Knutsford Academy sent its team out to the John Talley Showcase and Shootout tournament in Memphis, TN in 2022, where they finished runners-up. It was there that Alfie Bashford first got noticed by then CMCC head coach Kiaran McCormack.

"He was there on a scouting trip," said Bashford. "I got on with him really well and he told me that Central Maine could be a great opportunity for me. He really just wanted to help me as a person."

McCormack had known Ryan Conroy for years from when they had both come over to the Memphis tournament in 2003 before getting scholarships to U.S. colleges. Ryan gave him a call and convinced him to come down to Tennessee to scout the tournament in person. Watching the Knutsford Academy team, McCormack was impressed with how hard the defender played.

"I remember Alfie had to be practically carried off the field after the third day of the tournament," McCormack said. "I just really wanted to help him. He was the one that stuck in my head as the type of player that could help CMCC go to the next level. Not just with his play, but also his quality and his leadership off the field."

Bashford was also interested in playing with a team that had players with diverse backgrounds. This year, the CMCC Mustangs have players from Canada, Spain, and South Africa, as well as the immigrant population in Maine that has seen more families with backgrounds from Somalia, Angola, Burundi, and other African countries. That's especially true in the twin cities of Auburn and Lewiston that have produced some outstanding soccer players for the Edward Little Red Eddies and Lewiston Blue Devils over the last decade.

The result was a first season where Bashford wore the captain's armband and played center back for 16 of the team's 17 matches. The Mustangs went on to win the YSCC regular season and conference tournament to make it to the USCAA national tournament. There they defeated Five Towns College before losing out to eventual national champion Johnson & Wales University (NC).

With the decision to bring in one Knutsford Academy player having already worked out there was interest in recruiting both Cameron and Waters ahead of this current season, after they both came out and had a good showing to win the Memphis tournament.

It was actually there that the three of them played together on the same pitch for the first time. While the trio had moved in the same circles (Alfie's mother Lorraine used to serve lunch to Matty in primary school and the two worked together in the same fish and chips shop) they had not all overlapped at either Knutsford or Egerton FC. That finally happened during a warm-up match against the University of Memphis which Bashford came down for to support his former school.

McCormack was happy to have Bashford as an ambassador for the pair to join him in Maine.

"We had Alfie already out here to give us all the info," Cameron said. "And I was lucky enough to come out and visit the area. I felt like it was a good fit straight away."

Waters agreed. "Knowing that Alfie was here and he told me and Mitch so many times about everything here and just how good it is. It just gives you that sense of security that it's going to be fine."

For Waters, he wasn't originally that interested in studying abroad. "It wasn't something that really appealed to me," he said. "I never really wanted to come to America. But when we went to Memphis to play in the tournament Ryan sat me down and said, 'I think you could play in America if you want to go.' He put me in touch with Kiaran. We had a really good phone call, and I knew Mitch and Alfie were already committed and Mitch was constantly in my ear about us playing together. It's a great decision that I've made and definitely one I won't regret."

There aren't any regrets for current CMCC head coach Dalton Wing either. All three of his Knutsford Academy recruits have played their way into the starting line-up with Bashford and Waters part of a back line that has not allowed a goal in its last 607:37 of play, heading into the YSCC Tournament with seven straight shutouts.

Cameron has nailed down a spot in central midfield alongside Jeremiah Gomez and Mikel Soto, and has grown into his role throughout the campaign. He has tallied three goals and three assists in his last seven contests, including a sublime strike to beat rivals Southern Maine Community College.

With so many minutes played on the pitch home commentator Rob Kennedy has dubbed the trio the Three Lions, referring to the nickname for the England national team based on the Football Association's crest.

"I've leaned on them a lot this year," said Wing. "Not only as leaders but also to play 90 minutes consistently which they've taken with open arms and done. They've always produced for me. You can see the intensity they've brought from Knutsford Academy. They're gelled together and have helped bring the team together."



It's not just the on-field activities that have made the three happy with their choice to go to school across the Atlantic. There's also the opportunity to live away from home and gain some unique life experiences.

"It's the independence," said Cameron with a laugh. "If you go to uni in England you can always go home on the weekend if you need your mum to do your washing or you fancy a meal at home. The maximum you're travelling back is like three hours. Whereas we don't have that option. I think we've learned a lot."

Bashford actually made the choice to enroll at CMCC in January of 2023 to get a semester of college under his belt before the soccer season began in the fall.

"My mum worked away from home four to five nights a week, so I was used to being in the house alone," Bashford said. "My sister had gone off to university when I was 16 and my other sister had moved out to live with her boyfriend. So for the three years leading up to coming here I was kind of itching to get out and do something. But when I was at the airport at four in the morning and actually going it got a little more daunting. My first semester was definitely difficult, coming over here in January when it's dark and cold and there's not a lot of football. It let me get my feet on the ground to be uber focused going into my first season."

Life in Maine has certainly been different than living back home in Knutsford. Dealing with cold Maine winters was an adjustment for Bashford and something Cameron and Waters agreed they would have to adapt to.

The state is also much more spread out than what they're used to. "It's so different," said Waters. "In England everybody is just so close together. The amount of space you have here with the houses, the plots of land, it's nice."

"In England it's claustrophobic," added Cameron. "You come out your front door and you hit your head on your neighbor's wall."

Then there's the food. "There's so many options here," an amazed Cameron explained. "Say you finish training and you want pizza. There's like five places around here just for that and any fast food place that you can imagine whereas back home if you wanted pizza there was just Domino's."

They also needed to adjust to American soccer. Did the old European cliché about soccer in the U.S. being faster and more physical hold up for them?

"I don't think it's necessarily a quicker game over here, but it's probably a bit more direct than most teams would play at this level back home," said Bashford. "You also get a little more time to develop over here. You can make up for your mistakes. It's a bit brutal over there. It all goes back to so many people competing to get into that starting eleven."

"I was pleasantly surprised by the standard here," admitted Cameron. "It's easy to come in and think you're going to boss it but you look over your shoulder at the players on our bench knowing they could easily play instead of me. It's healthy competition in our squad."

"Early in our season we played a lot of NCAA DIII teams and we beat them," said Waters. "We know that we can compete with teams at that higher level, but there are good teams in this conference. We want to win our playoffs and then win nationals."

"The one key difference is game IQ," said Bashford. "You can tell some of the kids have played three or four different sports growing up in their childhood, whereas we played football religiously. The level of coaching we have back home at such a young age too."

On the subject of playoffs, they did admit that they liked the European system better where the league champion comes from who finishes at the top of the standings rather than from a playoff format.

There's also the desire to play more games over a longer season rather than the cramped two month long window that college soccer here in America has to play its season.

However, there's one thing the three all agreed was better about soccer in America compared to what they were used to back in the UK.

The fields.

"You can't beat a good grass pitch," said Cameron. "But some of the grass pitches we were playing on back home were awful. We played a cup final where there were swamps in the corner of the pitch."

"Take our school pitch," explained Waters. "They would have P.E. sessions on it all day, then we'd train on it and all the grass would be like turned over. You couldn't play football on the floor."

Compared to that, the 4G turf facility at CMCC and some of the well-manicured grass fields dotted around the conference have been a joy to play on.

It's on that turf field where CMCC hopes to claim another conference title when it hosts the YSCC Tournament championship this weekend. If they do win for the fourth season in a row the Mustangs will likely have three lions in the heart of the team play a big part.