Catching Up with Tesho Akindele

Most soccer players stay closely connected to the beautiful game after hanging up their boots. Some become referees or coaches or scouts, some become commentators or pundits or agents. But Tesho Akindele isn’t most players.

Born in Calgary, Canada to a Nigerian father and a Canadian mother, Akindele bounced around from Calgary to Mississauga to Toronto before moving to Thornton, Colorado, at the age of seven. Akindele emerged as a vital cog in attack for his high school team, rejecting an offer to join Colorado Rapids’ academy to enroll at the Colorado School of Mines, where he not only met his wife but became a school legend. Akindele departed as the Orediggers’ all-time leading scorer with 76 goals and a four-time All-American, but rather than complete the final months of his electrical engineering degree, he decided to quit school and apply for the MLS SuperDraft. Eventually, his gamble paid off, with FC Dallas selecting him with the sixth overall pick in the draft, making him the highest-drafted NCAA Division II player in MLS history.

It didn’t take long for him to make a name for himself in Texas, scoring 8 goals and 5 assists in 32 appearances to guide Dallas to the Western Conference semifinals and the U.S. Open Cup semifinals, and beating D.C. United’s Steven Birnbaum and Chicago Fire’s Harrison Shipp to the 2014 MLS AT&T Rookie of the Year. Two years later, Akindele guided Dallas to their first trophy since 1997, with Dallas winning the 2016 U.S. Open Cup and Supporters’ Shield. These stellar displays in Dallas would attract the attention of the Canadian national team, with Akindele scoring 3 goals in 19 caps and playing in the 2015 and 2021 Gold Cup with Canada.

After racking up a total of 28 goals and 13 assists in 164 appearances for Dallas, Akindele was traded to Orlando City in December 2018, where he enjoyed a mid-career resurgence and established himself as an attacking protagonist in Florida. Similarly to other players like Diadie Samassekou, Eduardo Camavinga, and Federico Valverde, Akindele combined a fearless aggression off the ball with instinctive ball-striking. Akindele scored 21 goals and 7 assists in 121 appearances for the Lions, guiding them to their first-ever trophy – the 2022 U.S. Open Cup – before calling it quits at the end of the campaign. Since retiring at the age of 30, Akindele has made a fleeting return for Des Moines Menace and played against Union Omaha in a U.S. Open Cup match in April 2024, but mainly, he’s focused his time outside of soccer and to raising his two young sons with his wife Taylor.

“My oldest son, Hayes, is 6, and my younger son, Rook, is 4. Hayes was old enough to remember me playing soccer a little bit. He was almost 4 when I retired, so he went to a lot of games, and I think he might remember a few of them,” stated Akindele in an exclusive Protagonist Soccer interview. “Now, he's at the point where he's like, ‘Let's watch videos of you as a player, he wants to see my old jerseys and medals up in the attic, so it’s cool seeing his interest.”

“One thing about being a parent while playing soccer is that you actually have a lot more time than people think. A typical day for a soccer player: You leave the house at 8, and you're back home at 1. You don't have anything else that you have to do, so usually I would nap, relax, stretch, and then go pick up my kids from daycare, and spend the afternoon with them. Every single day, while I was playing soccer, I got a lot of time with them vs. the 9-5 I have now, where I literally have less time day to day with my kids than I did playing soccer. Another thing with raising kids, one of my number one lessons I try to tell them is ‘How do you get better at anything? You practice. That’s a message I got from my parents, and now I'm passing it down to my kids, so I feel like it's good to be able to see them learning and taking some of the values that I think helped me in my life.”

Over the past quarter-century, Akindele has bounced around from the Denver suburbs to Dallas to Orlando, but since hanging up his boots, he’s found a new niche in Charlotte as a Development Analyst for Camp North End, a renovated 76-acre industrial complex with food, retail, art, and entertainment, including murals, sculptures, and diverse food options.

“We're hoping to kick off our next round of apartments here at Camp North End, so I'm excited to help that happen. We're also trying to lease up office space here, so we have a lot of office space for big office tenants and I’m trying to help with those efforts. I just started a podcast called Shaping Charlotte, so I’m trying to talk more about the foundations of the city here through that podcast and my social media.”

“My longer-term goal is to make Charlotte a more walkable city; I want more people to have the opportunity to live in places in Charlotte where they can walk to the coffee shop, walk to a restaurant, walk to work, or take the train, bus or bike. I want to effect that culture shift in people’s mindsets to believe what’s acceptable and what can happen in Charlotte, so that's kind of my guiding light for my career right now.”

- Zach Lowy