A lifetime in soccer.
A mission built around education.
Giuseppe “Joe” Parolini is Director and Head Coach of Toronto Blizzard. He has owned the club since 2000 and leads the program and the university conversations himself.
The approach
It works when both sides commit to it.
Joe describes the working relationship with a player and her family as the thing the whole program rests on — a shared commitment, kept up through steady communication on both sides.
We actually train the players, get to know the players and families, and then actually play in front of universities.
What that asks of a player is consistency: turning up, doing the work, and keeping the grades where a university will need them to be. What it asks of the club is that someone who knows the player is the one speaking to the programs recruiting her.
The people he brought in
He does not try to cover every discipline.
Joe ran strength and conditioning himself for years. He now hands it to a specialist, and has done the same across the rest of the program.
Mirko De Francesco
Club Technical Director
UEFA B Licence, and a professional player from 2013 to 2022 with coaching roles in Italian women’s football.
Mark McKoy
Strength & Conditioning Trainer
Olympic gold medallist hurdler. Joe ran this himself for years and now hands it to a specialist.
Jonathan “Jon” Franco
Head Goalkeeping Coach
Director of Elite 1 Goalkeeping and a former Guatemala national team player.
Davide Masciantinio
Technical Staff Coach
UEFA B Licence, twenty years as a professional in Italy and a Canadian U23 player in 2003.
Chris Wright
Technical Staff Coach
Technical coaching through the weekly program.
Nikki, Lorenzo and Jason
Part-time contributors
Nikki Matarazzo, Lorenzo Redwood and Jason Mesa contribute subject to availability and their other commitments.
What he is actually aiming at
The education is the point. The soccer is how you get there.
Joe is blunt that talent alone does not survive the move south. Players who arrive at a US university without the physical preparation or the habits find the first season brutal, and some do not finish it. Preparing a player for that is, in his view, most of the job.
Those talented kids who get scholarships and do not do the work — it is culture shock when they go south of the border. We are trying to prepare them to be better prepared for playing in the States.
He measures the program by what happens after a player leaves, not by trophies won while she is here. He talks about the moment a family walks onto a campus — sees the dressing room, the field, the classrooms, the cafeteria — and the idea stops being abstract.
Nobody knows who the next doctor or lawyer is going to be. Helping these kids reach their dreams is what keeps me going.
The record
Where Joe has worked.
- Toronto Blizzard
- Part of the organization since the early 1980s, and owner since 2000, when he built the club around a pathway to university scholarships.
- Canadian Men’s National Team
- Trainer of the 1986 Canadian Men’s World Cup team.
- Canadian Women’s National Teams
- Worked with the senior and U20 teams from 2007 to 2011.
- Soccer Hall of Fame
- The 1986 team was inducted in 2009 — a team distinction rather than an individual one.
Start the conversation
He would rather hear from you early than late.
Tell him where your player is now and where she wants soccer to take her. If Blizzard is not the right fit, he will tell you that too.