Tim Ream builds his mental health brick by brick.
To help silence his mind, the captain of the U.S. men’s national team searches through thousands of tiny, colorful interlocking plastic bricks while putting together Lego sets.
He finds peace in finding pieces.
“It forces you to kind of shut out what’s going on outside and just focus on the pieces and the way they fit,” Ream said on an episode of NBC’s “My New Favorite Futbolista.”
Ream, a defender for Charlotte FC in MLS who will lead the U.S. men’s national team in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, has been open about his struggles with mental health that he says date back to when he was in elementary school.
Some of the most physically gifted athletes — blessed with strength, speed and stamina — are unable to overpower their minds.
That’s a message the 38-year-old Ream is now sharing with children who may unknowingly struggle with their mental health to show them they’re not alone in feeling that way.
“You do as much as you can to relate to them and what they’re going through,” he said. “Not speaking at them, but speaking with them is the biggest thing, trying to be down at their level and help them understand that we’ve all been there and things do get better the more you speak about them.”
Ream said when he was in third grade, he’d go to the school nurse every other day hoping to be sent home from school. He never did get sent home, but he realized years later that he had continued going to the nurse because he was experiencing anxiety.
“She was great and always, as nurses are, always compassionate and willing to listen,” he said.
Ream, in 2020, began noticing that his own children began exhibiting similar tendencies to the ones he experienced in elementary school. It was during the pandemic, while living in London, when Ream played for Fulham FC, and his three kids were suddenly being homeschooled.
Ream searched for activities the family could do to stay active physically and mentally. He bought a trampoline. They began doing puzzles … and Lego sets.
“For us, realizing that we all have triggers, we all have crashouts, and it’s trying to figure out what those are and how we limit those,” he said.
Wanting to share those lessons with other children, he partnered with Virtual Soccer Schools, a U.K.-based charity that has connected elite soccer players with more than 90,000 young people globally to talk about mental health. He has become an advocate for mental health awareness, helping children identify and overcome their struggles.
“At any given time, there’s probably five to 10 people around them feeling the exact same way,” Ream said. “And it just takes one to speak up. And so, we’re trying to be that, the athletes who have stepped up, where we’re trying to be that one, to inspire kids to continue to talk about things that are difficult to talk about.”
Ream holds online mental health sessions with groups of children to discuss his experiences and how he overcame his struggles.
“Him sharing his stories has really opened up for other children to believe in themselves and become the best version of themselves with using the power of mental tools and education that we do at VSS to support the next generation,” said Tom Lamb, the founder and CEO of Virtual Soccer Schools.
Lamb said that whether there are 30 or 30,000 children on the call, the goal for Ream and VSS is the same.
“If we can just save one life on that call,” he said, “maybe it could be an intervention or where that child wants to go and talk to their safeguarding lead or talk to a teacher or a trusted adult, we are making a change and we are not putting mental health to the side.”
Just as Ream refused to put his own mental health — or his Lego bricks — to the side.
He said his children would often get only halfway through the Lego sets before losing interest, so he’d pick up the pieces and finish the job.
“I found it almost therapeutic in a way. … Yes, it can be monotonous, but it also allows you to just do it,” he said. “It makes you focus on the directions, because if you get one piece wrong, you’re kind of going to be all off with the rest of it.”
Ream also discovered that building a Lego set is a lot like building a sports team — with each being put together one brick at a time in hopes of creating a masterpiece.
“You have all these different pieces and these players, and you have to fit them together to make a team ... that goes out and plays together to try to win a game or win trophies,” he said. “So, it’s just kind of the way I look at it. It allowed me to kind of shut out the outside world and only focus on one thing.”
You can tune in to “My New Favorite Futbolista” wherever you listen to podcasts, with episodes featuring Ream and more U.S. men’s national team stars.
