As professional player development continues to evolve and grow domestically, MLS franchises across North America are searching for an edge.

Whether it’s adding additional age groups, improving coaching education or exposing players to environments abroad, the emphasis on a more direct path to pro soccer is emerging.

One tactic recently employed by D.C. United was to send nine of its current academy players to train for a week at Italian club Internazionale. Looking to take advantage of having a shared owner – Inter and United are at least partially owned by Indonesian media mogul Erick Thohir – United players had the opportunity to see another world of youth development.

“The experience was awesome,” D.C. U18 defender Donovan Pines told TopDrawerSoccer.com. “I had never experienced anything like that in my life.”

The origin for the trip, which took place from May 2 to May 9, began in August 2014. D.C. United Academy Director Nolan Sheldon took a handful of United Academy staff over to Milan for a chance to see Inter’s preseason up close. That experience, while lasting only five days, obviously made a major impression on the academy staff, and they spent the past Development Academy season attempting to implement and improve training sessions based on what they learned in Italy.

Eventually as the Dev. Academy season progressed, the idea to send players over to train at the Inter Academy matriculated into the May excursion. The plan was simple. Grab a couple of players from specific age groups (D.C. took players born between 1997 and 2000), fly them over to Milan for a whirlwind week of training that would expose them to a world class academy.

United’s U18 coach Tom Torres went over the nine players: Pines, Antonio Bustamante, Daniel Reeves, Brandon Williamson, Jose Carranza, Luis Rodriguez-Luna, Ronald Alexis Cerritos, Michael Edwards and Jonathan Godette were selected based off of a variety of factors from form, fitness to standing within the club.

It was an opportunity few youth setups can offer here.

“There’s a lot of relationships with other professional clubs in Europe and South America but no club in the United States is partnered with another European club where they can send players for training at no expense, where it’s not a summer camp, that just doesn’t happen,” Torres told TopDrawerSoccer.com.

Once they arrived in Milan, United players jumped in right away. They went to watch Inter’s U19 team play on their first day. The next day, they were on the field at the San Siro for a Serie A matchup between the Nerazzuri and Chievo. It was a chance to experience the unique fan culture of a storied European club.

“You go to MLS games in the States here, but going to a game at a place like the San Siro was amazing,” Reeves told TopDrawerSoccer.com. “The crowd noise for Inter was just crazy. They weren’t even playing well at all and the chants, the atmosphere was crazy.”

For the rest of the week, United’s academy players were incorporated into sessions with Inter’s academy with their respective age groups. The club scheduled a friendly against local club Sarnico where Reeves scored a hat trick. They met players and coaches from the first team after watching them train.

Jumping into the first academy training sessions triggered some nerves in at least one of the players.

“The first practice I was a little anxious and nervous but I thought I fit in pretty well,” Bustamante said. “It’s not that much of a difference, but I can tell you the practices are very intense.”

While the players were played and trained with Inter’s academy, Torres observed and took notes for the first couple of days, looking to continue to learn and soak up as much as he could. By the end of the week, he ran a D.C. United/U.S. Soccer-type training session.

One thing that caught his attention was the academy’s emphasis on physical preparation, which allows players to get the most out of their athleticism.

“Our players that we took over there are better athletes, better physical athletes, but the Inter players actually are more athletic because of the type of preparation that they do on a daily basis,” he said.

Then of course, the mentality of players is much different between Italians growing up in a soccer culture and the American kids.

“Our players did really well in the training but when it came to that mentality it took a couple of our days for a couple of our players to get into the mentality of ‘hey, this is for real, this is a career choice,’ and that’s the difference,” Torres said. “Here, it’s not a career choice a lot of times, it’s an extra curricular [activity]. And that’s what we’re trying to change the culture here as an MLS franchise, we want players to know that this is a potential career choice as we start to build things that we’re doing here.”

Leaning on the partnership with a club like Inter for expertise is just one of the initiatives United’s academy can rely on to improve its developmental path. Later this year the team is launching a residential program at nearby Calverton Academy, and plans are in the works to possibly launch a USL Pro team in the next year or two. Players from the U18s often have the chance to train with United’s first team. Trips to Milan are expected to be an annual experience as the bond between the two teams grows.

The overall goal is to separate itself from the pack and produce a strong pro player pipeline from the academy to the first team.

“The connection with the first team through Nolan’s direction, has never been better,” Torres said. “The connection that we have where players are constantly being called in to train with them is a big highlight. For us to be able to send players to Inter once a year is just another avenue for us to be able to say we’re doing something different, we’re doing something more in terms of what we can offer to players in this region.”