A soccer success story: Chicago club sends players to pros, Under-17 World Cup

A decade ago, Costel Catalin Serban's soccer club started on the North Side with just seven players who lost by lopsided scores and couldn't win a game.

But that miserable start didn't stop the former Romanian professional soccer player who drove a cab to make ends meet when he first arrived in Chicago.

Serban's soccer expertise and work ethic eventually helped his iProSkills Academy club players win area club championships, get college scholarships and become pros in leagues worldwide. Two even played in the Under-17 World Cup.

The club, which doesn't have a physical facility, now has 250 players, many first-generation kids from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

"I think it's a combination between the passion I have and hard work," said Serban, 44, about his success. "I think my passion drives the hard work, and that leads to good things."

Sebastian Antal, who signed with a professional team in Switzerland, acknowledged the club has tough workouts but added it has good leaders, like Serban.

"I was training with iProSkills Academy because of its amazing coaches, very intense and hard practices, and because of the atmosphere," Antal said.

Serban picked up leadership skills as a vice principal at an elementary school in his native Romania after being a pro athlete. He later soured on his country's education system.

In 2007, he moved to Chicago not knowing anyone and worked as cab driver. Five years later, he was able to return to soccer as a coach for a Chicago-area private club.

But that coaching job didn't last long because he didn't agree with how some of coaches treated the players.

“They brought in some coaches from Brazil who were mean to the kids," Serban recalled. "I said you cannot do that with kids, you have to treat them with respect. Not everyone is going to be [Diego] Maradona and Pelé."

Eventually, he started iProSkills with his wife, Magdalena Pasko. That first team was composed of 8-year-olds. Now they are some of the oldest players in iProSkills, which currently sports 27 teams, with players ranging in age from 4 to 18.

Serban said his club, which he hopes will one day have its own facility, plays in Rogers Park in the fall and spring. It plays in the gym at St. Gregory’s in Andersonville in the winter. Currently, the club is in the off-season, which means the teams aren't competing against other clubs, but weekly camps are being held at Mather Park in West Ridge.

Hard work leads to success

“This is a poor club. This is not a rich club," Serban said. "Most of them are first generation, but the good part is they understand hard work. They definitely have a different attitude. We tell them if you want to have a chance, you need to put in the work and the repetition. We have a 600- to 1,000-hour rule. If you don’t train at least 600 hours a year, don’t even think about it. Imagine Serena Williams or Tiger Woods if they didn’t do repetition and put in the work.”

Yet Serban is quick to point out the goal of his club is to create complete players, not necessarily professional players. Although a few iProSkills players have made it to the professional level, Serban and his coaches said they know most will not go pro and the emphasis is on teaching more than soccer skills.

“We focus on the ball, the book and the tie,” Serban said, explaining the ball is soccer, the book is schoolwork and the tie, or necktie, is how to present yourself off the field.

Some of that hard work is exemplified by players like Angel Panora-Garcia, a 19-year-old native Chicagoan who grew up in West Ridge and became the first in his family to attend college because of soccer. Panora-Garcia, who coaches at iProSkills summer camp, plays soccer and is majoring in engineering at Coe College in Iowa.

Another example of a player who is using soccer to make it in life is Ricardo Hernandez, who came to Chicago from Colombia at 15 in 2023 and walked to Mather Park from Downtown after using Google Maps to find the club, Serban said.

Once he made it to the park, about 9 miles away, Serban hired him as an assistant coach, and he’s worked for the club ever since. He helped to bring his mother and sister to the U.S. with the money he’s earned.

Right now, there are 120 players in the weekly summer camp and they speak about 14 languages, Serban said. Many of the coaches, like assistant coach Abdul Karim Rutayisire, who came to Chicago from Rwanda, are immigrants who believe diversity adds to the club’s strength.

"We focus on the details and add intensity and create a coach-to-player relationship,” said Rutayisire, 35, who played professionally in his home country and has worked for iProSkills the last five years. “Also, the diversity. We come from different cultures, so that brings something different than the usual coaching.”

Soccer mom Erin DuBose, picking up her three sons — Percy, 4; Curtis, 9; and Calvin, 10 — from camp recently agreed with Rutayisire. She said she found the club a few years ago while searching online for winter activities for her eldest son.

“I played soccer and could see how good the training was,” DuBose said, who played collegiate soccer at Boston University. “I’ve seen other clubs, and this has the best training. I think it makes kids into very complete players.”

Six players join pros

While the odds of a player playing professionally are very low, the club has had six make it to the pros, including twin brothers Frederick and Martin Krug, who represented Panama at the U-17 World Cup in 2023 and who now play for Levante UD's first team, preparing for La Liga, which is Spain’s top professional league.

While iProSkills training is intense, it also is cheaper than many other clubs. The soccer camp fee is $200, compared to more than double that at many other clubs in Chicago. Serban has been known to waive the fee for families who cannot afford it.

“We try to do our best,” said coach Mihai Vinatoru, 44, a former professional player from Romania who has coached at iProSkills for five years.

“We try to make them great human beings," Vinatoru said. "Are they all going to be soccer players? We don’t know, but we want them to be great husbands, good neighbors, great classmates. We want to implement beliefs that they’ll have for the rest of their lives. You may not make it as a soccer player, but you’ll be a good person."

Serban said that many of the coaches and some player families are first-generation Americans and have become like family to one another, which helps create a bond on and off the field that will last longer than win-loss records.

"All the coaches here, we don’t have families in America," Serban said. "So we’ve kind of become a family. We do birthdays together, Christmas together. This is our family."