On November 18, 2010, a Major League Soccer team changed its name. One minute they were the Kansas City Wizards. The next, they were Sporting KC. Of course it’s never that simple.

This is that story.

Greg Cotton
Chief Operating Officer, Sporting Kansas City
I hate the word ‘brand’ more than anything. It’s overused; it’s not understood. People are misquoted all the time when they talk about brand. Really, we use the word ‘ethos’ around the office. So it’s what our company is all about. It’s what our soccer team is all about. It’s capturing the passion of our game. It’s not just we can sell 20 percent more jerseys if we use this color or this shield. It has nothing to do with that. All of that is secondary. It’s kind of like falling in love. If you find the right match, all the other benefits are secondary. I think that is how we approached this. We needed to fall in love with a brand that reflected the ethos of the company. So when we say ‘brand,’ we don’t mean just the logo or all that. We mean it in a bigger way. We mean brand to encapsulate everything that we do, the way that we are viewed from the outside; the way that we are viewed from the inside. It’s bigger. It’s reflective of the love we feel for this club; the passion that our fans feel for the club. When a player grabs that shield on his chest and kisses it after a goal, that needs to mean something. And I think when we went through this process, we always had that in the back of our minds: what should a player, what should one of our athletes really be meaning when they grab that shield and they kiss it, and it goes back over their heart? I try not to think of that word, brand, and I hate to say it, but you have to use it. But you have to make sure you use it wisely. Love without wisdom is fleeting, and Sporting wants to be around for a long time. We’re the smallest market, or one of them, and we’re just trying to change the way people think about MLS.

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MR. HUNT’S TEAM

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Robb Heineman
Sporting Club Chief Executive Officer and Owner, Sporting Kansas City
I can tell you right up until the day before we made the name change there was not necessarily complete shareholder unity around making the change. I think even as a group—we have five owners in this group and five happy marriages, so we really have 10 opinions in the room about brands, names. And I’m probably the dissenting voice in that I really advocated for the name change. I really wanted to change the name from the day we bought the team. I don’t think all of my partners always shared that same belief.

Charles Gooch
Reporter, Kansas City Star, and the newspaper’s soccer blog, The Full 90
The most surprising thing to me reporting on the story was how committed the team is to it. There is a small underground sentiment of sports fans that think the team just did this overnight, that they made a decision, and they are just going with it. I’ve talked to Robb a bunch, the PR guys a lot, marketing people, ticket people; I’ve talked to all of them, and they are all very committed and 100 percent behind this idea. I don’t think enough people know that or realize just how committed this team is to making this rebrand work. And they are not afraid to step outside of the box and try innovative things. That’s the thing with the main company that is behind the team. The Cerner company is known for innovation and thinking differently about the way things are done (in health care technology). And there is some truth to how differently they think in how they involve their wives, involve all of their employees. I can’t speak for a lot of sports, but I don’t know how many sports franchises go that in depth into trying to enhance the fan experience on an individual level.

Cliff Illig
Owner, Sporting Kansas City
Shortly after we purchased the team, and especially once we got into a new stadium, we knew we were going to have to do something with the outward focus brand of the team. If you are going to spend as much money as we were planning to on stadiums and everything else, you really want to have a presence that is unique to the organization.

Robb Heineman
For us the evaluation around soccer wasn’t based around any real love we had for the game. I’m the only one of the ownership group that played the game growing up, and I hadn’t attended a whole lot of MLS games, and I’m not sure any of my fellow investors had ever even been to one. So we didn’t do this for a huge fondness for the game of soccer, but we did see the emerging demographics, and some of the changes that have been happening and are happening in the household around decision-making. We thought this was the right area for us to be involved in.

Mike Wurst
Original Wizards and now top-ranking Sporting season ticket holder
When the new ownership came on I was thrilled because A: it meant the team stays in town, and B: because of who it was who bought the team, I was very optimistic they would do good things with it, make the ambitious aggressive decisions to do something special.

Jeff Szajnuk
Cauldron member
I was part of a group of Cauldron guys and season ticket holders called Heart of America Soccer Foundation, which tried to help in the search for investors. Some of the people really involved in that group were David Ficklin, who now is responsible for building our stadium; Greg Cotton, who is COO of the team. Sam Pierron, who founded the Cauldron and now works for the team. Chad Reynolds, now the club’s graphic designer. So to see a lot of those guys now working for the team is a dream. I’m sure some of the haters, when they show up on opening day, it’s going to hit them that this is real.

Greg Cotton
Sporting Kansas City Chief Operating Officer
Frankly, when we bought this team, our season ticket holders were in the 600-range. We were last in the league in revenue in all categories. We were last in the league in ticket sales generally, season ticket sales, gross revenues, net revenues. We weren’t doing well on the field. We were way way way down. You couldn’t imagine a scenario that the team was further depressed. And the team had been for sale for two or three years.

Greg Maday
Owner, Sporting Kansas City
Robb is the common denominator; in roughly September 2006, when we finally bought the team and everything we went through, I’m not sure we didn’t start talking about the name change immediately thereafter as part of a long list of to-dos—build a stadium, build a training facility, change the name, change a lot of things.

Greg Cotton
I remember having conversations even before the team was purchased that we really ought to do a brand study and make sure this is the right team name, color scheme. Does this really represent what we want to do with the club? But there was really no momentum around it. I think everyone knew at some point in the future something would probably happen, but it was Mr. Hunt’s team, and at that time we were just kind of the caretakers. We wanted to very respectful in that regard.

Chad Reynolds
Graphic Designer, Sporting Kansas City
Back in about June of ’05, Greg Cotton and I sat down over a couple of beers and started brainstorming names, essentially, for this potential new ownership group. The state line element that we carried through to our brand now, we drew that on a napkin as kind of a potential element for OnGoal, and it carried from there.

Robb Heineman
We’d begin by asking does it make sense to give it some time? But we wanted to—our first goal—was to define ourselves as the third most popular brand in our market behind the Chiefs and Royals.

Greg Maday
I don’t think we have aspirations of knocking out the Chiefs and Royals. And growing up in the 1970’s, you couldn’t get a ticket to the Royals’ games. In late ‘70s early ‘80s, Arrowhead was empty. I was in college, watched John Elway in his first year play the Chiefs, maybe 1985-6. I would follow Elway all the way down the field. He’d move the team from the 20 to the 30-yard line, and I’d just move down the seats with them to be right in line with them. That’s how empty it was. In 1990, with Schottenheimer and Joe Montana, Marcus Allen, all of a sudden the world changed. But I don’t think we have any goals to challenge them. But this is a soccer community, and as those that play soccer get into the position of parenting and having children and taking them to matches, they are going to buy season tickets to our events. I don’t think it’s an either-or, but I like our position in the marketplace.

Greg Cotton
The shield was changed very early on; I think it was one of the first things we did after we bought the team. We took the primary logo, not a rainbow, but the colored stripes logo, and we made that our secondary logo, and we took the secondary logo, which was basically just a stylized word mark, and made it our primary. That was to make the brand we had more recognizable and more sellable and more wearable. So we changed that in 2007. We still had the Carolina blue kits, but we had the stylized word mark as the shield. I will tell you our merchandise sales on the jersey side, by the end of 2007, had increased 775 percent. That was attributed to the logo switch and the new, secure, local ownership. People were buying again. It was just a brand evolution, not a revolution, which is what I said at the time. That was probably summer of 2007.

Robb Heineman
I was the only one that was completely gung ho about changing the name. I would say that Greg Maday and Pat Curran were largely always in favor of it, but they weren’t always as vocal about it. If it would have gone the other way, I don’t think they would have been disappointed in it today. Nobody said absolutely not. Now were there meetings when things like that came up? Sure, I do remember a meeting there or two, but I don’t think it was ever an on-going strong conviction that anyone had against a name change.

Greg Cotton
Nobody was 100% in on changing the name or the brand, the colors, but we all wanted to explore it. Chad and I in particular took the lead on this project. That was probably the winter of 2006 to January-February 2007. And so we engaged the league; they actually were much more receptive than I was thinking. If we could have this phoenix rising from the ashes rebirth, a re-imagining of what this club was all about, we knew it needed to happen at a point when we have a bunch of new stuff happening. Just buying the team and switching ownership doesn’t mean all that much to getting new people excited about the club, which is what we had to do. So first we wanted to do it around the first of three stadium proposals, that one out in Johnson County. We thought that was going to be in construction in mid-2007. We just knew it needed to be a big launch, or a rebranding just didn’t make sense to do it piecemeal.

David Ficklin
Vice President of Development, Sporting Kansas City
I would say it was some time in 2007, and we’d have these conversations where Heineman would say, “I really want to change the name.” Ok, well, what are you thinking? “I’ve always liked the name Sporting.” I was like, wow, ok, that’s Francisco Marcos favorite team, he who built the USISL and the whole minor league, a great pioneer of American soccer. He talks about it constantly.

Robb Heineman
This is completely all on me, but I think we were relatively naïve on what the development timeline for the stadium was going to be. Or I should say I was very naïve. So we purchased the team in September 2006, and I think we were all convinced that we’d have a stadium built by early 2008. We made the strategic decision that we’re probably going to get a second chance to make a first impression here in Kansas City, so let’s go make a big bold push to the community when we have all of our ducks in a row. I’d say probably sometime in early 2008 is when that really started gain some momentum. It was, is this going to be a very literal name change or is this going to be more of a philosophical change around our business model, or none of the above? Will it be completely abstract?

Greg Cotton
Then the world fell apart early 2008, our stadium project on the Missouri side at Bannister Mall didn’t get off the ground. So for all of 2008 and most of 2009, or at least half of 2009, we didn’t pay attention to the brand at all. Other than having a slight modification of the shield and to the colors.

Robb Heineman
We really had to hold back from pushing forward from September ’06 to 2009. That was a little frustrating obviously, going through those doldrums, not necessarily doing all the things that you wanted to do, because you wanted to wait for the right strategic moment to do them.

Greg Cotton
After the Bannister Mall stadium project fell through due to an almost complete lack of retail development in the area, I guess it was rock bottom to some degree, but no one in our office thought that way, and I don’t mean to pat ourselves on the back, but we’re running 100 mph all the time over here. We’re always looking for the next thing. The next thing then was trying to figure Bannister Mall; then it was looking at other sites; it was trying to figure if we could play at Arrowhead; it was trying to figure out where we could play temporarily, where we ended up at the minor league baseball stadium (Community America Ballpark, CAB). There was just too much going on to feel the weight that probably the fans felt. And that I felt when I was fan all those years of the Wizards, which was, gosh, when are we going to get our own stadium, when will we have a home; rumors starting popping up again that the team would move because we couldn’t get a stadium. All that old bad blood came up again in 2008, but we were running too fast to feel the negative vibe. There were moves going on with the coach, with our marquee player, Eddie Johnson, who we sold to Fulham. There was change in the air all the time, so the change in the brand when it came up again in 2009 really wasn’t all that shocking to anyone. It was just the natural progression.

Chad Reynolds
It’s funny because we did kind of a stop-start, to be honest with you, a couple of times on potential rebrands. I feel like we’d get a month or two into a process and then be like, let’s make sure we’re on a little bit more firm ground on the stadium, when the stadium really started being a reality. But it became pretty clear to us that something had to change, and something had to feel more professional, is I guess the best way to put it. Or just to feel more… feel more real.

Greg Cotton
Robb got a call from Jeff Lynn, the General Manager Nebraska Furniture Mart, who said, “Mr. Buffet (Warren Buffet owns the Furniture Mart) noticed that when you guys play your games out here we are doing a little better in our sales, so would you be interested in coming out here permanently? We just happen to have a 13-acre site.” We engaged local counsel to explore it, and very very very short version, in November 2009, we finally got the $146 million in star bonds approved to build the stadium. That process happened very quickly over 6-7 eight months, all due to Robb and his ability to sell the vision of what our company and soccer team are all about. So then we knew we’d have a stadium in June of 2011, so we really needed to hustle on the rebranding. Spring/Summer 2009, we reached back out to the league and sponsors, are started having discussions again about it. We talked to five or six outside advertising agencies but decided to keep it within the league and it’s present partners. We were more focused this time and went in with a sense of what we wanted to be and what we wanted to see. We really wanted to come to a final result, a final mark, a final name, final kit.

Mike Illig
Son of Cliff Illig, team liaison for Illig Family Enterprise Company
It was actually helpful to all of us I think when we took it to the league in 2009, because then we had to take a step back and explain to them why we wanted to do this, what it was going to mean to us, what it was going to mean for fans. That’s when you began to get this entire picture together of the future, the brand ethos, and could really put some momentum behind the change. We had to develop our story. And that’s super important. It’s all about that story about who we are, because that will now never change.

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THE NONSTORY

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Chad Reynolds
I was a fan before I worked here. And I was never in love with the Wiz or Wizards moniker to begin with. Nobody seems to have a true history of it anymore. The way we understand it, back in 1995, there was a “name the team” contest held by the Kansas City Star, the big local paper. They received thousands of entries or whatever, and the name that won I believe was something Tornados, or Cyclones, or something related to the weather here. A very Oklahoma City Thunder type thing. And that wasn’t really appealing to Lamar Hunt. So he picked the Wiz moniker, because Wizards, or Wizards of Oz, had finished second or something like that. They trotted out some 9-year-old girl who had apparently suggested the name first, and that was their big thing. Well, immediately they started backtracking, saying no it’s not related to the Wizard of Oz. So there was always kind of a weird start to begin with, let alone the whole shortening it to Wiz thing.

Robb Heineman
It all had to do with the Wizard of Oz. I was interviewed the other day for a biography being written on Mr. Hunt, and they asked a question of Mr. Hunt: when they first named the team The Wiz, was he aware at that point that wiz was slang for urination? He said he wasn’t aware of that usage when he agreed to name the team that. The organization has had name challenges from day one.

Andy Tretiak
VP Marketing, Sporting Kansas City
The name Wizards is certainly very polarizing—people loved it or despised it; I knew coming into the organization that that was going to be a major hurdle.

Chad Reynolds
When you look around the league at the teams that have been successful, in terms of the fan bases that have been successful, the new teams, the expansion teams, they kind of had an advantage over the quote, rest of us, the organizations that have been here for 15 years. They didn’t have 15 years of bad marketing and marketing to the wrong groups, and the types of things the rest of us have had to overcome.

Greg Cotton
The Wizards name and the shield that went along with it was really Lamar Hunt’s second choice. He had originally come up with a teardrop shape for the original Wiz logo, and he really loved that. It was unique. He got a lot of stick for it I think because it was an unusual name, but he felt that was something—a name and a brand—that people could really rally around. Very shortly thereafter, there was a legal proceeding. There was a cease and desist I believe from Nobody Beats The Wiz that caused the powers that be to make the team go through a brand modification I think they called it, or enhancement or something like that, and so they threw Wizards on it.

Chad Reynolds
I was a 12-year-old [when we got the team] and was like this is the dumbest name I’ve ever heard. But you kind of had to own it. It was very much a, “nobody makes fun of my little brother but me,” type thing. Yeah it’s a bad name, but look around the rest of the league: the Clash, the Mutiny, just a ton of bad names across the board, frankly. Once I got into high school and college, walking around with gear that had a giant goofy looking rainbow logo on it. You could get into all the other random connotations and things with it, but it was just never anything that people were proud to wear.

Robb Heineman
There are a bunch of minor league sports in Kansas City, and frankly the Wizards were caught in that same fray for media coverage and community involvement. The T-Bones, an AFL team called the Brigade, the Blaze was still around.

Chad Reynolds
We had this problem in this town where a lot of people thought of the Kansas City Wizards, they thought of an empty Arrowhead Stadium with a bunch of screaming kids or they thought of a minor league baseball stadium (CAB) with a bunch of screaming kids. So that was a perception that very much had to change.

Greg Cotton
There was always a sense that maybe the brand doesn’t fit exactly what we want to do with the club. And Mr. Hunt never really—Wizards wasn’t his love. That wasn’t the brand or the team that he initially fell in love with.

Cliff Illig
There is nothing wrong with the Wizards; it wasn’t that it was a crummy brand, it was just we needed to make sure we had a brand we could build around for the future. Wizards was a unique brand, and didn’t collide with the NBA Wizards, and we considered not changing it.

Greg Maday
I travel all the time and pick up a paper to check scores, and the Wizards scores were 150-140. Oh, those aren’t the Kansas City Wizards; it’s the basketball team. There were trademarks issues about branding that name and owning it across areas and whatever.

Amber Heineman
Wife of Robb Heineman, boardmember Sporting Club Foundation
How do I say it nicely? Maybe it was a little corny. It was very Kansas oriented—Wizard of Oz, all of that. Their offices are in Missouri, and they wanted to incorporate both sides of the state line. It just seemed like it needed a big overhauling to take it to another level.

Mike Illig
There is really not a whole lot of brand equity in that. What is the story you are telling with that? It’s a bunch of nomads. We played Arrowhead; we went to CAB. The Wizards, the Wiz, the logos—there is not really a whole lot to be proud of with the marks specifically.

Jeff Szajnuk
Cauldron member
When I started coming to games in 2003, I was coming in spite of the name, in spite of the colors. All of those of things were hurdles for me to get over. It seems superficial now, but I never liked the name Wizards. People of Kansas City don’t feel a connection to the Wizard of Oz. You can buy Wizard of Oz crap at the airport, but there’s never been a connection. So you are either taking it Dungeons and Dragons—Harry Potter style or you’re taking it Wizard of Oz style. And neither of those things were something I could embrace. I didn’t like the name Wizards, but I’d lose my voice singing it. It was always about the city and the fans and the team. They’ve moved us, changed our colors, done all those things, but the fans are still here.

Chad Reynolds
I went to Kansas University, and everybody feels a part of it for whatever reason. We KU basketball fans talk about the KU basketball family, or the Kansas family. And I noticed when my friends would talk about the Chiefs, talk about the Royals, they would talk about KU, and they would say, “When do we play next?” And then they would say, “When do the Wizards play next?” My roommates, they’d talk about Arsenal and West Ham as “We.” And then they’d talk about the soccer team in their own hometown as the Wizards, a team that I work for.

Robb Heineman
We are one of the original founder members of MLS, and obviously the thing that is most important to us about all of it, is the star above our shield—the championship. That is what it is all about. We don’t want to do anything that gives the suggestion that we don’t care about the past, because we do, a lot, but we believe the future for us is going to be everything.

Robert Houghton
Former president of the Cauldron
Was it a great name? Would I have chosen in back in 1995? Probably not; it’s not great; it’s a very Americanized sports name, but it’s who we were; we won a cup under it. I thought it was important to keep it, but I understand the new ownership group wanting to make a clean break and move on.

Mike Illig
Wizards felt so Mickey Mouse to me. I mean how can you take seriously a team called the Wizards, formerly called the Wiz? They can’t even figure out what they want to be; how the hell are you going to go support them? The only thing anybody remembers is beating Manchester United, with all these global stories about this little team in Kansas City beating the big bad Man U. I remember thinking, walking out of the stadium that day, good god, how the hell are we going to explain changing the name now? For the fans that still love Wizards, wear the jerseys, it’s part of our history. That never will change. So do it, love it, but we have to move on to bigger and better things with this club that the Hunts Sports Group wouldn’t do.

Sam Pierron
Founder of Cauldron (previously Mystics) - Special Projects at Sporting Kansas City
I didn’t like the name Wizards when I was 18, 19-years-old. I don’t like the way it rolls past the lips. It’s doesn’t project strength; it doesn’t project anything. We were the Wizards but had a dragon mascot. No one wanted to have anything to do with the name. Now at the same time, I’m sensitive to people’s affinity to it. I have an affinity to it; it will always be a major part of my adult life. But no matter how good the memories are, things change. I married a woman I loved and ended up getting a divorce.

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THE BIRTH OF SPORTING

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Greg Maday
We knew the actual name was the big thing people were going to care about. People said why now? Why are you changing the name? It can be as simple as, hey, we are going to have to put a name on a stadium. So if we are ever going to change it, those names aren’t inexpensive.

Charles Gooch
We got a few tips early on. The team stopped having a lot of new merchandise early on in 2010, and then right around the time of the Manchester United friendly, Robb Heineman was saying some things along the lines of the team was looking to make some radical changes in the off-season.

Joe Tregellas
Cauldron member
I first heard about a rebranding maybe a year and a half ago. If you are a Big Soccer geek, there are always conspiracies flying all over the place. Everything was speculation.

Mike Wurst
They kept it pretty tightly controlled. It was all just speculation.

Mike Kuhn
Cauldron Member, blogger, Down The Byline
Last summer it really started picking up, and Sporting KC started get thrown around. When I found out for certain, somebody anonymously emailed me the logo before it was published. I ran it past another friend who knew, and he confirmed it for me. So I ended up leaking it on my blog earlier in the week of the official announcement.

Robert Houghton
The fans were kept in the dark about it. I understand that. I’ve dealt with the front office long enough and the people in the section long enough, that I know if they told someone–and what did leak out was posted by people in the Cauldron that shouldn’t be posting information but did anyway. So I understand them keeping it from us; they wanted to be prepared for the backlash they knew they were going to receive and present it the way they wanted to present it.

Sam Pierron
That’s accurate. That’s fair. When you are talking about something as significant and massive as a brand change, I don’t think you are going to get your best results by committee. On some level, the name has to represent the vision of the ownership, as much as the current passion of the fan.

Alexi Lalas
ESPN commentator, former President and General Manager of MetroStars/Red Bull NY & LA Galaxy
I was involved in a mid-season rebranding at Red Bull and a few years later with the arrival of David Beckham and the rebranding of the Galaxy. I learned there could be an incredible danger with having too many cooks in the kitchen.

Robb Heineman
I have all the respect in the world for our fans; I really do. But we understood that it was likely that there was going to be some negative reception around the name. The name for us has a very literally connotation around our business model, so it was kind of one of those things, don’t ask if you don’t want to know the answer. That was the calculated risk we were willing to wait on.

Charles Gooch
I think a lot of fans felt a little raw about it. Some groups felt the ownership group was taking their history away. And I know from dealing with the team that the star on their crest they won in 2000 is very important to them, and they don’t want to take away from that. But I think for a lot of fans those words weren’t enough. There is another group of fans that just wished they would’ve thought up the name, that they could have had an input or a say. They didn’t; they felt like it was forced upon them. That’s how fans work sometimes. It’s their team, and they want to have say in what their team does. The ownership group has not been opposed to making these kind of decisions and then letting the chips fall where they may. If the fans are mad, they’ll deal with that. If there’s negative press, they’ll deal with that. They are in it for the long haul; they want to be innovative, that word they always throw around. And sometimes innovations don’t work, and they are willing to fail on this one, but I don’t think they’re gonna.

Cliff Illig
When you start something from nothing, the brand is really important. We went through the naming of Cerner in an interesting way. When we started Cerner in 1979, we were just three guys’ names, and it wasn’t something we thought we could tackle the national and international marketplace with. We really studied how you go about naming a company. We decided we liked two words, not three, because three always got boiled down to alphabet soup. We liked companies like Xerox and Exxon also, which adopted words that didn’t mean anything before the company. We liked the protectability. We went through a similar and long process to settle on the name Cerner. We’re enough corporate guys to believe that your brand is important and part of what you frame your strategies around. It’s not something that you just do.

Robb Heineman
As far back as 2008, we had done a logo study, so it was something that Greg and I and Andy Steinberg, and David Ficklin, we had talked on and off about it for years. We knew that when we took it to the shareholder group, for approval, that it had to be an informed discussion; we couldn’t just go to them with a bunch of nonsense and expect we were going to get much traction.

Greg Cotton
We did all of these brand identity workshops and got things like the Missouri and Kansas state insect are the same: the bee. So we had honeybees all over one study. And we just kind of looked at each other. It was our own fault. We didn’t know what we wanted well enough. In late 2007, maybe early 2008, we just said, we are not going to pursue a rebrand at this time, and we will look at it again at some point.

David Ficklin
I remember in 2007, we’d have these conversations where Heineman would say, “I really want to change the name.” Ok, well, what are you thinking? “I’ve always liked the name Sporting.” I was like, wow, ok, that’s Francisco Marcos favorite team, he who built the USISL and the whole minor league, a great pioneer of American soccer.

Robb Heineman
We’re not just going to call ourselves the Kansas City Bears. We ran the gamut around Athletic Club of Kansas City, Soccer Club, and all those kind of things. But in all of those what we were trying to avoid was the alphabet soup. We didn’t want to be ACKC for example. We ran through all the literal names: Boulevards, Fountains, Tornados, and none of those really caught our eye.

Chad Reynolds
What really kind of happened was, it starts with symbolism, and what symbolizes Kansas City. We have more fountains in Kansas City than any city on the planet except for Rome. Which is cool, and something most people in Kansas City are proud of, but most people outside of Kansas City don’t know that. We don’t have that kind of one iconic piece of architecture like Seattle has with the Space Needle. We needed something to be that iconic element. And Kansas City is cool and unique in that it does straddle two states. It’s a big part of what Kansas Citians identify with. It’s a big part of what causes political hassles in this area. You’re from Kansas or you’re from Missouri. People ask me where I‘m from when I’m here in town, and I’m from Kansas City, Kansas; people from Missouri say, “I’m from Kansas City, Missouri.” But out of town, people ask where I’m from, and I say Kansas City. I’m very proud of that. So we immediately latched onto this idea, this state line; this thing that divides us in our own town at times, is really something we’re all very proud of, and then being very proud of being from Kansas City outwardly. The state line was kind of the very first element where we went, that’s it, that’s got to be incorporated somehow, going back to that line I drew on that napkin in June of ‘05. All along we were like we’ve got to find a way to use that; that’s our iconic element.

Cliff Illig
In this country, from a sports standpoint, we’ve got this city/mascot model that we’ve historically worked off of. That’s one approach to naming and one that is very acceptable. And then interestingly over the last few years, you’ve seen a move from plural names, like Royals or Chiefs, to singular theme names, like the Fire and the Galaxy. And then when you look around the world, you see in addition to Barcelona and Real Madrid, you also end up with Manchester United and other words that don’t follow that traditional U.S. model. Part of what we’ve done, and you can see this especially in the stadium, is saluting European design. Physically it looks and feels European, but it includes all those things Americans have come to expect, the amenities that are not necessarily characteristic to an international setting. And in the same way we thought about that in respect to the brand. We wanted it to be associated with Kansas City but also to have a European or international approach to naming.

Greg Cotton
So we recognized the state line as something very unique to our story, and we wanted to have that unification/United theme around our club. So we even as a lot of clubs have done coming into the league, suggested what if we were Kansas City United? I remember that at the very beginning. And of course, they said, “We already have a United.” We said, well, there are 45 of them in England, we’re kind of striving for authenticity, does it make sense, particularly because it matches our story? We didn’t really love that to be honest, but it was a challenge to the establishment, and we wanted to push it, to see how far we could get it. So we pushed it fairly far; it got to the commissioner’s desk, and he said no.

Amber Heineman
Just because there’s DC United, I don’t see why we can’t use that. There’s also Manchester United. The wives really liked that one. We also thought of FCKC, Football Club of Kansas City, which is pretty generic, but some of the owners didn’t want all the letters, and it is also a name of a youth soccer program here already.

Greg Cotton
Spring 2009 I was sitting with Robb, talking to a design firm at the Brio restaurant on the plaza. We were sitting outside on the second deck, and they asked about the name. I started, well, we don’t really want to go into this process thinking about a name, we’d like the name to kind of evolve out of the process, and quite frankly the name could end up staying Kansas City Wizards, and Robb just said, “Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute. I want to call the club Sporting.” At first—I support Robb in everything that he does—I looked at him and said, huh, I’m not sure I get that.

Robb Heineman
I think we previewed it first to Cliff. It was Cliff and Michael Illig. I think they liked it. But Cliff and Neal, they’ve always asked, what is the thought process underlying our decision?

Clay Patterson
Son of Neal Patterson, Owner Sporting Kansas City
My dad is typically one to challenge the thought process. He’ll even play the other side of the table purposely. I’m not surprised at all that he was the hardest to get support from.

Cliff Illig
I don’t remember when I first heard it exactly. There was no grand epiphany.

Mike Illig
It was first brought up to me on a flight by Robb to me and Pops (Cliff Illig) from one of our away games in 2009. He had both of us together in a space where we didn’t have an agenda of things to discuss; he had us right where he wanted us and just started going off on his plan to remake the team under Sporting Club. He didn’t know if it was Sporting Club Kansas City or Kansas City Sporting Club, but he knew he wanted Sporting to be the base. Both of us we’re like, “Ok great. Why? “ My wheels start spinning a million miles an hour, like, oh my god, that name is going to piss a lot of people off. Specifically I was confused as to why, myself. Pops was kind of like, “Whatever.” When you say Sporting, his big question is Sporting what? To sit there and ask yourself what your mascot is—Sporting What? You’re Sporting Kansas City. Ok, well, when you talk to guys like Pops and Neal and Greg Maday and Pat Curran, they sit there as part of the very GenX thinking: “I’m used to the Kansas JayHawks. The Kansas State Wildcats. The Oklahoma State Cowboys.” They get the mascot, no matter how childish a mascot may be, you still have to have something with it. So, they were like, “We’re sign off on it when you guys come up with Sporting What.”

Cliff Illig
Some of the anxiety around Sporting came from when you look at the word in the English language, it always invites that question. If there is an area as we still settle into our own brand that is uncomfortable to us, it’s that the word Sporting doesn’t come across as impactful as a case where you have a mascot—The Chicago Fire. That’s the path we had to walk.

Greg Maday
From the get go, there were different versions and different iterations, and I remember having a conversation with Neal in spring of 2010, and he said, “So what do you think of Sporting KC?” That was the first time I had heard about that specific name. And I said, what’s that? We talked about it; that that was what the guys—Robb and others—were recommending for the name change. I said, OK, well, when I go get my hair cut, what do I tell my barber? I’m giving him tickets to what? Sporting? Hurry up and get my hair cut, I’m going out to Sporting? I wasn’t on board immediately.

Mike Illig
I can’t tell you how many times I’d go to my parents house, talking to Pops in his home office going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and I’d leave so fricking furious. Just because he wasn’t getting it, and I was so nervous that Neal wasn’t getting it, and I’d come back to Robb and say, I’m having a real hard time with this; are you getting any luck? And he’s like, “None whatsoever.”

Alexi Lalas
I know the hours and hours we spent [at New York and LA] on why this star is going to be placed here and all that stuff. For most people, most fans, that stuff probably doesn’t matter, but it should matter when you’re creating something you believe in and is ultimately going to be part of a history that is important to you. That’s a long way of saying that it’s a lot of work that goes on that will never be recognized. And then you throw it out there for the masses, and invariably, you are going to take your hits. But that’s fine if you believe in it, if you’ve put in the hard work. My biggest pet peeve in MLS is winging it. I hate that. I’d rather have a flawed plan than no plan, on or off the field.

Cliff Illig
There was a plan. It was a team effort that a few of us had to catch up with. But nobody walked into it thinking it was a mess that’s gonna take a lot time for someone to arbitrate through. The visual brand work—the logos, and the shields, and the colors, the kits—there was no hesitancy that that was really good stuff. So you had this really good stuff that was using and leveraging that particular brand identity selection, and the only question we had was would the Sporting name confuse; by being unique are you in fact confusing the people you are trying to build brand equity with?

Amber Heineman
We were presented with Sporting, and I will say not all of us were just certain that was the right way to go. The LLC that bought the team is called OnGoal, and Liz Maday is the one who came up with that name. So when they presented Sporting to us, I looked over at Liz saying, can’t you think of something else? I remember one of the wives saying, “Maybe it is too cool for us to understand.” We just wanted something more basic. But it grew on us.

Liz Maday
The wives are picky about everything about the team. That is true, and everyone knows it. The hard thing about the name is what do you yell when you’re in the stadium. We initially said, ”We can’t yell Sporting, it takes too long.” So we tried to come up with cool nicknames. We had alternatives right there when Sporting was presented to us, but I don’t really remember them. It’s probably not healthy to think about that. There were so many names that had been taken. It was easy to think of names that reminded you of Kansas City, but that isn’t what we were really going for. We wanted to be bigger than soccer and show off that Kansas City was the best-kept secret in the world, pull in the region and nearby cities, adapt to other interests.

Chad Reynolds
I was sold on it because I heard the concept before I heard the name.

Cliff Illig
Neal and I weren’t part of the initial process of coming up with alternatives, and when it came to us there was consensus it was the best option, and it didn’t come across to us as forceful as we hoped it would. Now it met most of the other principles. It is unique, we can build around it. It is a single word. No alphabet soup. It can be associated with Kansas City. It’s workable around Sporting Club, the parent organization, and the other things the club may do. For example we have Sporting Innovations, which is the market leading work we’re doing in the digital space to make our stadium venue incredibly digital from the outset. So Sporting what? Sporting Kansas City is the team. Sporting Innovations is something else. Sporting Club is something else.

Mike Illig
So when we talk to Pops and Neal, it was difficult, but what it took actually was what Neal called a W.O.R., a With Out Robb meeting. You get Robb in a room and he is damn good at selling. He’s like me in a sense, very passionate about it; he has an answer for everything it seems like. So it was a meeting that allowed everyone a fresh take and a chance to speak without Robb interjecting his answers or comeback immediately to whatever your question or thought was. And to be fair to Robb, it was also about let’s hold off on criticism and try to come to a stance ourselves. If we all end up not liking the idea, then we can go back to Robb and say here is why. As it worked out, we reached a consensus that supported Robb, though obviously with the understanding this was going to be tough, and it certainly has been. Robb and I joke about it now, like, “How many other W.O.R meetings have you had since that one?” And honestly there has been none, but we still joke about it.

Robb Heineman
I wasn’t there, so I can’t be completely certain, but I’m an extremely opinionated person. And so in a lot of these meetings, my opinions are sometimes presented as though that’s what we’re doing, as opposed to them being presented as an option. It’s not something that bothers me a whole lot. I have a lot of faith and trust in my four partners.

Charles Gooch
Robb is a fascinating person. He is a lot like Mark Cuban. He comes from a tech background. They both think out of the box when it comes to the game. They sit near the team, they are passionate about the team. Robb live-tweeted a practice during the preseason, and it was just like a fan was retweeting what was going on. And he is a very excellent salesman.

Cliff Illig
Robb’s in an interesting position. He is not just one of five owners, but he splits bullets everyday trying to put all of this together. He has very strong opinions and sometimes in meetings you have to ask Robb, hey will you just not try to defend one thing the whole time, but allow us to look at all the alternatives? It’s a constructive and positive thing. I don’t want anyone to think it is a negative part of the process. You wouldn’t want the team putting this together to not walk into the room and feel like this is the right thing to do, but at the same time, you don’t want them to dominate the time and not give everyone the opportunity to think on their own. We don’t have one master of marketing who decides this stuff. Our style is more collaborative and team-oriented, which is something we brought from the culture of Cerner, which has a very flat organization without a lot of hierarchy or politics.

Joe Tregellas
Robb Heineman on some radio station had thrown the name Sporting out there. Kind of a, “We’re toying with the idea.” We also saw light blue and dark blue trusses going up on the stadium, so in my mind I knew the colors were changing. You knew something was happening. I figured the name was going to be Sporting a couple months before they announced it.

Robb Heineman
I do remember having it as a collection of names that dropped at the time. We’re always trying to test things, sometimes much more overtly and literally, and I don’t honestly remember what our thought process was around that, but I doubt that it was just a pure slip of the tongue.

Charles Gooch
He threw that out there on the radio; a Monday morning in mid-August, and things went crazy on Big Soccer from there. They immediately kind of backtracked from it. They didn’t deny it, but whenever we asked about it as a newspaper, they would just say, “Nothing is official; we’re just exploring some ideas.” In my experience with Heineman, he gets things out there before they are really done. I know he tweeted about the Manchester United friendly before the league had even approved it. That’s just the way he is. He gets really excited about connecting with the fans. He just throws things out there. I think at the time they had already decided they were going to go with Sporting Kansas City.

Robb Heineman
We got final shareholder approval in mid-2010. It was at Neal Patterson’s farm. He has a woodshop that has a meeting area, and we met out there as a group, and I think there were probably 12 or 14 people in the meeting. We went through it and made the decision. It wasn’t the only topic of the meeting, but of course it was a very important one.

Mike Illig
We joke about that place. It’s pretty famous for us. Robb calls it a shed, when it’s a shop. A shop is where things are created, and a shed is where things go to die. That’s Neal’s analogy. It wasn’t an over the top conversation. It was brief in nature, because at that point we knew what was happening. We went around the table and everybody said their piece. Neal goes around the table—what do you think? I was convinced 100 percent. Our vision and minds had created these ideas, and this is so much bigger than anything we could have done with Kansas City Wizards. That being said, and to this day, it still goes back to Sporting what? So our work is not done. The joke at that meeting was, you guys better know what you’re doing.

Cliff Illig
I didn’t worry about it once the decision was made. You can’t waffle as if there is a concern. You just go forward and work around it and be consistent. There was a fairly big concern around our long-standing fan base that A: changing the name to anything from the Wizards was not going to be well received. And then B: the worry of dealing with that reaction.

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A MIDWESTERN STORM

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Robb Heineman
I knew it would be interpreted in a different way than we meant it. It really is a literal name, but I figured there would be some interpretation that it was being done just for namesake. We knew there was going to be a lot of pushback regardless of whatever the name would be, but then the name as being as different as it was, particular for some non-soccer traditionalists—we expected the worst frankly. We’d even tested it within our own organization and didn’t necessarily have strong support from staff, so we knew it was coming. We were asked by the league if we wanted to do some market research around the name, and we kind of said, “No, we know what the answer will be.” It’s going to be, “We don’t like it.” So there is no reason to do research on a question we knew the answer to. I wasn’t surprised by the backlash, but I was nervous, because I knew I was going to be the one to stand up in front of everybody and deliver the message.

Alexi Lalas
When the unveiling happens, you know you are going to take hits, no matter what. You could have the best design and brand in the world, and you’re gonna take hits. You have to stand firm, and I think Kansas City did. You have to be prepared to explain yourself. As exciting as it is, it has an incredible potential to be challenging, shall we say, from a PR and cultural standpoint that you built up over the years with your fans.

Joe Tregellas
I absolutely hated it. I was actually pretty fond of the Wizards. I didn’t buy into the Wizard of Oz thing–my mind never went there; I’ve never seen the movie. Harry Potter either.

Jeff Szajnuk
A few weeks before, we thought for sure that it was going to be Sporting. People starting freaking out.

Sam Pierron
Huh. That was my exact reaction. It’s something to chew on; there’s no doubt about it.

Mike Kuhn
My first thought was, God I hope it’s wrong. I’ve been really in favor of keeping the name Wizards. It was part of history and changing it I thought would do more disservice than anything positive. I’ve gone to games since 1996, and my parents are in the top 10 of season ticket numbers at this point. Their initial reaction when I told them was, “Really? Isn’t that a little too European?”

Chad Reynolds
Yeah there’s really not a lot of middle ground is there.

Andy Tretiak
We gave the possibility of negative feedback a lot of thought.

Greg Maday
Robb did the announcement at Power and Light District. I took my whole family down there, and I told them I think we might need to make a quick getaway if the crowd turned into a mob.

Robb Heineman
The name and the logo had leaked onto the internet obviously before we did the announcement, and a lot of the messaging was really negative. We had been working on it for so long that it is actually pretty amazing that it didn’t leak long before it did. And yeah, it wasn’t a controlled piece of news. There were way too many people that knew about it to keep a lid on it. There was talk about what different factions of fans were going to do at the announcement, that there was going to be booing and stuff.

Amber Heineman
I’ve probably never seen Robb so nervous. We have a joke that he has done so much public speaking, and he’s so good at it, and I think he kind of likes it. He can be a bit of a ham sometimes, and I like to give him a hard time, but that was not one of those times when he wanted to get up and talk to people. He sincerely believed in the subject matter he was presenting, but he was nervous of the reaction. People who have been fans of the team for years, they have jerseys and memorabilia; not only was it changing the brand name, it was changing basically everything about the team except for the players. I remember him asking me about our kids. Like, “How do you think our kids are going to take it if people start booing me and yelling at me?” I know that was something he was really worried about.

Robb Heineman
Mike Illig called me in the morning and asked me if I was going to order a Kevlar vest for the announcement that night. I think everybody anticipated the worst, and all the ownership group did as well. We all thought it was going to be negative reaction. I was nervous, and I don’t usually get nervous for speeches like that, but that day I definitely had the butterflies going, and I think it was noticeable. My wife said a few things to me. I asked a few of the staff members to say a few things to me; so yeah, it was definitely a different day.

Cliff Illig
The amount of fairly forceful feedback we got from our existing rowdy fan base was a little bit of a surprise to me. There was a lot of back and forth on the blogs, even about whether we had the right to change the name. Ultimately, we had to say we think it’s best. And I was surprised by the effort we had to put in to bring those avid and committed fans—those fans are very very important to us—along. And we don’t necessarily have all of them on board yet.

Robert Houghton
I went down to the announcement, and I remember not really thinking that much about it. I was kind of in denial going into it, and then walking away, I felt like a good friend had died, an empty sick feeling in my stomach; I literally felt like I lost someone very important to me. And that is kind of what it is. It hurt a lot right off the bat. C’mon really? Euro-poser name? Really? We really have to go that route?

Robb Heineman
The announcement went off, in my opinion, pretty well. I was surprised it wasn’t as outwardly negative as I anticipated. And I think now more and more as I spend time with the community and fan groups, I think they are giving us the benefit of the doubt. Some of them may not love it; there are still a lot of our fans that are referring to us as the Wizards, even in some of the chants that they are doing in the games, but I think generally they appreciate us as an ownership group what we are trying to do for soccer in Kansas City.

Charles Gooch
It was a cold and rainy night, and it was packed, packed full of the diehard fans. A lot of them were negative going in or a little bit weary, and then Robb gave a speech that just about everyone was like, “I’m behind that guy. That guy owns my team.” He can take a crowd and put them in his hand and guide them where he wants to go.

Jeff Szajnuk
The only reason there wasn’t a complete backlash from the entire Cauldron was because the inherent weakness in the name to begin with. If it was a name that fit like a glove it would have probably been over our dead body, and it was like that for some people. We had people give up their season tickets and say, “I’m not coming back.” I was at a Cauldron meeting a couple of months ago, and there was a guy who came up with the flyer they sent out for renewal and he just showed up to tell them off.

Chad Reynolds
I immediately went, there’s a lot of people who are going to struggle with this. I’ll be the first to tell you, I hate the name Real Salt Lake. I hate it. It makes no sense to me. What did they get a charter from the king of Utah? How do you get Real out of that? That’s the ultimate in Euro-poser names, to take the term that’s been thrown at us a lot. In 10 years Real Salt Lake is never going to make anymore sense than it does right now. Potentially in 10 years Sporting and Sporting Club make a lot more sense.

Shawn Francis
The MLS Insider
There was that idea, was it too euro-sounding? I think Real Salt Lake was the first MLS team to come out of the box like that. At first it sounds super jarring, but now I don’t think anyone notices it anymore or worries about the Euro-poser thing. Largely because Real has been so successful on the field, which will always take away negative stigmas.

Greg Maday
I wouldn’t have supported the name if it was just about a European model. For MLS to thrive and go great guns in the United States, it can’t be European soccer, it has to be American soccer whatever that is. We want them copying us, not the other way around. But OK, the other teams in the world named Sporting are in Portugal, it’s very European; we don’t get soccer; we don’t get the name. That was never our intent. That was never an angle. The name just fit the membership model we are trying to create.

Charles Gooch
While this was all going on, the team said this is not a European move; we’re not trying to emulate a European team, but they obviously are. They are obviously using a foreign model for the name. And they’re using a foreign model for the idea, because a lot of clubs in Europe, you go to the club dentist, the club shoe store, the club this and that. That’s what they are trying to do. That’s a funny point we joke around about here at the Star. It’s not a European name, but it really really is. And a lot of people are unhappy about being a Euro-poser. A lot of American soccer fans want to have an American identity. They don’t want to go around chasing Uniteds and Football Clubs and Sportings and Reals. They want an American stamp. I think Kansas City Soccer Club would have worked. I think an ode to the year they were formed, a Kansas City 96, I think that model could have worked without the Euro-poser tag, but I don’t think either of those would have fit with what the team was trying to do with the membership.

Alexi Lalas
The amount of people who complained about the more European name or global ideas behind the brand, the same number of people complained in the early days of MLS that it was so American and there was no connection or recognition that it is a global sport. So it’s hard to win and straddle those two—be authentic in the world of soccer and to be true to this unique thing we have in North America with MLS.

Sam Pierron
It’s less about being a Euro-poser and more about reflecting an entirely different mentality. If you translate sporting or sport into a number of languages, then you’ll see it appears throughout the world. So many Spanish-speaking clubs have deportivo in their name. It’s the concept of the club and membership that drove the name change, and if it takes a name that is a little harder to categorize, that’s a little jarring the first time you hear it, that’s not a bad thing.

Mike Illig
For some of us, when you see people are not necessarily fans of the teams, but friends of us, saying, “Wow, look at this awful comment. Look what these guys are saying, I don’t understand this.” That was hard for Pops and my mom and the wives because they didn’t really understand it either; their part of that old school nature when it comes to mascots and Jayhawks and whatever decals they can put on their daughters’ faces to go to the games.

Liz Maday
We do read all the websites; I usually read them out loud on Sunday mornings. My husband said, “You’re giving me heart palpitations.” But we just reassured friends and people that it grows on them. We’re not going to miss out on a mascot, and the overall idea of it is so much better for Kansas City, because the name adapts to entertainment and other sporting endeavors. You’ve got to trust us.

Amber Heineman
We heard it a lot from our friends, and that is always hard. Kind of like, “What are your husbands thinking? Why did they do that?” And of course it’s hard not to take that personally, because you see how hard your husband has been working, and you see how much he believes in the rebranding. It’s not like this wasn’t extremely well thought through.

Greg Cotton
I thought there would be more animosity around changing the name in general and not keeping the Wizards. But that type of vitriol I wasn’t expecting. To the extent that it came. We wanted to make the announcement long before we actually did. We wanted to announce it in the summer and through a variety of complications it never came through.

Liz Maday
My children would not wear the new logos and shirts to school at first, because they thought they would get criticized, but now they do, and all their friends do too. I think the twenty-something children, six of them or so, of the owners loved the name, and they were the biggest supporters. And that age group is our future. That influenced us in the positive and made us feel old, like, “Why don’t we get this?” A lot of people called us the Wizards Wives, and we wondered if we were now the Sporting Wives. Because that doesn’t sound so nice.

Greg Maday
Anecdotally from my experience, I thought I spent the entire holiday season after someone got their first cocktail in them having to explain the name to them. And now, four months later, everybody knows what it is; most people understand, some still don’t and may never. Long and short of it is, I think it’s one of the coolest names going. It fits. You needed to get rest of the story. It’s like reading the first page of a book and saying, I don’t like this book.

Sam Pierron
The broader story is that I understand why people don’t get it right away. I didn’t get it right away. But while the syntax might seem a little unusual in the American lexicon of sports names, it’s not as if we are claiming we have the royal charter of the king of Utah. On some level it’s just a name, and all that does is provide a brand on top of an organization. Real Salt Lake is viewed as a topnotch organization because they’ve showed success on the pitch, have a nice stadium, all those kinds of things.

Greg Cotton
It certainly has been controversial, which quite frankly, if it wasn’t, if everybody just shrugged their shoulders and walked away saying that’s nice, we didn’t do our job. It needed to be attention capturing, and it certainly was. From that perspective we hit our mark.

Robert Houghton
Immediately afterward there was a lot of animosity, and you could probably break it down perfectly along years of involvement with the team, based on discussions on Big Soccer and places like that. If, for the most part, you had not been a fan of the team for more than 5 years, those guys were all ok with the name change. Those of us who had been around since the beginning weren’t happy with it. I think that’s pretty standard. You’re invested; it’s part of your life.

Chad Reynolds
What you would name a soccer team in Kansas City, and make it feel soccer-y, and make it not cheesy? Are you naming it after weather like the Oklahoma City Thunder? What are you supposed to name a team in this area? There’s a lot of answers that always have some complications with them. What about the Blues, I’ve always liked the Blues. Well there’s the St. Louis Blues across the state. One of the ones that I always thought was funny, was the Kansas City Athletics? You know the Oakland Athletics- they were in Kansas City for 15 years. That one’s not going to fly. So there’s a lot of, ”Oh well, ok, you know,” that type of response.

Jeff Szajnuk
That’s the thing. If there was a natural name for this club–we’ve been debating this for 15 years, and nobody has ever had this thing. Thousand-word essays on Big Soccer; no one had the perfect name.

Chad Reynolds
I can’t tell you how many fans and friends and season ticket holders I’ve had come up to me and go, “You know I hated it at first, but I think it was just me reacting.” And I go, yeah, I understand that. “We’re going to change the name of this team, crap, what does that mean for me?” That’s the immediate reaction. I probably have more Wizards gear than anyone on the planet. There’s a handful of guys who own more old Wizards jerseys than me. I have the training jersey; the Charlie Brown jersey, the one with like the stripes across the front. The Life Savers jersey where the Life Savers wrap around the sleeves. I’ve got them all. And what’s funny is that as a designer, as a guy spear-heading the brand change, I lost two-thirds of my closet when we re-branded this team. And that’s no joke, I can’t wear any of that gear any more.

Mike Wurst
I think it was a vocal minority that was against it. I’ve had a lot of people say, “I don’t understand it,” which is different than saying, “I hate it.” In the end, it’s much more about the product on the field than what it is actually called. I think people will forget about it and move on. Some people will always go overboard.

David Ficklin
The hardest part was not being able to tell everyone all the details from the very beginning, and just say, “We’re gonna do something really crazy here, and it might sound kind of strange, and we can’t tell you the details, but trust us.” We wanted to have concrete things to say about what we were doing, all the while our best fans were desperately wanting to know more. “What is this? Tell me why I need to buy into it?” And we couldn’t give them the whole story, and in fact we still haven’t yet.

Robert Houghton
One of the things that helped me come around to it, was the day after the announcement some of the players were at Dick’s Sporting Goods doing an autograph signing. And I had a jersey to get signed. There wasn’t anybody there, so I went up and started talking to the guys. Three of them were there, and I was talking to two of the more senior players. I asked them about it. The response from one of them was, “I think it’s terrible, but it’s their team. It is what it is. You deal with it and move on. It doesn’t change the players on the field or what we do, it’s just a name on the jersey.” Walking out of that, I was suddenly ok with it. I only took me a day. We weren’t the only ones who weren’t big fans of it; some of the players weren’t fans of it. But you just deal with it.

Joe Tregellas
Given the totality of the plan, I don’t think they were just changing the name for a money grab—buy new uniforms—or for giggles. At least their intentions were pure. The execution hasn’t been great at times, but the overall plan and idea, that is why I can like Sporting now. Honestly, what probably made me like Sporting more than anything was other fans around the country saying, “Oh man, that’s too bad, you guys are called Sporting.” I’m the type of guy who’s like, yeah, so what? The more outsiders hated it, the more I had to like it. It’s mine for better or worse, so I better own it. It’s mine now. I love it.

Mike Kuhn
I’ve learned to live with it. I still don’t really like it, but I’m not going to stop supporting the team.

Chad Reynolds
We’re selling merch like crazy even though we don’t have a ton of it out right now, because it’s something people want to wear. And that’s partially because of the new color scheme too, it’s more attractive. But the logo is not something people are going to be embarrassed to walk around with on their shirt anymore.

Sam Pierron
My philosophy is I’ll explain and I’ll explain and I’ll explain, and I’ll always be honest. At the end of the day they’ll decide if they like us based on the facets of the organization that they see and not per se the brand that sits on top.

Andrew Steinberg
Executive Vice President of Revenue, Sporting Kansas City.
If we weren’t careful we ran the risk of, here we go again, another American soccer club being a Euro poser. So that is why it is so important for us as Sporting Club to revolutionize the way we connect with our community.

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JOIN THE CLUB

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Charles Gooch
I think the word ‘club’ to them was the most important part of the rebrand.

Robb Heineman
I really think as a group, it was one of those things that the name change grew on us. What sounded a little unconventional and crazy early on, as you keep saying it, and as we start talking about the other aspects of our business that we are going to be involved in, it started to make more sense. What we wanted to do, particularly around the name, was do something a little bit different that would give us a platform that would allow us to better connect with our community. We look at the fact that we are the only locally-owned team in Kansas City as a huge flagship for us. We wanted to be more than just a Major League Soccer team playing in a soccer stadium. We really wanted to be a community aspect that impacts sports not only at the professional level, but also at the youth level. We want to be not just a sports team; we want to be instilled in the social fabric of Kansas City. So that’s really the context that we try to do all of our decision making.

Greg Maday
The story is about membership. About being inclusive, not exclusive. It’s about who we are in the Midwest. About the five of us who came together to buy this team, local entrepreneurs, about soccer but about other events, sports, and opportunities.

Mike Illig
What are you? We are Sporting Club and happen to be in the business of soccer right now, but in 5 years from now, who knows what that might entail. Ten years from now it could be a lot of things, I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows right now, but if a new deal comes along where we can be cutting edge and innovative, I think without a doubt we will look at it. And Robb has led that charge to speak that way and look that way. He’s never been afraid.

Chad Reynolds
The flagship will always be this MLS soccer team. But hopefully a couple years down the road, there’s the Dallas Cowboys or New Jersey Nets calling and going, “What did you guys do here, where did this club model come from, how does it work? How can we implement parts or all of it, because we think it’s the future of American sports?” And we, Sporting Club, do think it’s the future of American sports. It’s never really been tried on this kind of scale in this country.

Andrew Steinberg
That’s the key. Taken in its totality, you kind of get those, “Huh, I get it.” There is something more here, and it’s central to athletics and wellness, but also the social aspect and everything else around cause with Livestrong and other things I hope aren’t lost on people.

Robert Houghton
They’ve repeated the mantra over and over again and put their money where their mouth is, moving toward and creating this club idea that is more than soccer, and it not just being a moniker. I think a lot of the younger guys have gravitated toward that, the idea being they would love to have a rugby team, a lacrosse team to follow as part of the family. For me, at 48, I’m lucky if I can get away with watching soccer. I’m married, I’m already pushing my luck. But I understand the rationale behind it and applaud them for taking a step nobody in this country has done. They are breaking new ground in the American sports environment.

Jeff Szajnuk
They didn’t have a lot to announce around the brand initially, especially the membership part of it, and we’re still waiting to see a lot of that. Getting perks for signing up and some sort of reward system is nice, but a lot of us felt like members already, so for a lot of us, it is still a vague idea. I think it’s more of a hint of the thought that went into this, and there is more to come. Hopefully there is, and I think people have faith in the ownership group to try to do all those things to be more than a soccer team and follow through with this whole club idea.

Alexi Lalas
They might have a rougher start than most because it’s not a sporting club right now, unless there is a steam, sauna, and hot/cold plunge, and some squash courts. There was a rush to compare and contrast what sporting clubs are around the world, and I’m not sure we have the proper comparisons besides these athletic clubs which are basically country clubs or gyms. Maybe that’s a good thing, trying to create something bigger than just the soccer. You have to applaud them, but in the context of what they are right now, I can see why people would have issues with it.

Mike Kuhn
I like some of perks of it, but there’s also a thing where members can be anybody, including non-season ticket holders, and I feel like as a whole, the season ticket holders aren’t getting the benefits they should get. Instead, any member gets those benefits.

Charles Gooch
If this rebrand is going to be successful, they are going to have to make this whole membership platform and Sporting Club thing work. They’ve absolutely dug their feet in on this. And if they are able to bring rugby and soccer and youth soccer and all these things they want to be the umbrella for, be successful with it, have 50,000 members, 11,000 of those are season ticket holders, the rest are just people who want to come out to a game, then maybe you say, “Ok, well, they couldn’t have done that with the Wizards.”

Robb Heineman
So, what we’re trying to do as a group is position ourselves a little bit differently, and there are a lot of things we’re going to introduce over the course of the next few years that will be very definitional about why we did change the name. If we don’t pull those off, I think the 10 of us as shareholders will sit around the table and there will be some of us who say it wasn’t a good idea to change the name. It’s husbands, and wives, and lots of the kids that are involved. And we all have strong opinions. I think for now we are all good with it, but it’s a work in progress. And on such a big birthing decision, having a unanimous decision is not necessarily the norm.

Greg Maday
If you want people to like you, make yourself interesting, right? If there is a coolness around the club and stadium, with Livestrong, with associating with a cause, with being a member that gets you special things, if you have an opportunity to make yourself a new likeable organization that people want to join, than giving up stadium endorsement dollars, going through a rebranding, it should all pay off. And so far, it’s been a very good thing. Hopefully it will last. And that’s all up to us.

Chad Reynolds
We were out at a bar back in early January, and there’s a bunch of us from the staff out at a bar, and we’re all sitting at a table and one of the guys has on a Sporting Kansas City jacket. And I was sitting at the other end of the table and didn’t have anything Sporting on, or anything like that, and some guy comes up and just starts ripping him a new one. Just, “This is the worst idea ever, blah blah, I hate the name, the logo’s alright but I hate the name.” Just essentially yelling at him at this bar. And other people are looking, and he just looks at me sheepishly like, “What do I do? Here go talk to that guy he designed it.” So he sends him down to me, so now this guy’s ripping me a new one, giving me the same argument he just yelled at my buddy. And he goes, “Where do you guys even come up with this shit?” And I look at him and I go, so did you go to Wizards games at Community America Ballpark a lot the last couple years? And he goes, “Well no, blah, blah.” And then he made a crack about it being a minor league baseball stadium. And I looked at him and I went, exactly. When people thought of this team, the Wizards, they thought of a minor league baseball stadium, and empty Arrowhead, and a bunch of yelling children. And he goes, “Oh yeah, well that makes sense I guess.” And I’m like so we’re about to open a 200 million dollar stadium that’s going to be one of the finest in the country, and you want us to go open that with the same kind of thought process in mind. And he goes, “Well that makes sense too.” It’s one of those things, that yeah, you don’t want to have that argument or conversation with every single person, but when people stop and think about it, it makes a ton of sense. It’s more than just being a professional soccer team at the MLS level.

Jeff Szajnuk
A decade ago, any fan in the country, if you asked them which team was going to be moved, it was going to be our team. Jamie Trecker actively lobbied, I’d say for three years, telling everybody how bad a market it is here. I think even after the team was sold to good local ownership, he was still saying it would have been better if they moved it, so we have our doubters. The Cauldron membership has exploded. I don’t think that’s because of the name change, but maybe a combination of those things. New identity, new stadium, exciting group of players on paper, new professional branding. Even if you don’t like the colors, you can tell more thought was put into the design of everything from top to bottom. Whatever you want to call them, fine. Probably half our songs still say Wizards, and that’s not changing. We’ve moved to a few parks, we were almost sold out of town. I think people here get the big picture. Even if you don’t like the name change, I think everybody can be happy we still have a team. I mean, we really really almost lost this team. We’re probably luckier than any team in this country because of the owners we have. Just the ideas they are willing to try while still respecting the game. We’ve had failed stadium project after failed stadium project and each time renderings came back looking better and better. It’s been a long long long time getting to this new place.

Mike Kuhn
They better create a true sporting club. They affiliated with the local Blues rugby club, so they’ve bought themselves a little time.

Joe Tregellas
I hated it at first, but I’m pretty settled into it now. Time, plus you see what the ownership is trying to do, the bold steps, the heart they are putting into the stadium, this idea of being a regional power in soccer. I like that. You don’t have to be right all the time; you just have to be really right some of the time.

Charles Gooch
I’ve kind of been the Manchurian Candidate on this amongst Kansas City bloggers, because I saw the reasoning why there were doing it. When the stadium opens, that was going to be a big chip for them. And if they were ever going to put their stamp on this team after buying from Lamar Hunt and taking it from a team that was going to leave the town possibly to a team that was going to be locally owned, I saw that as, well if they are going to do it, they might as well start now, start this process and pick a name they like and brand it going forward. The rebrand is not something that should be judged now. Not even judged at the end of the season. It’s going to be a couple of years in the future when the stadium is completely and totally entrenched and the team is entrenched and the ownership group is entrenched. That’s when you’ll be able to look back and say this is a success or a failure.

Chad Reynolds
We as soccer fans are always talking about the next generation of fans. We hear all the time, “Oh people have been saying since the 60’s that soccer is the next big thing in this country.” Well, it’s fucking coming, there’s no denying it. So let’s make sure that when that happens in Kansas City, it’s something that everybody can feel a part of. That’s kind of where we’re at. Ten years down the road if we haven’t lived up to the Sporting Club concept then we’ve all failed and none of us deserve to have the jobs that we have.

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Follow Adam Spangler on Twitter at @TIAS

Banner photo of Livestrong Sporting Park courtesy of Sporting KC.

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As a kid I wanted to do anything but play in goal. But I was the tallest kid on the team, and the kid’s dad who coached the team thought that made the most sense. I don’t remember ever encountering a goalkeeping coach, just being forced into the big clown gloves. After a year or two of life in the box, I got my wish and moved out to the field; I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wondering how things would’ve turned out if I stayed. As an adult, I’ve always loved the goalkeepers. There is no other position like it, anywhere in sports. Not ice hockey or lacrosse or water polo or whatever sport you want to name that has some sort of goalkeeper. They’re not the same.

So when pitched interviews with either Briana Scurry or Tony Meola around their partnership with Allstate Insurance, and how they were surprising youth teams in the Northeast over the weekend with goalkeeping clinics and guest-coaching opportunities, I said sure. I’ll take them both, together. Having two world class soccer players together, one female, one male, both goalkeepers, intrigued me. What would they want to know from each other?

TIAS:
I’d like you guys to take over the conversation, but I’ve brought some topics to get us started. On the general side, is the game approached any differently from the men’s and women’s side?

Scurry:
I seriously doubt it’s any different. You focus on what you need to do. Positioning, game plans, directing defense, be strong in the box, distribution. I’d guess you feel the same Tony?

Meola:
The approach isn’t much different. My theory is pretty simple. You have to make the saves you were supposed to make and then make one save you weren’t supposed to make. That’s what I tell young goalkeepers. Don’t kill us by making any mistakes, and bail us out one time. One spectacular save.

Scurry:
I didn’t think of myself as either a scapegoat or hero, did you Tony? I just saw myself as someone who could stop the other team from winning. Like you said, if I could make all the saves I was supposed to make, and the occasional one I wasn’t, that is the difference between a good goalkeeper and a great goalkeeper. At the end of the day if I was a hero or a scapegoat, all that really mattered was if I did my job and if the team won or not. Who the media talked about afterward didn’t matter to me.

Meola:
I agree. I don’t think there is any more pressure in one game than the other. I would have dreaded taking a penalty kick more than I would have dreaded being in the goal for a penalty kick.

Now, I would exclude the U.S. Women’s Team from this, but the one thing I see in the men’s game that I don’t see as much of in the women’s game is that there is an awful lot of pressure on the ball in the opposing end of the field. It never used to be that way. Twenty years ago when we started, it was standard that you started pressuring the ball around the midfield line, but now as soon as the ball turns over, it’s a hundred miles an hour.

Scurry:
I agree Tony. In terms of physicality, men are stronger and faster, so the speed may appear to be faster, however, I feel that in terms of speed of thought, the men’s and women’s game is very similar. In regards to national team levels.

TIAS:
Did you feel a lack of respect for the women’s game?

Scurry:
No, to be honest, most of the people I’ve met have been appreciative, and I guess you could say the response from them, being so enthusiastic and so surprised in a sense, that could lend to a thinking of, why are they so surprised? Were they thinking it was going to be a lot less impressive than they actually saw? In that regard, I wouldn’t call it a lack of respect, I think it was just no knowing, not having experienced it before. The power, athleticism and passion in the women’s game.

TIAS:
I was stuck in goal as a little kid because I was the tall one. I was on a good team, so I did a lot of standing around. At the time all I wanted was out of goal and onto the field. At times I regret that now, and wonder if that is something you guys felt as youngsters, and if you see it at all fighting against the development of goalkeepers?

Meola:
I don’t know about you Briana, but I was born a center forward; I couldn’t convince any coaches that I was. You always want to run around, but you come to realize—I equate it to playing the outfield in T-ball baseball. You don’t give it much importance until you get a little older. But there is a concern in our position, and I’m curious what Briana thinks on the women’s side, we are really not developing young goalkeepers. Clubs are not as patient. You see in MLS we have quite a few foreign goalkeepers taking up spots. We were concerned about national team goalkeepers on the men’s side, and thinking back probably on the women’s side, because the position was occupied by three guys for quite a long time, and on the women’s it was similar with Briana and Hope. That really hurts in the development of goalkeepers as much as it is a luxury to have in the now. That’s my one concern because I always thought that would be the one position that would be solid forever.

Scurry:
I find it interesting you use the phrase stuck in goal, because you are absolutely right, so many people see it that way, but I have to agree with Tony in terms of development, there’s not a lot of people, coaches, trainers that understand the position well enough to teach it. A lot of times a goalkeeper at the youth levels just gets tossed in there and get the ball somehow. There’s a gap there, and I agree with Tony that when one has such longevity, it is harder to crack into the mix. And the drop off between the first 4 or 5 goal keepers that may be next in line after Hope, it’s a huge drop off, and that’s because there isn’t a bunch of development going on.

Scurry:
How do you think Tony, your MLS experience compared to your international experience.

Meola:
For me, I look at MLS in general as one of those things that I could have done or I could have not done. I had obviously a ton of opportunity to go to Europe, and I just decided my MLS experience—and more often than not when you play soccer in this country you have two jobs, right? You play and then you promote. And I always just had this tie to being here, especially after my experience in England with work permits and having so many problems, and them not wanting to let Americans in the door, and I was just so committed to promoting the game here. So in that regard it was excellent; the other lucky part of my career, that some of my friends didn’t have, though I wasn’t as lucky as Cobi Jones, playing in the same city, was that I only played in the two cities. So I was really able to engulf myself in the city—one was my hometown, and the other, a place I never thought I would like that I fell in love with, Kansas City. All in all Briana, it was a great experience. It didn’t end like I wanted it to; it ended in a very awkward way with a guy I never thought it would end with like that, but there isn’t much I would change.

Meola:
There is only really one question I have for Briana. What’s it like to stand in a World Cup final in front of the PK. I’ll never have that opportunity. Not many people—think about it, women, men—they don’t stand in front of the PK in a World Cup final.

Scurry:
It was a surreal experience for me Tony. I really just knew I had to save one. Like you said, make one spectacular save. The interesting thing about the whole experience is with 90,000 fans you’d think you’d hear something, but I don’t recall hearing anything. I was just so focused on that ball and that moment that nothing else existed for me. I will say this: for the entirety of the PKs, I was never intending on looking at the kicker. I was always going to focus on what I was going to do and reading her and going with my instinct. But on that third kicker, for whatever reason, as I was walking into the goal, I looked up and looked at her. And I just knew. I’m sure as an elite athlete you’ve had these experiences—call it the zone or intuition or instinct or whatever—but it wouldn’t have matter where she kicked that ball. I knew I was going to get it. And then the emotion I expressed after that save basically felt like my skin was exploding. It was so exciting; you always dream about it, and I was able to do it. It was amazing, is all I can really say.

an iconic resort, a maybe murderer, & the birth of top-flight football in Tijuana

by Eben Lehman

It took decades, but in the end it was just a short journey to find something seemingly so far away: the transcendent football experience. On a Sunday morning in April, soccer fan Dean Mitchell leaves his home in San Diego and heads south towards the border. The barren desert geography doesn’t change much between his home and Tijuana, Mexico, but nearly everything else brightens once he passes that wall, including Dean’s mood. Crossing the border on foot it takes literally one step to enter a completely different world – away from a soccer niche to a land hot with football fever.

After years following a revolving door of lower-division San Diego soccer franchises – the Nomads, the Flash, various iterations of the Sockers, holding out hope for a MLS expansion team – Tijuana is where Mitchell finally discovered his personal sports mecca. Within the domain of his football odyssey, the guarded international boundary is nothing more than an imaginary line. And anyway, Tijuana is a hell of a lot closer than Los Angeles where the closest two MLS teams preside.

Mitchell steps through the border and slinks into one of the waiting cabs. Along Paseo de los Heroes, a major six-lane Tijuana thoroughfare with a tree-lined median, scattered red and black jerseys along the street become a massive swarm as Estadio Caliente nears. Sitting in the shadow of an enormous casino complex, this is the home ground of one of Mexico’s newest football teams: Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente. The Xolos, as they are known by their fans (pronounced “show-lows”), take their name from a small hairless dog native to Mexico, a species revered by ancient Aztecs who considered them guide dogs to the underworld. Only four years old, the Xolos are hoping their chosen symbol will help guide them to the big time, to top-flight football.

photo by Fausto Vargas

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As usual, the stadium is filled nearly to capacity with a raucous crowd of almost 20,000. With the pitch still empty of players, fans stand and cheer in eager anticipation. Finally the team emerges onto the field led by their mascot, “Perro,” a muscular half-dog, half-human cartoon figure running with a Xolo flag. He makes a beeline to the rowdy “la Masakr3” supporters section behind the south goal. They erupt flinging beer into the air. Bass-heavy music blasts through the arena speakers; a large inflatable Xolo head glares from the sideline; scantily-clad women circle the field with the namesake dogs on leashes. This is football in Tijuana. For Mitchell, this is American soccer.

The team plays in the second division of Mexico football, but if things go according to plan, the Xolos will be entering the top-flight Mexican Primera Division next season. As far as Mitchell is concerned, the move up is long overdue. “The atmosphere here is already better than most first division games,” he says. “The San Diego Union actually rated a Xolos game as the best atmosphere at a sporting event in the entire region.”

The ascendancy of the Xolos is an astonishing development for a city with limited football history, and one sitting both literally and figuratively on the periphery of the nation’s football landscape. Tijuana is actually closer to Vancouver, Canada, than the Mexican Football Federation headquarters in Mexico City. Nonetheless, the bright lights of first-division Mexican football have almost reached this distant edge of the national map.

While a top-flight football team would be a new step for Tijuana, it would not be the first time this far corner of Mexico climbed to the pinnacle of the sports and entertainment world. The Xolos may yet be a short story, but the team’s shallow roots stretch wide through unique characters and culture, from which rises the history of the ever-tumultuous Tijuana.

photo by Fausto Vargas

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Senor Hank

Watching the game from high above the crowd, hidden in one of the newly completed stadium suites, is Jorge Hank Rhon. His story with football is not uncommon: wealthy, prominent local figure starts pro football club. That is not to say he isn’t unusual. Hank Rhon is Tijuana’s version of Donald Trump, Jerry Jones, John Gotti, and Willy Wonka all rolled into one. Depending on whom you ask, the man known as “Senor Hank” may be alternately portrayed as a shrewd businessman, an unrepentant criminal, a generous philanthropist, or an entertaining eccentric. His billionaire politician father gifted Hank control of Tijuana’s historic but beleaguered Agua Caliente racetrack property in 1985. Before a football club, Senor Hank formed the Grupo Caliente company, now an international network of hotels, casinos, and shopping malls.

If you like your billionaires with a bit of flamboyant flair, then Hank is your man. He is the anti-Stan Kroenke. Larger than life is not large enough. Hank favors lavish decor, expensive artwork, and outlandish clothing. He often wears his lucky red crocodile skin vest. Sixteen years ago, a routine customs search of his luggage at the Mexico City airport revealed jackets made from ocelot fur, pearl-encrusted vests, carved elephant tusks, and sculptures made from precious stones. Hank’s drink of choice? A personal blend of tequila, aged with scorpions, cobras, and deer antlers, in which the penises of a lion, tiger, and dog are also soaked.

As much as he is known for his sprawling business network, Hank is also renowned for his private exotic animal collection. He professes a deep love for animals, claiming a boyhood where he helped nurse a wounded deer found near his house back to health. Over the years Hank has owned everything from grizzly bears, white tigers, lions, wolves, and jaguars to elephants, giraffes, kangaroos, ostriches, and zebras. He maintains a personal zoo and donates scores of animals to zoos in Mexico City and Tijuana. In 1992, customs agents stopped a car driven by one of Hank’s family members heading back into Mexico. Riding like a child in the back seat was a rare white Siberian tiger cub. The animal was seized, Hank was fined (the cub eventually made its way to the San Diego Zoo).

His office is a zoological park. That is not a metaphor. The room brims with terrariums of poisonous snakes and lizards, and cages holding tropical birds. In the summer of 2004, when asked by a reporter what his favorite animal was, Hank replied, “Woman.” He later dismissed it as an ill-received joke. Not conceived, mind you. To Hank it was your lack of humor that made the mistake.

For all his somewhat endearing eccentricities, there are those who will always associate Hank with money laundering, drug smuggling, and even murder. Many still demand answers for the 1988 killing of Tijuana newspaper editor Hector “Gato” Felix Miranda, who took pride in publishing negative portrayals of influential figures and attacking political corruption. One target of the journalist’s vitriol was Hank. The gruesome shotgunning of Felix in his car on his way to work tied back to two security guards employed by Hank. They were convicted, but the investigation stalled with barely a sniff of Senor Hank.

Some curse his name, but as these stories often go, many more love Hank for his generosity. Nearly every day he receives requests for money and assistance from Tijuana’s lower classes. He provides assistance where he pleases, even sponsors periodic large-scale gift giveaways to locals. He’s made numerous large donations to charities over the years and helped build several hospitals and schools.

In 2004 Hank rode this wave of goodwill to become mayor of Tijuana. He stumbled, though, while trying to take the next step up the political ladder. After just three years and an unsuccessful 2007 run for governor of the state of Baja California, his career in politics ended. So Hank refocused his attention back to his beginnings. Back to Agua Caliente.

Hollywood Oasis

Tijuana’s Agua Caliente racetrack, which Hank took control of back in the 1980s, has a history as rich and flamboyant as its current owner. Built in the late 1920s by American Wirt G. Bowman and a group of investors, the extravagant Agua Caliente resort complex almost immediately became a world-renowned celebrity hotspot.

Agua Caliente Postcard circa 1930

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Named for the natural hot springs found on the site, Agua Caliente featured a hotel, casino, bathhouses, and private bungalows when it opened in 1928. Immaculate landscaped grounds connected the sprawling complex of bright white stucco buildings with red tile roofs. Year-round it shined green, a captivating oasis in the desert. It was arguably the finest resort in the world. From the beginning, Agua Caliente catered to an almost exclusively American clientele; its list of patrons read like a who’s who of the era’s Hollywood elite, sports stars, and entertainment heavyweights: Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Buster Keaton, Rita Hayworth, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers.

In late 1929 a new two million dollar racetrack opened next to the casino, bringing world-class horse racing to Tijuana. That same year an Olympic-sized pool opened, along with a new country club built with an immediate aim of hosting professional golf tournaments. When the world’s greatest golfer of the era, Gene Sarazen, won the Agua Caliente Open in 1930, he was paid his five thousand-dollar prize with a wheelbarrow filled with 5,000 American silver dollars.

All together, Agua Caliente cost well over ten million dollars to build ($133 million in today’s money) but took just one year to earn a profit. By early 1930 the resort was clearing close to $500,000 in a single weekend.

Thanks in part to prohibition in the United States, business at Agua Caliente boomed. Wealthy Americans could spend weekends at the Tijuana resort gambling and drinking legally. And it wasn’t just tequila and cerveza at Agua Caliente. Try champagnes imported from a private French vineyard, the finest Scotch, green absinthe, and exotic cocktails. The extravagance and devoted following meant business stayed strong even after Prohibition’s repeal in 1933.

The resort could not, however, compete with a ban on gambling. The death knell for the Gatsby era at Agua Caliente came in 1935. That year a presidential order outlawed gambling throughout Mexico. Almost immediately the casino, racetrack, and hotel shut down. Over 1,000 local Mexicans on the Agua Caliente payroll lost their jobs. It was the end of an era. The party was over.

Two years later, as the desert began taking back the lush complex, a glimmer re-emerged. The racetrack reopened, and big-time horseracing resumed, albeit within a much smaller pond. On March 27, 1938, Seabiscuit entered the field of the revived Agua Caliente Handicap. Over 22,000 fans packed the racetrack to watch the legendary horse run to a two-length victory.

Agua Caliente Postcard circa 1930

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The racetrack kept hope alive for Agua Caliente, but the squabbling over ownership of the property lingered on for decades after the initial collapse. The glory years would never return. Instead, various groups fought over operation of the track from one season to the next. It wasn’t glamorous, but southern California residents – including Mitchell’s father and grandmother – still traveled down to watch the races. Horse racing at Agua Caliente limped along until a large fire in the summer of 1971 reduced the facility to a pile of ashes and rubble.

In 1972, Mexico President Luis Echeverria visited Tijuana and referred to the charred ruins of the once-iconic racetrack as a “national disgrace.” At the president’s urging, businessman Fernando Gonzalez agreed to rebuild the facility from the ground up. Gonzalez formed the company “Hipodromo de Agua Caliente,” and with significant financial help from his friend Carlos Hank Gonzalez (Senor Hank’s father) began rebuilding the clubhouse and grandstand in order to bring world-class horse racing back to Tijuana. Fifteen million dollars ($80 million in today’s money) went into the reconstruction, a sum that raised a lot of eyebrows. Very few saw a bright future for the property. Once the oasis, Agua Caliente was now merely a mirage.

And so it was with very little fanfare that young Jorge Hank Rhon, still in his twenties, was handed control of the property in 1985. But Hank wouldn’t need outside fanfare, he proved to have a knack for creating his own spectacle. He made an immediate splash by hosting the Miss Mexico pageant at Agua Caliente, an event that somehow brought in 24,000 people. In 1986 Hank used his money and influence to bring the prestigious Clasico del Caribe horserace (known as the Kentucky Derby of Latin America) to the racetrack. It was the richest horserace ever run in Mexico at the time.

But it wasn’t enough. Hank expanded the sports book and off-track betting at the facility (now legal in Mexico), and though it brought in loads of money and built his personal wealth, it caused the track itself to become less important to the business. By the twenty-first century the famed racetrack dropped significantly in size to fit the only game in town, daily greyhound dog races.

Team Xolos

For years Hank desperately wanted to bring a first division football team to Tijuana. He saw sports as a natural way to promote civic pride, to legitimize the city on the national stage, and bemoaned the void left by Tijuana’s lack of a dominant team. Back in the 1980s Hank himself commented that, “Here in Tijuana we like the Padres and the Chargers.”

Football is huge in Mexico, but Tijuana struggled through the years to support a steady stream of short-lived lower-division clubs. When a purchase of an existing Primera Division team proved to not be in the cards, Hank decided to alter his strategy. In January 2007 he bought the second division club Guerreros de Tabasco, moved them to Tijuana and rebranded the team Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente. If there was one thing Agua Caliente still offered at that time, it was open space for a stadium.

The Tijuana Xolos began play as part of the Liga Ascenso, Mexico’s second division in 2007. Control of the team went to Hank’s son Jorge Alberto Hank Inzunza, who still serves as president of the club. Construction began on a new stadium, built on the casino property once part of the esteemed racetrack. Rising from the same dirt, literally the same ashes on which the top horses in the world used to run, the stadium opened in late 2007 with an initial capacity of 13,000. Unlike in the U.S. where taxpayers are often forced to pay part of the bill for professional sports stadiums, Xolos ownership has funded construction completely on their own. Ongoing expansion over the last three years has brought the total capacity over 18,000, and construction of a second deck with additional luxury suites continues.

photo by Rafael Maya

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After an inconsistent few seasons, the Xolos made the semifinals of the playoffs in the spring of 2010, before finally breaking through for a title at the end of last year. With shrewd personnel decisions made by the young Jorge Alberto Hank and club vice president Gog Murguia, the team has grown into one of the most talented teams in the second division. While Senor Hank was an expert at growing international businesses, his son Jorge Alberto has proven to possess a masterful touch at building a successful football club. The Xolos won the Apertura season championship in December, earning themselves a spot in this spring’s promotion playoff between the year’s two winners (In Mexico one team is promoted each year, but since there are split seasons with separate champions – Apertura in the fall, Clausura in the spring – a playoff determines the team that makes the move). If the Xolos win the Clausura 2011 title this May, there will be no need for a playoff, as the team will be automatically promoted as champion of both seasons.

Top-Flight Tijuana

Not everyone is happy about the impending move. Some bristle at the team’s association with Hank and question the club’s direct link with gambling interests. Estadio Caliente sits literally a few hundred feet from a casino, and the main jersey sponsor is Hank’s Caliente company. The crux of this criticism is of course somewhat hypocritical. Sports gambling is legal in Mexico, and other teams in the Primera Division already have gambling sponsors. Grupo Televisa, for example, owns multiple teams and has considerable gambling interests under their corporate umbrella.

Despite being one of the five most populous cities in the country and a natural jumping off point to pull in American fans, some Mexico football officials openly question the suitability of Tijuana as a venue for the league. The most insidious implication is that Tijuana is too violent to host a first division team. Recently certain officials raised reservations over the safety of the city, comparing the situation to the Indios de Ciudad Juarez who played in the Primera for four seasons from 2008 to 2010.

The volatility in Juarez is far worse than in any other part of the country, and the problems with player safety on the Indios team were unique to that local area. Meanwhile, Tijuana violence declined this year. Most of the remaining violence isolates itself in marginalized areas of the city’s eastern section, far away from Estadio Caliente. Besieged by these criticisms of their team and their city, Xolos fans only strengthen their resolve.

photo by Rafael Maya

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Dean Mitchell has been making his regular trip from San Diego to attend Xolos games since the opening of Estadio Caliente back in 2007. He watched the stadium evolve from a 13,000 seat horseshoe with port-a-johns and taco carts, to a nicely paved concourse with traditional concession stands and modern amenities. He knows just how much this team means to the city. “It’s huge,” Mitchell says. “I’m convinced Tijuana’s finest hour will happen in Estadio Caliente. Hopefully that will be in May when they ascend to the first division.”

A team on the national stage would serve as a unifying force for the citizens of Tijuana, and undoubtedly bring with it a new wave of civic pride. It would give every citizen something to take ownership of and has the potential to raise the city’s image on the national and international level. “Just a few years ago, kids growing up in Tijuana didn’t have many positive role models,” Mitchell says. “Now every kid wants to be like Raul Enriquez, the Xolos all-time leading scorer and first superstar.”

Promotion for Tijuana would also be great for the league, because it directly opens up the Southern California market. Once in the Primera, Xolos games will be televised every week on American television. Playing at a stadium less than three miles from the U.S. border also means that loads of new American fans will be making the trek across the border for matches, especially when the big clubs like Chivas, Club America, Pumas, and Cruz Azul come to town.

This is what Mitchell hopes to see. Along with a group of other fans from the San Diego area, he is working on establishing a formal traveling Xolos supporters group with chartered transportation to games from the U.S. side of the border (see http://www.xolos.us/ for more information).

“Americans will be pleasantly surprised by a more grown-up, less bawdy Tijuana,” Mitchell says. “The main boulevards are all freshly re-bricked, modern architecture and nightlife has improved remarkably, and there’s a great artistic community.” Asked what he would tell a soccer fan in the San Diego area considering attending a Xolos match, Mitchell answers without hesitation: “You’ll never be the same.”

On some level, Tijuana rising to the Mexican Primera after just four years of existence proves that in sports anything is possible. On the site where Hollywood’s yesterday partied and played, Tijuana is being reborn. The bright lights of Agua Caliente are returning, only this time they’re lighting up a football pitch, where the stars of tomorrow could soon come to play.

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Eben Lehman (@GringoTuzo on Twitter) is a writer and connoisseur of all things Mexican football. He is a founder and editor of FMF State of Mind, a website featuring news, commentary, and discussion of the Mexican Primera Division and the Mexican national team.

Banner photo by Rafael Maya.

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by Ashwin Warrior

I came to Calcutta on a whim. Time off from school, traveling and volunteering in India—one version of the American collegiate dream. I chose Calcutta, the sprawling metropolis of over fifteen million people, on the recommendation of a friend. He said the city was unforgettable, that no matter what I was interested in, I could find it there.

Some focus on the extreme poverty; others the vibrant people and rich culture. No matter how you see it, India’s third largest city certainly has the power to overwhelm. Every square inch of the city is thick with life. In the streets, people, animals, and machines collide. Barefoot rickshaw pullers, emaciated and sweating, lean forward with grimaced faces straining for leverage to lug their passengers along the crowded roads. Just as they get going, their knees buckle inside legs skidding on heels to a halt; the traffic prevents their flow. They jockey for space with the men guiding bullock carts piled high with hay and brash young taxi drivers who speed and brake, speed and brake, down the narrow arteries crammed with centuries of transportation technology. To watch some of them operate in the chaos, is to experience the world’s best footballers bounce from defender to defender, filling open space but for a moment until it all shuts down.

The oppressive heat bears down, soaking clothes in a sweat that never completely evaporates. Wandering damp and disoriented, the city assaults the senses: a potent combination of sewage, exhaust, spice, and savory snacks frying in deep tubs of oil fill your nose and attach to your essence, making you one with the city no matter how hard you try and avoid it.

You don’t walk down the street; you’re swept up into the mass of people jamming the road, pushing along the human current with eddy pools everywhere as commerce commences in the maddening flow. Small metal stalls line the edges of mass movement; men sit cross-legged selling everything from cigarettes to kitchenware, and any hope of a casual conversation is killed by the cacophony of honking and hawking and outright yelling. Symbolic suffocation becomes almost real in the heavy yellowing smog, which sits persistent in the sky as if the city’s ceiling. Welcome to Calcutta. Recommended by friends.

After a week cooped up in a ratty hostel, I finally made peace with the streets. In the relative cool of evening, I entered the crowd, kept my head down, and just started walking—maybe not the best travel advice in hindsight. Elbows jabbed my ribs as I passed, causing me to cough and sputter and forcing me off the main streets, away from the crowds.

Some unknown number of blocks later, when I looked up, the streets were narrow; buildings leaned in, placing me in shadow. The ground was littered with shards of broken clay, Calcutta’s innovative alternative to plastic. It’s a city fueled by chai tea: each day gallons are sold in tiny clay cups. Once drunk, the cups are shattered on the floor and ground back to dust as if a prehistoric recycling program. Discarded and scattered, the bits of pottery snapped and crunched beneath my feet as I picked my way down the lane, alone. I shivered. The culture shock of the city was gone with the commotion, but stray signs of life fluttered like background music. A back beat I knew rose up: skid thwack skid thwack—the deep contour of feet pounding compressed air; the scuff of a ball hitting pavement.

Around the block several teenagers kicked a faded and worn soccer ball back and forth in the middle of the street. The ball looked like it might cave in at any moment. The plastic patches had all fallen off, leaving the cloth interior exposed, different colored threads overlaid on seams hand-stitched over and over again.

While I struggled to jostle for even an inch of space to breathe, these boys carved out their niche square in the middle of the road, an uneven, bumpy, pot-holed-filled dirt mess. Every few seconds a taxi or rickshaw roared through, disrupting the game, but it did not bother them. Squeezed between the edges of the pavement, sport came to life. It spilled onto the sidewalks, down side alleys, and much to the annoyance of the shopkeepers, often caromed off chai stall carts, tangling with the legs of customers. It was in the simplest sense boys being boys, completely oblivious to the world, but for the ball and the competition to see who could pull of the most impressive trick, the most convincing feint. There were no goals; it was all showmanship, the score measured in how loud everyone yelled or clapped when you made a fool of your opponent.

Their game was miles removed from the 120,000 capacity Salt Lake Stadium, second largest stadium in the world and home to Calcutta’s two famous soccer teams, East Bengal FC and Mohun Bagan AC. There were no chanting crowds, no bright lights, but games like this one are what define Calcutta as India’s most soccer-crazed city.

Out of habit I stood and watched their game, hypnotized, my feet twitching each time the ball was passed like some strange sports induced phantom limb syndrome. I have been on the edge of so many games like this in my life, wanting to jump in, hesitating, and then deciding not to and walking on. That night I had no choice. An errant pass ricocheted off the fender of an idling cab and the ball came rolling toward me. As I made the motions to return the pass, one of the boy’s voices arced above the noise of the street, hurtling toward me, “Arre, maybe this guy wants to play?”

In a flash I was surrounded by a ring of folded arms and furrowed brows. Around ten boys, all high school aged, had assembled around me and were giving me the once-over, sizing me up. Finally, one guy stepped toward me. Bare-chested and sinewy, with shoulder length black hair slicked back over his head and an Arsenal jersey tucked into his belt loop, he smiled and extended his hand.

I had stumbled upon a team preparing for a six-a-side tournament that weekend. The guys all worked or went to school during the day, so practices went down in the evenings, in the middle of the street. They were young, skinny, bow-legged. They wore brightly colored shirts printed with a smattering of misspelled English words and phrases. They didn’t cut the most impressive figures, but then neither did I. Months of living out of a backpack had left me looking pretty disheveled. Gross may be the more appropriate word. But the guys were shorthanded for the weekend, needed help filling out their team, and asked if I could help. Without a second thought I said yes. There was just one stipulation: I had to be able to play.

In what stands as one of my most nerve wracking interviews to date, they rolled the ball to my feet and said, “Okay then, let’s see what kind of football you play in America.”

The test was simple enough, just juggle a little and maybe throw in something fancy, but it is exactly the sort of thing I am terrible at. I have never been that flashy sort of player, never practiced rainbows or round-the-worlds. I love watching players with true skill, but my game was mostly about kicking the ball ahead and simply outrunning the other guy. Or passing. Without a team, I wasn’t much of a player. But I knew my reputation was on the line and felt as if my country’s reputation was too.

I hooked the ball into the air and juggled it for a minute, all the while acutely aware of each guy’s bobbing head, following my every move.  By the end of it, however, I could let loose a sigh of relief; they seemed satisfied. Soon it was all shaking of hands, hugs, and grand talk of positions to play and what each person would do with their share of the prize money when we won. Hands gestured wildly, as if our entire futures were hidden somewhere in the rat’s nest of telephone wires that weaved and crisscrossed above our heads, as though it were possible that our shouts of excitement would somehow shake them loose.

Two other tourists were also talked into playing. The limit was three foreigners per team, though they said that as long as I kept my mouth shut they could pass me off as a local and it would be, “No problem, no problem.” They were all incredibly friendly, treating me as if I were just one of the gang, had grown up with them, and played with them every day. Suddenly I was walking down the streets, not forcing my way, slipping between the crowds, with a swagger and confidence that only comes with feeling like you’re on the inside. I had my team. With the arms of two of the guys slung around my shoulders we talked strategy for the weekend’s games, but it felt like there was nothing we could not handle.

That is when I started getting suspicious. Foreign travel lends itself to suspicion and often it causes, or rather allows, you to assume the worst of people. Guilty as charged. There was a one hundred rupee registration fee for the tournament. The guys on the team insisted I only had to pay half, and they would cover the rest. They said I needed shoes for the games, and suddenly they were grasping me by the hand and pulling me down the road to a shop where I could get a great deal on futsal shoes. On the surface, they were being the friendliest people, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were just out to scam me. The reason for my suspicion? They were being too nice. I might be a cynic.

As the sun set, the boys dispersed amid backslaps and handshakes, but I wandered away feeling sick, thinking I had walked blindly into a scam. I emerged from the quiet of the back alleys, back into the storm of noise. I dissolved into just another face in the sea of people crowding the streets of Calcutta, back on the outside looking in.

I couldn’t even hear myself think, but I felt something wasn’t right.  I woke up the same way the next day. There was something so appealing, so trustworthy about the guys, and the way they played. I recognized in them my own friends back home in California and the pickup games we played. But these weren’t those friends. I didn’t know these guys. I didn’t know what I was doing.

I skipped the game. Didn’t show. Convinced there was no game. Then the next day outside my hostel, the team of boys hobbled up to me, asking where I had been, their clothes dusty and soaked with that Calcutta essence. They fell out of the tournament after two games and had the bruises and scrapes on their knees and shins to prove it. Even worse, they were forced to play shorthanded after the other two tourists also didn’t show up. Ouch. My stomach turned over. They weren’t mad at me for not showing up, but I could tell they were disappointed; their eyes never fully met my gaze while we talked. They had been excited about that tournament for weeks. I apologized but knew it did little to set things right. I was an asshole.

A couple days later, I had begun to settle into Calcutta’s rhythms again and sat reading a book on a bench down a side alley with my tea. Men and women pushed past on their way to work. Women clad in brightly colored saris hurried by, lighting up in front of the backdrop of brown and gray buildings. Men in starched collared shirts and linen pants somehow maintained businesslike poise, oblivious to the heat that was beading sweat up and down my uncovered arms. I was parked on the bench, slotted between an overweight man sweating profusely through his shirt and a young boy in t-shirt and jeans, marinating in his headphones, rocking slowly back and forth to the latest Bollywood hit.

One of the guys from the team walked by. I tried to bury my face in my book, tried to press myself into the wall behind my back and disappear. But he made a beeline toward me anyway. Ignoring my obvious embarrassment, he said I was welcome to play at the park with them later that day. Just a few simple words, but suddenly a penance lifted from my shoulders. I leapt at the chance to redeem myself, hurried back to my room, changed, and waded my way back through the streets, to that one particular street that doubled as our field, back on the inside, part of this crazy city.

It was foreign freedom, those moments with the boys and a ball. Our bodies pressed together in a tight knot, so that even when it hit a divot in the road and spun wildly out of control it would find only a wall of dusty brown arms, legs, various appendages, and soon return back into the fold, back into the passing rhythm. We didn’t have some deep discussion about the differences between the U.S. and India, about the unique circumstances that conspired to bring us together to play a game of pick up soccer in a Calcutta side street. We talked positions, our professional idols, girls, motorcycles, all casually paced by whoever had the ball. Like some talking stick between elders, if you had the ball, you had the floor; pass it to the next guy; he would say his piece. We passed for hours. It was simple. It was life, light as the air somewhere above the lingering yellow haze.

Local business owners came out of their shops and told us to stop; we didn’t. Two overweight policemen ambled their way toward us, rattled their sticks, and yelled at us; we laughed them off. It wasn’t until a flood of goats came charging down the middle of the street, swept away our ball and left the road covered in shit that we decided to move on. Life in Calcutta doesn’t stand still, and neither did our game. Neither does our game.

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Ashwin Warrior is currently a third year student at Seattle University, but spent the past six months in various locations across India. He is originally from the California Bay Area.

Banner photo by Ashwin Warrior.

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MLS Superdraft breakdown - you know you’re not getting that here. But every year the draft marks the beginning of a new soccer season. Beyond the MLS hot stove, it means the first USMNT game of the new year is around the corner, with the Gold Cup just down the road. And this year the USWNT reboot after fighting through new domestic league difficulties to prepare for what should be the most competitive Women’s World Cup in history. The new beginnings force away past memories, and everybody gets a chance to win again… or for the first time. Looking over the recent past, however, I find State Of The Union pieces that still hold true (2006, 2007, 2009) or at least haven’t much changed. But the photos always change (2008’s gallery), so instead of trying to ride down the homestretch in a beaten horse, I’ve picked through my images of the past year, collected in a click-able thumbnail gallery after the jump.

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Ratings for MLS Cup plunged 44 percent from last year and grabbed just 748,000 viewers, a near record low. It’s almost as if ESPN knew what was coming–the game, the crowd, the referee, the weather, the ratings. Why else would they not promo the game during their international friendly double-header earlier in the week? Why else would they send Steve McManaman? Other options were always there for both MLS and ESPN, but it all must have looked awful, awfully familiar to a network which in this environment has better things to spend money on when it comes to counting the commercial returns. But it’s hard to blame the bottom line. You play the capitalism game or go home alone and don’t ask for a second chance. Charlie Sheen aside, very few in this world can do what they want at all times and get away with it. Even the mighty NFL gets caught occasionally.

And so now MLS Cup will move on to next year, and at its absolute baseline will be more productive in future seasons, just like Jeff Cunningham, Edson Buddle, and a seemingly endless line of players that passed through Toronto before moving on to greater successes. Goals scored by former Toronto players since leaving the great white north (my big brother in blog Bruce McGuire mentioned after the game): more than ninety. NINETY! Don’t want to be forced to buy a MLS Cup ticket as part of your season ticket package? Right or wrong, right place or wrong time, rest assured that problem will not be Toronto’s anytime soon.

The Cup tears runneth over again, but not like last year. The tears here aren’t produced by a near-perfect inner-city setting or Drew Carrey and his band of merry pranksters; they’re pulled from my face by the bitter winter wind whipping off Lake Ontario and wrapping around street corners.

I love you Toronto, I really do. From the crisp air holding hopes of snow, to the clean streets and polite people, to the restaurant-table-side credit card machines, to the fact that your soccer team is not a spectacular surprise but simply another respected and covered team in a town that holds plenty of other pro-sport options, there is plenty America and American soccer can learn from your story. But this here is not a love a story.

From tomorrow I must borrow
so to save for today
moments wishing this dream
didn’t leave me this way.
Thin voices chime, “come what may”
or maybe whisper, “some day”
but ring in silent cliche
for this cast away

Walls caving to goodbye waving
in just a matter of days
Dire dreams roll into nightmares
drop me down in a maze
Not given a choice of ways
Every turn the feeling stays
Memories weave a hot heavy haze
Haunting as the hound that bays

Reeling senses to cold pretenses
the waking in lieu
of the uncommon chance
only dreamed by the few
Still trying to deny they knew
simple truths like the sky was blue
While sweating thoughts that too were due
Dripping wet like morning dew

Words empowering then souring
yielding thoughts of setting adrift
Mentally mixing molten metals
worriedly welding closed this rift
Through nestling nights now lost I sift
Unpacking my one lone true gift
meant for you and me to help lift
us from the cold currents so swift

Suddenly strong, apparently wrong
this dream seemed meant to be
more than just simply sleeping
as if time were using me
I’ll try going back to sea
Yet still searching for the key
In time we may come to see
that only love will set us free.

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I did love these seats. For big version of panoramic, click here.

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Thanks to all of those who came out to The Social on Friday night in Toronto and partied with the Designated Players.

How the USMNT (might have) won the 1982 World Cup

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“Too small,” Coach Messina answered, knowing full well that he would be questioned again. “Five-foot-nothin’, and what, about a hundred pounds – soaking wet?”

“But Tom, you can see this kid’s a player, can’t you?” Gary Rickman was adamant. The Maxwell boy was small, but he had displayed a level of skill the St. Louis coaches had never seen in a youth player. Actually five-four and one-hundred twenty pounds, dry, he was still among the least imposing sixteen-year-olds at this tryout.

“Sure Gary, we’ll sign him,” Messina replied, “and tomorrow Petey will dip him in marinara sauce and have him for lunch.” ‘Petey’ was Stoyan Petrov, the hard man of St. Louis Busch Soccer Club. “This discussion is over,” the head coach added.

Rickman conceded, but tucked Jimmy Maxwell’s evaluation form, with his home phone number, into his shirt pocket.

Petrov was raised in the part of St. Louis known as “The Hill”, surrounded mostly by Italians. His parents had immigrated to America from Bulgaria in 1952 with their two young daughters. With little in the way of marketable skills, Boris Petrov relied on his work ethic to impress potential employers. While others were trying to show off their past work experiences, Boris simply showed up before everyone else at the Brown Shoe Company and started doing pushups in front of the foreman’s office. By ten o’clock he was offered a job in the shipping department. “Work hard and you will survive,” he would tell young Stoyan, years later. “Work harder than everyone else - and you will succeed.” For Boris Petrov it was just that simple, and his only son took every word to heart.

Stoyan signed with St. Louis Busch at fourteen, based mainly on his athleticism. Big, strong, and fast, he was just what the staff was looking for and he was actually placed on the ‘YES’ list before they even saw him play. Hard-working, fast, strong as an ox, and fairly creative was written on his evaluation form.

Petey, as he was known, did everything with maximum effort. His daily regimen of five hundred push-ups and one thousand sit-ups made him an awesome physical specimen. He had fantastic size and speed which allowed him to hang with the first-teamers at fifteen. But what set him apart was his competitive spirit. Petey played the game, every game, to win.

By the time he was nineteen Petrov was starting at defensive mid-field for Busch, and had already earned a reputation as a dirty player. He was initially upset by the designation. Then, after St. Louis beat Pittsburgh Steel 4-0, in Pittsburgh, he saw an interview with their head coach on the nightly news:

Reporter: “Coach, tough one tonight. Can you sum up your thoughts?”

Coach: “Well, you know, we try to go to Jenkins in the middle, and Petrov shuts him down. So we push him up to forward and the SOB stays with him. Then I put the new kid, Stewart, in for Jenkins, and Petrov nearly kills him on his first touch…”

Reporter: “Ah… and no call?”

Coach: “No foul! Just the hardest tackle I’ve ever seen. Petrov…I….I really hate that guy.”

Reporter: “A lot of coaches complain about his play, some call it dirty.”

Coach: “You want the truth? We all wish we had a guy just like him. He’s not dirty. He just plays at an intensity level six notches above the rest. He’s amazing.”

Stoyan Petrov slept well that night.

Even with the skill set that sixteen-year-old Jimmy Maxwell possessed he could not be expected to compete with the likes of Petrov, or any of the other professionals at St. Louis Busch SC. He was four years younger than Petey; still a boy. And a small one at that. Gary Rickman knew this, but was sure this kid deserved a shot with a big club. The touch, the pin-point passing, the way he could dribble out of trouble, and the field awareness were all years ahead of his counterparts. “Shoot,” Rickman would tell his wife, later that evening, “this kid could be the best player I’ve ever seen.”

Considering who Gary Rickman had played with and against, that statement was quite remarkable. As a member of the Busch squad in the early seventies he had been teammates with Pat McBride and Al Trost, and had personally marked Boston’s Brandon Rafferty at least eight times (although it seemed like more). He had faced Johan Cruyff twice (once with Ajax and once with Barcelona), and had even marked Pelé in an exhibition match against Santos in 1973.

“I’m not giving up on this one, Rita,” he told her after dinner. “You should see this kid play.” Gary knew she would appreciate Jimmy Maxwell’s style, perhaps more than he did. She had an eye for the subtle nuances of the game; like the way some players could feel pressure before it arrived, or play the second- (or third-) option pass as others were catching up to the first. Those little things brought her great joy, and she missed them dearly. The “style” employed by Busch Soccer Club was too direct, too fast, too physical for her taste, and she hadn’t been to a match in years. With her health declining so rapidly, Gary had wished for something to cheer her up.

“He nutmegged two defenders in a row, one with each foot, with a third guy on his back – all inside the penalty box!” He offered to help her see what she had missed. “Stayed on his feet the whole time with these monsters trying to mug him, then lays of a little back-heel pass to the trailing midfielder. Who, of course, shot high over the crossbar,” he added, with a laugh. Her eyes lit up when she heard Gary describe the play.

“Of course, Messina signed all three defenders, and the shot-misser, right?” she asked, only half-joking.

“No, silly,” he replied. “Only two of the defenders,” he hesitated for effect, “and the shot-misser.” All they could do was laugh.

The drive home from St. Louis was long enough without the dark cloud of disappointment hanging over it. Three hours in the car with his older brother would normally be loads of fun, but this trip hadn’t ended so well for Jimmy. Dale tried to console him but was, in this case, seriously ill-equipped. When the radio signal from KSHE-95 faded near Festus, reality set in: he had failed. To make matters worse, his favorite REO Speedwagon song was just starting when the static took over.

They had planned to stop in Poplar Bluff to see Coach Franklin before heading home. Ken Franklin managed the Mules of the Midwest Conference, in the Third Division, and had coached Jimmy Maxwell since he was twelve. Ken would say that all he did was “let ‘em play”, but his coaching method was solid, and a few of his charges had gone to play professionally. He knew Jimmy would join them someday.

The boys arrived at the Franklin home just after seven, hungry and tired of driving. As they crawled out of the cab of Dale’s Ford F-150, Ken met them in the front yard and could immediately tell how the weekend had gone. It took all the strength he could muster, but Jimmy walked right up to his coach and gave him confirmation.

“I didn’t make it,” he said. It was tough to look him in the eye, but he managed.

“How’d you play? Did you leave it all out there?” was the response. Coach Franklin believed in the power of hard work. His charges were constantly reminded that often in life the difference between winning and losing is the tiniest bit of effort, and you never want to regret not trying hard enough. Skill levels and athletic ability would set some apart, but effort was something anyone could excel at.

“Yeah, I think so,” Maxwell replied. His big brother was behind him, nodding in agreement. “It was weird, coach. They only picked the biggest guys. Some were so bad you would have cut them from the Mules!”

“Jimbo, I was afraid this might happen. You see, some coaches only see what’s right in front of their eyes,” Franklin offered his explanation, “and many of them are with the bigger clubs. They can’t afford to take a chance on a kid who isn’t already physically ready to play with the professionals.”

“Do you remember Joey Baxter?” he asked the boys. Neither did. “He played for me on the first team about nine years ago, left back. We went up to Kansas City for a match against the Spurs, back when the Winston Cup was still called the U.S. Open Cup. Anyway, Joey had a pretty good game even though we lost 3-1, and the KC coach wanted to talk to him after the match. I remember Joey’s response when that coach offered him a shot at a tryout. He said, “No sir, I can’t see playing for somebody who thinks I’m the best player on this team.”

“He knew what that coach saw, and it wasn’t his skill. Baxter was about six-two, one-ninety, and had been working really hard to improve his game. But he knew he was nowhere near most of the other guys,” Franklin explained, “That took guts.”

“What’s he doing now?” Jimmy asked.

“Last I heard he was in graduate school up at Mizzou - mechanical engineering, I think. He was a sharp kid.” Coach Franklin continued, “Moral of the story is this: Soccer wasn’t his future, and he knew it. You, on the other hand, were born to play this crazy game, and you shouldn’t let this setback get you down. I’d bet good money I’ll see you wearing the ten shirt for the national team some day.”

“Thanks, Coach,” Jimmy said. “We need to get going,” Dale chimed in.

“Glad you stopped by, boys, and say “Hi” to your folks for me,” Franklin replied. His wife handed them some sandwiches, hoping to provide some solace in her own way. Bologna and cheese never tasted so good.

As they made the short trip home to Fisk, Jimmy realized he felt better, and was trying to picture himself on the US National Team. Wearing number ten, of course. His life was about to change in ways he had never imagined.

The Maxwell’s phone rang that evening at 9:20. No one ever jumped up to answer, since they had to wait for the familiar “ring…..riiiiiiiiiiiing” that signaled a call to their house and not the Kershaw’s, with whom they shared a party line. Ma Bell had not made much progress in Southeastern Missouri. Jimmy was in the kitchen devouring a large bowl of Cap’n Crunch, and reading a Spiderman comic book, when his mother entered and handed him the telephone handset. The twenty-foot cord came in handy, especially when the older boys took calls from girls. Privacy was hard to come by in a five-room farmhouse with one phone.

Jimmy didn’t ask his mom who was on the other end, in order to avoid potential embarrassment. Any time a girl called he had to endure the teasing from Dale and Bob so it was easier to keep a low profile. He assumed it was Sara Sabulsky, the latest in a string of cute upper-classmen who had taken an interest in him. The feeling was somewhat mutual. She was athletic and attractive, but nearly four inches taller than him. He was still not entirely comfortable with the whole process, but it was being thrust upon him. Jimmy braced himself, and answered the phone.

“Hello,” he said in a muffled voice, trying to seem uninterested. He was still tired from the tryout and the long drive, so he didn’t have to fake it much.

“Jimmy Maxwell?” asked the obviously male voice.

“Yes, sir,” he replied, “who’s this?” He sat up in his chair.

“My name is Gary Rickman, I was at the tryout this weekend,” the caller answered. “I am one of the assistant coaches for St. Louis Busch.”

Jimmy thought he must have left something at the field, his new cleats maybe. Oh, no.

Rickman continued, “This may sound strange, but I called to find out two things: First, how tall are your parents? And second, are you serious about being a professional soccer player?”

“Uh…hold on,” Maxwell replied. With his hand over the phone, the boy then called into the living room, “Mom, how tall are you and Dad?” He waited for the response, then answered, “Mom’s five-eight, Dad’s five-eleven.”

“Good,” Rickman was relieved. Before he could call his friend Ramon about a small sixteen-year-old prospect, he needed to be prepared.

“And YES, SIR!” Maxwell blurted out, upon realizing he had not answered the second question.

“Sorry, but what is this all about?” he asked.

“I have a good friend who does some scouting for a different club,” the coach replied. “Before I called him, I needed to know those two things. He will ask me about your size, and now I can tell him not to worry. Any older brothers?” he asked.

“I get it,” Jimmy caught on quickly. “Tell him Dale is nineteen and six-foot-two, and Bob is seventeen and about six-foot-even. They were short when they were my age, too.”

“But I’m a LOT better than they were,” he added since both were listening in.

“Great,” Rickman laughed with Jimmy. “I’ll see what I can do and call you back. It’s sometimes hard to track Ramon down, so don’t worry if it takes a few days. I will let you know either way.”

“Can you tell me who he scouts for?” he had to ask.

Jimmy Maxwell had just turned four years old when he got his first soccer ball. If the weather had been more cooperative, he probably would have gotten a bicycle (with training wheels) or maybe an electric train set. In the summer of 1964, drought had nearly decimated their watermelon crop and the income from the summer wheat barely covered their living expenses. Jimmy and his younger siblings were fine with whatever they received, but the older boys felt cheated with this year’s diminished presents. Younger brother Jerry would have been satisfied with the box Dale’s new socks were packaged in. Three-month-old Phyllis didn’t care about Christmas yet.

Jimmy learned soccer from watching his brothers play at the field on Route 60 in Fisk, about twelve miles from Poplar Bluff. Since Dale and Bob were among the younger boys at the Saturday pickup games, it was accepted that Jimmy wouldn’t play, but could come along to watch. Like most boys, his attention span was similar to that of a puppy, so watching quickly became tiresome. Their pitch was mostly grass, due to the efforts of the Davis boys who lived nearby, but it was surrounded by a sand and crabgrass mixture that was annoyingly bumpy and slow. This was Jimmy Maxwell’s playground.

Too bumpy to dribble on, the sandy soil ringing the field provided a bevy of problems for the older boys, but it was all Jimmy knew. He thought nothing of having to scoop the ball into the air and balance it on a thigh while looking for an imaginary teammate to make that far-post run. By the time he was nine, Jimmy could run the length of the pitch without letting the ball touch the ground. If you could call it running, that is. His curse as a youngster was his growth cycle – he would fill out to sometimes ‘pudgy’ proportions, then shoot up three or four inches in height. As a child, Jimmy Maxwell never was comfortable in his own body. His teenage years were even worse - the same changes, amplified.

He would be nearly twelve before he was allowed to get into a game with his older brothers, and by then Jimmy was able to make his ball do pretty much whatever he wanted. Still too young to be much help with farm chores, he had hours of free time to play in the yard with his ball every day. An old walnut tree next to the house provided excellent target practice, since even the slightest error would cause a rebound that had to be chased. One-v-one games with Jerry, two years his junior, gave him the opportunity to play with his left foot to “make it fair”. That didn’t last long, since Jerry was a sore loser, and Jimmy never let him win. Playing with the older boys allowed his talent to shine.

Bob and Dale were exceptional players in their own right, and constantly challenged their little brother to try new moves, or juggle with a new body part. They were unknowingly creating the best player in the country, but it would be years before all the work would pay off. By pushing him to improve, they thought they were just doing what big brothers did.

Allowed to tag along everywhere, Jimmy became sort of a mascot for the older boys. They would marvel at the little kid’s ability to juggle for what seemed like hours on end. One of Bob’s friends even got him a gig entertaining the crowd at halftime of the Poplar Bluff Mules’ home games. Most times, he could keep his ball up for the entire twenty-minute period. Not bad for a ten-year-old. Club management put a stop to his show when the supporters began to boo the home team when they would come out and stop him.

When he was finally allowed to play with the older boys, Jimmy was placed up top, away from the grinder that was the midfield. His brothers sought to protect him from the physical contact by giving him freedom to find open spaces. What they could not have predicted was the nature of their little brother, seven years younger than the oldest boy on the field and at least two years younger than anyone else, when he had the ball at his feet on a grassy field, thirty yards from goal.

Twelve-year-old Jimmy Maxwell received a bouncy pass from one of his teammates, softly settled the ball, turned and took it directly at the eighteen-year-old defender who was the closest opponent between him and the goal. The older boy was a little surprised, but dropped anyway expecting a pass. Jimmy kept coming, and the defender felt he had to go for the tackle before they got too close to his goal. The younger boy side-stepped his mark with the ease of a seasoned striker and laid a square pass to his teammate, who promptly slotted the ball into the goal.

Ken Franklin had a list of “Undeniable Truths of Soccer”. Things like: ‘The more defenders you have, the more likely you will be scored upon’, ‘Playing for the tie will guarantee the loss’, ‘Nothing bad happens when you are moving’, etc. When he started coaching fourteen-year-old Jimmy Maxwell, he added this one: ‘Creativity comes from being aggressive’. The two of them would discuss this while watching Monday Night Soccer at the Franklin house. The coach believed most players that were deemed “creative” were better at performing tricks than getting results. He often said true creativity had more to do with forcing your will on the game. One other player understood.

The Boston Patriots’ new attacking midfielder, Brandon Rafferty, embodied Franklin’s newest ‘Truth’. Everyone in the park knew he was going to attack his rival, beat him, and, when a defender stepped up to help, dish the ball to an open striker. He broke the mold of the holding central midfielder who played deep and sprayed long passes to his forwards. Twenty-five-year-old Rafferty led the American Premier League in assists his second season, and helped Boston climb out of the bottom half of the table, where they had been since the inception of the new league two years before. Jimmy dreamed of playing with the likes of Brandon Rafferty some day. Rafferty was a real Number Ten.

“Who, my friend Ramon?” Gary Rickman asked. He was reluctant to tell the kid, for fear of getting his hopes up. He knew he couldn’t guarantee anything.

“Yes, sir, I guess. Who does he scout for?” Jimmy persisted.

“Real Madrid.” Rickman waited for a response, but got none. “I’ll call you later,” he added, and hung up.

The boy put his cereal bowl in the sink, grabbed his soccer ball, and sneaked out through the back door. The juggles started that night with “Uno….dos….tres” and ended, a little over an hour later, with “dos thousand, ocho hundred, diez”. He would need to work on his Spanish.

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Buy The Ten Shirt.

All Text & Images Copyright 2010 by Michael Maddox.  Published by Figure 18 Publishing.

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Three Brits, three famous men swoop in and buy the rights to the Cosmos. Now they just have to figure out what to do with what is probably still the most famous American soccer club in history. Some of today’s most famous Mad Men go to town. They hold interviews, not for employees as much as focus groups, all while keeping the secret.

Unlike starting a new business with new products, the Cosmos come on the scene with a trans-Atlantic tanker’s worth of baggage, both blessings and challenges. Surely they need to find someone who understands all of that, can make sense of it in today’s American soccer landscape, and provide the leadership necessary to get it off the ground.

Enter Executive Director Joe Fraga, a local man, original Cosmos fan, who was there when Giants Stadium was packed full and has been waiting inside the vacuum ever since. His first questions to the new Cosmos brass were pretty close to everybody’s questions.

Earlier, we heard from Terry Byrne about the MLS franchise and stadium goals of the club, for which they say all the finances are set. If all goes according to plan, they will be the 20th MLS franchise in 2013 with a soccer specific stadium to call their own in Queens. Which all sounds lovely, but what is it right now? That’s where Fraga comes in, charged with getting the grassroots efforts off the ground and keeping the soccer credibility on pace with the marketing.

It’s only been three months, but that’s an eternity in today’s new cycle. Will youth academies, club partnerships, corporate and community outreach, and forth-coming “inspirational games” be enough to sate fans all the way to 2013 and MLS?

TIAS: You are the one local guy on the executive staff at the moment, so let’s start there with your background and thoughts on the Cosmos before this came about and now that you’re working for the club.

Joe Fraga: Yeah, I grew up in the area. I was raised in North Jersey, so I grew up with the Cosmos. I’m 39; the team was launched the year I was born.

So old enough to have real memories of the team?

Absolutely, and a lot of the players that we’re dealing with now. One of the best things about this job for me is growing up with the team and getting to know players from that age—six and up into high school—they used to come to our practices.

So yeah, I grew up with the Cosmos and never really attached myself to another team in the States. I played in North Jersey, Bergen Kickers, Leonia high school. Played at St. John’s University. 1992 we won the Big East tournament. I left the area, was all over the country, played some ball. I went down to Miami, worked with the Fusion, worked with the Breakers, and with the Gliders—I was the GM of the women’s team for a while. Even when I left here, I guess in 1994—I was involved with politics—but soccer was always my first passion, so I was always involved with the sport in some way shape or form regardless of what my professional career was.

And then I moved back here in 2001 and started full time with the sport. I worked with the UN AIDS game, Real Madrid v Roma, in 2002. And then I worked with Champions World, where we produced all the tours for Man U, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter, Roma, AC Milan, you name it. We brought them over for a while. Then when I left Champions World, I worked at the UN. I was executive director for the World Sports Alliance, where 99% of my job there was creating soccer programs, because that is what everyone wanted. We did have some basketball, some tennis, we tried to do some cricket; but soccer, everyone wanted soccer—the fields, the infrastructure, the equipment. Which then led me back here.

Guerrilla (er, monkey?) Cosmos advertising in Manhattan’s meatpacking district

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I got a call—I don’t even remember who called me—saying I needed to be at Anomaly at a certain time in the afternoon, because they were interviewing people about their Cosmos experiences. So when you ask me how I got involved, obviously there are a handful of Cosmos fans from the day it folded until now who have always wondered what’s gonna happen, when is it gonna happen, and if it’s gonna happen. Even at Champions World, we were looking at buying the franchise from Peppe, and I have known Peppe for a long time as well. So it was one of those, “Hey did you hear, the rights were bought? Peppe finally gave up the rights!”

When was that?

October 2009 I guess. And so sure enough a few weeks later I get a call and show up at Anomaly.

What did you think it was for?

Well, I’ll tell you what, I remember telling the person who called me, well, how did you get my name, and they went through, “Oh, we were told you were a point person for soccer in the city.” I had just finished helping put together Copa NYC and connecting it with the Mayor’s office, and it came through there somehow. I remember the first comment I made was: can you tell me what this is about? And the person who called me from Anomaly was an assistant or someone calling for someone else, so they didn’t really know. They just knew they were interviewing people for their “Cosmos experience.”

So I showed up there, and it was Dan Cherry, who is now our Chief Marketing Officer, and he said, “Look, we are putting on film—we’re just interviewing people who had been part of the whole Cosmos experience, and we want to know what you remember.” Of course I asked why, where is this going? It was supposed to be fifteen minutes; I ended up being there for four hours.

So did he tell you?

I guess back then they had an idea, but they wanted to know what I wanted the team to be. I said they have to be this and can’t be that. You have to respect the legacy. It just started with that, which became a four-hour meeting. And then Dan introduced me to Carl Johnson, who is the Partner of Anomaly and the Cosmos CEO, and I spoke another hour or two with Carl. Then a couple of weeks later I’m meeting with Paul Kemsley. I met with Paul and Terry. I was finishing up my MBA, and they called again the day before my classes were ending, and I ended up going out with them, and then started working two jobs. One with the Cosmos, which was kind of on the DL because they hadn’t made the announcement or anything and segued from the UN, starting full time on this in February, and officially in April I was on board. And we made the announcement in August.

Where were they at when you came in and where are you today, three months out from the official launch?

When I came in, obviously it was an amazing marketing story. Taking the team from where it was, and sort of breaking down its history and seeing where they could make it relevant again, in what areas. Back when the team was around, you didn’t have any social media, any academy set up or system. So in every facet of the plan that we had, whether it was grassroots marketing, culture, it was very well thought out. One of the things that did impress me is that it wasn’t what everyone feared it was going to be, like some Globetrotters or whatever.

That was the big rumor initially.

Part of the attraction was to come work with these visionaries—they are at the highest of their game. The other part of what clinched it for me is that it wasn’t going to be, “We’re just going to slap a logo on something and take it around the world. And hope we get recognized and with a little luck we’re the team in MLS.” It was a really well thought out plan. It was based on growing it from the bottom up. It’s the only way, in my opinion, that I think it can succeed, especially if you are starting with such a gap in time from when the team played and now.

We’re very fortunate to have the history very few teams have in this country. It’s great that we can lean on the past to move forward, but I also see the challenge of making it relevant. And that discussion where it was like, “OK, we’re gonna make this straight. We’re not going to be the Globetrotters, we’re not going to just sell shirts, we’re gonna actually pull this off. And the reason why you’re so important is that you are the guy who is going to get it off the ground. The academies, the camps, the CSR (corporate social responsibility), with Copa NYC.” That is the first phase. Our goal is MLS, and that’s a couple of phases from here, but I think everything we’ve done from before February is with the intention of keeping the marketing and soccer credibility balanced. Both need to happen to get everyone on board and convinced.

I know it might be frustrating because we haven’t been able to announce a lot of things, just because of timing. We already know what we want to do and how we want to do it, and I think if you’ve been following—just carve out the academies and who we have brought on board and how the kids are playing already after just a couple of weeks. You can already see some of the product we were thinking about six months ago in motion.

New Cosmos track jacket by Umbro

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Why maybe not perfect, it did after I sat on the idea for a bit seem wise to start with the kids, seeing as you have several years before MLS is even a possibility. The other side of that is critics saying, “It’s just a marketing thing, call me in 2013 when you have a MLS team.” What’s your response to that?

I respect that. Look, we’re in whatever a six-minute news cycle, and you have to have updates, but I imagine those critics are the same complaining that there is not enough talent in the U.S. national team or this coach isn’t best for that. If I was able to take them to Randall’s Island on any given Saturday and say, ok, this is phase one. This is part of what we need to do. If you want to wait until 2013, then just wait, but this is something that is very tangible and something that is needed. It’s not about, oh, let’s churn camps and make money. It’s really about that we have an amazing under-12 team that four or five years from now, some of those players will be signing for our first team. You don’t do that overnight. Anyone who knows the sport—go look at Ajax, go look at Real Madrid, go look at Barcelona. With Barcelona being the latest, Messi was seven when we came to Spain. In this country we have a tendency toward win equals success equals best players, and that’s not necessarily the case. So we’re gonna do it the way we think we need to do it.

But again, it’s a lot of timing. For every cool thing we do on the ground, there is also a retail or merchandising deadline. There was a lot of hurry up and wait on—obviously you can’t really move forward with the Cosmos and be considered legit without Pele, so you can’t just launch everything without having your honorary president on board.

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What can you tell me about his involvement? He didn’t take part in the Cosmos documentary, Once In A Lifetime, and it was said because he wanted to get paid. How did he prove to you guys this wasn’t a money grab for him?

I can’t speak to what he did or didn’t do with the documentary, because I also heard other things that his staff didn’t want him on that because other people weren’t involved with it. If you watch the documentary, it really is a cool retrospective, but it isn’t entirely accurate. From what I know, based on the opportunity now I’ve had to personally work with him, there is no other thing that he wants more than to see this happen the right way.

When we launched at the final of Copa NYC, Terry and I sat down with him in a tent and he wanted to give input so to ensure everybody left that field with an amazing experience. He wants to be so involved. He doesn’t want to make a misstep. He’s always like, “Should I speak to this person or that person.” So he is very involved in the relaunch in the sense that he wants to see it done right. And I think every former Cosmos player, they all want to be part of it; they are all accepting of this, but they are all very cautious. They want to make sure. We are here because they were the best at what they did and created this whole movement and team and aura, and they want to see that we are doing the right things.

The biggest concern, as you know, in the documentary, there was the anti-Peppe and pro-Peppe group of players and everyone has an opinion, but the biggest concern was that if it did get relaunched, how and with whom? Would it be cheesy? I think we have quelled any of that, at least in the players’ minds. Now can I get every blogger and every soccer writer on board at the same time? That is one of the challenges we have everyday. That is why we are here everyday.

We couldn’t announce that we took over Copa NYC until we finally did it. That right there, for anyone who wants to question how or why we did it, there is no better way than to get a slice of our community than through Copa.

It is a great idea and tournament. One of those too perfect, too obvious things.

It’s awesome. And there are other things we are doing that haven’t been announced. Again with the timing. It’s not necessarily our fault that our Umbro deal came, and we haven’t kicked a ball or have a team, and an amazing company came along chomping at the bit to partner with us and be our kit sponsor. Do we hold that back? No, we have to announce that. And that’s one of the first things announced, so of course everyone says it’s all about marketing.

You take them as they come.

Exactly. Tomorrow, if they say, do you want to be the 20th MLS team? Will we not announce it until we say, oh, well, we aren’t even running our camps yet? No, we would jump on that. If you are not seeing this everyday or coming into the office—we had some people come in recently and they’re like, “Oh, wow.” What did you think; we were just a desk with a phone? It’s a pretty big operation. It’s building a team. Anyone who has worked with a team or a league gets it, but that’s not everybody. So the more people we can show that there is an inner working here that is moving toward the big goal, the better. We can only move so fast.

When does Phase two begin?

I keep saying phases, but I don’t know if we have set phases or a timeline. There are several things that happen. I’ll speak to grassroots because that is what I’m overlooking. If you look at it from August 1st and the grassroots components—the academies, the camps, corporate social responsibility (CSR), Copa NYC—there are a few more things that fall under that culturally, but those four:

Academies: we signed arguably the two best academy directors in the system right now. Teddy Chronopoulis in LA, and Giovanni Savarese in New York. For a start-up, that’s two huge signings right there. For development of children and players, I don’t know if you can do better than that. The teams are playing now. Whether that translates to success or not, I don’t know, but I know for sure that Teddy, Gio, and Terry are all in unison; they are all communicating, and we know that down the line we will have a system that someone will recognize as the Cosmos way. Both academies, even though they are 3,000 miles apart, will be playing the same kind of ball. It’s one of those things that will take some time, but I think we have the right people to make that happen.

Outside of the academies, we have our relationship with Gottschee, one of the most historic teams in the city. Some of the best players ever to come out New York, the national team, even the Cosmos, have come from there. So we hope to now rekindle that, and in a few years have that same history repeat itself.

Future 1st team Cosmos?

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Was it ever a question whether or not to make the academies free for the players?

No, I think that is something due to the way soccer is run in this country that there is no way you can get around. If you want to attract the best player–hey times are tough, parents are getting squeezed, so for a lot of these parents it was a huge relief financially, and that’s the biggest hurdle with a lot of sports. If you can get over the financial hurdle, and you have some talent, then you could go far. It will be interesting to see next year once we have a year under our belts, what kind of talent is going to come out. Giovanni is a little frustrated now getting calls from lots of good players after the team has been picked. Next year’s tryouts will be very interesting.

So that is the academy side. And while this is happening, you also have a marketing component, a merchandising component, a retail component, a social media component, a communications component; Terry with the first team is already looking for stadiums and toward a MLS team. All of that is going at the same time on parallel tracks. Now at some point it will all collide, and poof, we have the Cosmos, but for right now, everyday everything goes little by little. Some days the grassroots or academy component will be further along that the marketing. Other days we get two or three opportunities for marketing, which you can’t pass up. So that obviously forms the opinion I guess in some people’s mind that, “Oh for right now it’s just a marketing play.”

We’re going to launch the Cosmos camps on both coasts shortly. Those initially will start out smaller than your normal soccer camp, so that each player gets what we call the Cosmos Experience, which includes our system, a dietary component, and other things; It will include various levels and age groups, from day camps to overnight camps, and they will include elements of the academies, and we want to work in the academy teams into the camps.

Then you have this whole thing with corporate social responsibility. We have several groups we’re seriously looking at. One of the major groups we are finalizing with is the Department of Education, because a way to be legitimate around here is to become part of the DNA and fabric of New York City, and so our partnership with the DOE is going to be a huge component. Maybe one that actually pushes the soccer credibility, depending on who wants to see what, past the marketing.

Explain that partnership a bit.

It’s a program that they have that other professional teams are involved with. The Jets and the Knicks. It’s called C.H.A.M.P.S, and it’s keeping the kids active after school, somewhat of an anti-obesity campaign component, but more importantly, it’s to teach discipline and gain a better livelihood through soccer. We couldn’t get that in the beginning, but now with the academies and Pele, they understand we are serious. And the numbers I just saw show that the C.H.A.M.P.S. soccer program eclipsed all the other programs that they offer. I’m not sure if the team across the river is involved in stuff like that, but I can say that everything we do will be here in New York; the LA academy not withstanding—that’s a visionary future play.

So that’s coming down the pike. And Copa NYC next year relaunches as Cosmos Copa, and it will be more accessible, a slightly different tournament, maybe a little longer.

So people can look at all of that however they want. I’m sure there’s still going to be people who are saying that’s not necessarily enough, but that’s the base. You are building from the bottom up. Look at some of the original MLS teams. There are some that have been in their communities for X amount of years and still don’t even have a quarter of what we have in three months. So, it’s hard to say who wants what, and where, and how, but I just know being here everyday that the approach we are taking is the way we need to go as the New York Cosmos, and the investment is part of getting to our ultimate goal of being in MLS.

Manhattan, East Village

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What if MLS falls through for 2013?

Look, you take the whole business plan, for lack of a better expression. Our goal of MLS is one big component of the plan. Could it be that MLS decides to look over 150,000 school kids and a couple of thousands kids in camps, and academies that are hopefully on their winning ways, and a marketing deal, a kit sponsor no matter the Umbro-Adidas-MLS whatever. Could they look over all of that? I wish I could say no, but who knows? We want to be the twentieth team. If they come up with some reason why we need to be 21 or 22, I don’t think that means we close up shop and say sorry to parents and go. This is a viable business. If we wanted to just be a t-shirt company we wouldn’t have done all the things we’ve done.

What have you learned from growing up and living in the city and watching the MetroStars and then Red Bull work within New York?

In defense of the MetroStars and maybe Red Bull, it’s hard. If you look back they did draw some pretty amazing crowds in the beginning, but unfortunately the product on the field is what ultimately gets people into the stadium. And even though they brought the Donadoni’s in, it was kind of hard to watch because, especially for someone my age, those were all college guys. So that’s not to diminish the fact that they played professional, but just as that was starting, you’re also starting to get games in Europe and all that, so of course people are going to compare the product. Not fair at all for MLS.

Getting into the community was very hard for the MetroStars because you had hundreds of coaches who were used to getting taken out—the Cosmos did a tremendous job in the community. Players were at practices, kids played at halftime; they were in the community. I’m not 100 percent sure the MetroStars were able to get in there. I feel like they tried but nothing connected. Nothing transcended the area. I wasn’t on the staff but have friends who were and know they were frustrated. There was a definite misfire when it came to the community, and Red Bull has done even worse I think. This year is amazing because they were in last place last year, and now here they are winning the conference, so maybe that turns around. But I do find it interesting that you have a brand new stadium, that’s 18,000 seats, that if I was the head of Red Bull, I would say, my goal is that every home game is sold out. I just find it very strange that it’s not.

I’ve been out in the community, and there is an excitement there for the sport, and now maybe I’m biased because I’m out there as a Cosmos. Buy if you wear one of our shirts around here (SOHO) even, which isn’t a soccer-dense community, you will have someone come out of a restaurant and say, “Oh, the Cosmos are coming back!’” I think because of that hole in the heart of New Yorkers—that hole was the Cosmos—I think MetroStars and Red Bull never had that.

It wasn’t like in Washington, DC, where they really had nothing, and then poof, you have a great team that was amazing with the community because all the Hondurans and Ecuadorians had their players there. Sure New York had the Italian players, but they weren’t really all players. That also fed onto it. So I look back and now try to not make those mistakes with the Cosmos. I think we have, in their eyes, an unfair advantage, because there are so many people who have been waiting for this to happen. They assumed Cosmos would be the team to come back into MLS. That never happened. They thought they would be the team to take over for the MetroStars when they heard the team was trying to be sold. That never happened. So now there is an excitement there that neither of those teams, with all due respect to them of course, had, and it’s because there is that history everyone feels is going to come back.

That being said, that’s a dangerous position to be in too, because we can’t replicate what happened. It was an amazing five or six years that was a perfect storm. And that’s our challenge.

First it was the reported fright from MLS about taking on any or too many NASL teams. That passed with flying colors in Seattle and likely soon other places. Now it’s more a worry that DPs will turn MLS into NASL. All things that revolve around the history of the Cosmos. So it’s safe to assume in 2013 Cosmos will be going after some Designated Players?

Well, yeah, like any ownership group, if we get a MLS franchise, we are going to under the parameters of the league. We will go out and try to get the best players we can. I think that Seattle is the perfect example of what you just said about, oh my god NASL. Seattle is probably the best thing that could happen to the league, because I do feel like a whole wave of people just decided to ignore—this is going to be strong—but I think there was a whole group of people that thought soccer started after the World Cup in this country: “You know what, forget that [NASL].” And worse, “Forget the people who were part of that.” I think they lost a whole group of people that had knowledge and insight. I’m not saying they should have run MLS, but I do feel like there is that missing. It’s not necessarily missing from the business, because you could put down a business plan, a strategy and a model. I feel that it is missing the point that it affected the fans. People that were part of soccer in those NASL cities that were in the field with their sleeves up, getting their hands dirty, getting crowds in, and all of a sudden those people were derelicts. But now Seattle opens the floodgates, and you see the bridging of history with the present. But you still have a solid structure and guidelines that the NASL didn’t have. That’s what we’re working with, and that’s what we’re looking to do with the Cosmos.

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That concludes the Cosmos Interviews. Part 1 with Terry Byrne is here.

Surely more to come from the burgeoning club. Will they be the 20th MLS team? Can they win the hearts, minds, and open wallets of New York soccer fans?

Follow TIAS on Twitter

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This is what we know. The New York Cosmos are back with intentions on being the 20th MLS franchise in 2013. It’s run by famous industry names like Paul Kemsley, Terry Byrne, and famed advertising executive Carl Johnson, as well as more locally entrenched talent like Giovanni Savarese and Joe Fraga. They got Pele as the honorary president. They purchased Copa NYC (soon to be called Cosmos Copa), a citywide amateur World Cup of sorts. They’ve obviously got some money, not just because of the ownership group’s personal assets, but because they launched youth academy teams in New York and Los Angeles, both of which will be free to players. They have a partnership with Blau Weiss Gottschee, the most historic of the city’s elite youth clubs. They launched a branded ball and kit, produced by Umbro, which signed on as kit and equipment sponsor. They have a website, a Twitter account, a Youtube, Flickr, and Facebook page. They have as of yet, however, no men’s team, professional, amateur, or otherwise.

But for a club with no men’s team, no MLS franchise for at least a couple more years, it sure seems like everyone is talking (or complaining) about the Cosmos…

Behind a nondescript door and up an elevator in Manhattan’s SOHO neighborhood, the wheels are turning. The Cosmos office is long and narrow, with freshly painted sheetrock on one side and exposed brick on the other. Dangling chandeliers line up above a monster work table that occupies nearly the entire main room, which fronts a few glassed-in offices for the executives where a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Pele stands guard. Cosmos memorabilia, business plans, kit mock-ups, and plenty of pictures of Pele cover the bright white walls in swatches of green and yellow nostalgia. The space is raw and open with dashes of urban modernity, like just about every upstart business with enough money to afford the pricey lower Manhattan rent. As the Cosmos simultaneously look back to the past in order to get to the future, the office reflects that feeling. So much history; so much promise; still so much work to do to. What will it look like down the road?

The day-to-day work falls largely on the shoulders of two men. My conversation with Executive Director Joe Fraga about the grassroots efforts of the club since the relaunch three months ago will run later in the week, but first TIAS sits down with Director of Soccer Terry Byrne…

TIAS: Let’s just start with where the Cosmos first came up for you. Give me a bit of timeline on your knowledge of it, and then participation.

Terry Byrne: It’s been two years since PK (Paul Kemsley) came to me. He called six people in London—me, I was working with David Beckham at the time, Thierry Henry’s agent, people that he knew from football. He called us all to his office and just said, “I want to throw an idea at you guys, appreciate your input. The New York Cosmos.” So the questions became about cost of a MLS franchise and all that stuff, and everybody had a different opinion. I just said, look, personally I would like to be involved because in 1979 I played here in Huntington, New York, and I went to watch the Cosmos train. Part of my career path if you like—I’ve spent 20 years in the UK in soccer and started out as an equipment manager, became a sports masseur, physiotherapist, a director of football, and David Beckham’s personal manager, worked with the English national team for 10 years. And now, for me, it’s just a progression, and I’ve got now a project unlike any others I’ve worked on before.

I put in 10 years at Chelsea. When I first started Glenn Hoddle was the manager, and we hadn’t won a trophy in 27 years. Then all of a sudden between ’97 and 2001, we won six trophies, because we had the likes of Gianfranco Zola, that era if you like, where we had huge success. I was part of a movement in that club before Abramovich coming to Chelsea. We went to another level, which then encouraged Abramovich to take it to another level. That’s what I think we are here. I think we are on the cusp of something massive. I’m under no illusion of what we have to do to achieve and get to those goals, but we’ve gone from probably 6 people after one year to 16 staff after two years, and we’ve also got 25 coaches in one academy and 25 in another. So we’re up to about 70 people on the payroll. So, the scale and the enormity of the project, I’m under no illusion.

I’ll always remember one of the first meetings I had with Dan Cherry, one of the brand directors we have here. He said to me—we were talking about the badge and how with the Cosmos, it’s not our club, it’s the people’s club; it was always the city’s club, and we have to respect the heritage and try to contemporise it, and give it a rebirth. You can’t replicate what it was, because what it was, was about a time in music, fashion, an era, a movement. All of those things, whether you are talking about marketing, communications, the soccer element, the academies, the CSR (corporate social responsibility), it’s a huge project, but an exciting one.

I probably wouldn’t even think of this or ask if not for the recent news over Liverpool, but did you or Paul have any hesitation in two Englishmen coming into New York to run a club?

There was a level of trepidation on our part more than anything else, to say, you know we’re three Brits effectively, if you add Carl (Johnson, CEO) into the equation, we were three Brits coming in to effectively run a New York team. I look at the Glazers at Manchester United, and their popularity has not been huge, and what has happened with Hicks and Gillette at Liverpool. You can look at Randy Lerner, who has done a fantastic job at Aston Villa. I think it’s not the nationality; it’s what you do. If you back up what you say you’re going to do, people will respect you for that color, creed, and race, irrespective. Wherever you may be from, I think if you’ve executed what the people want and done it the right way, which is what we’re doing, it shouldn’t matter.

Pinton’s Cosmos tape library before the sale.

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The biggest challenge for us initially was grassroots soccer. We have to build from the ground up. If you imagine this is a dormant brand that laid dormant for the best part of 30 year—one man alone looked after it and nurtured it as his baby. I’ve seen a lot of derogatory remarks about Peppe (Pinton, former owner of the Cosmos); the only thing I can say is that I am extremely grateful to him because he kept it alive. He sent day in and day out letters to people who wrote in. He polished trophies—we’ve got the original trophies from 1977 because he’s kept them in pristine condition. He has 1300 hours of Betamax video. He’s given us a great bill to digitize it all, but I have to say I’ve got nothing but respect for the man. And the one thing that convinced him to sell to us as opposed to others—I think other people offered him a lot more money, but I think he saw in Paul someone who has a vision and entrepreneurship that Steve Ross had. He said to PK, “You’re the closest thing I’ve ever seen to Steve Ross with regards to your ideas. Whether you can execute them or not I don’t know, but you promise me that you will try to get to that, that’s good enough for me.” And Paul is always adamant that Peppe will have his day. At our first game, on the middle of the pitch, standing there in front of 77,000 or whatever we hit, Peppe will have his moment. And that will be his justification for doing what he did by selling to us.

So if there are 70,000 people there, what stadium is that going to be?

I dream of the New Meadowlands personally, but I think long term, absolutely there will be a new stadium, in Queens probably. That’s the plan.

So that means the Wilpons will be involved? Where are those discussions?

Between now and next year there will be a lot more advance in conversations and actions. In the last six months there has been three or four meetings, all positive, both with the MLS and the Wilpon family. Who knows? What I do know is that we have the funding in place. It’s real for us to achieve buying the franchise and building the stadium. And now that we have that funding in place, we will try to do everything in our power to make it happen in terms of where, with who, and when.

What can you tell me about of that funding?

We have private investors. Paul put a lot of money on the line. A lot of personal money on the line.

The big story about him before the Cosmos was the bankruptcy of one of his companies.

I’ve only known him for four or five years. I knew him from when I was at Chelsea; he was at the back end of joining Tottenham. Anybody who built a business to near on a billion dollars from nothing has some special kind of gift. He has a vision, so much energy, and with regards to his own business going under, I think you will find that what actually happened had nothing to do with him. Ironically, it was part of a partnership he did, but more importantly, what money he was then left with after that, he has plowed a lot of money into the Cosmos, put his own money on the line, and his money where his mouth was. Then he sought private investors, which he has gone on and done, to give us the security and knowledge that we could underpin what our dream was. All secured, all done, but it’s really him who is behind it. And how much is it? Enough to build a stadium in Queens and enough to buy a MLS franchise.

Or pay rent at Meadowlands?

I think that would be a temporary solution for us. I don’t think it would be long term.

If you wanted to launch in 2013 in your own stadium, that needs to happen sooner than later now. Are you set that that will not be the case?

If anybody says you can build a stadium in 6 months, they are probably exaggerating, and if builders here are the same as they are in the rest of the world, a lot longer in the making than what they say at the outset, but knowing that the funding was in place was the primary concern, and that funding is now in place. So we are all systems go on building a stadium.

The new Umbro Cosmos jersey

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Joe (Fraga, Executive Director) talks about phases (that interview later in the week at TIAS). Phase 1 being the launch and youth clubs and marketing. The funding to me seems to potentially ring in another new phase. Just to stay with that term, what phase is next?

If you said to me how many phases there were, I’d say probably four. And we are in phase two. Phase three now will start in the New Year, when we probably announce what games there are next year and who will play for the Cosmos the very first games. Beyond that, next year we intend to have three inspirational games worldwide. 2012 would be probably six games and 2013 going into MLS. Now, the best plans in the world you set out with a vision and a timeline, but you won’t always necessarily hit those timelines.

So you would like to go into MLS with a full squad basically?

Completely.

Without even the need of an expansion draft?

I think part of the league would require us to have that, but our plan from building an under-8 team to an under-18 team and bring Gio Savarese and Teddy Chronopoulos in was to build that future production line for the Cosmos. We know already we have some good kids, and we need to hold on to them and protect them, nurture them, make sure they become good people. Some we will lose to the college draft system, some may want to go directly into the professional game, but I do know already in my heart and head that we have some kids that are wearing a Cosmos shirt either in LA or in New York, that will play for the Cosmos first team, and I think that principle of why we did what we have done—and the academies we’ve spent millions, you know? Over the last 12 months and the next 12 months, we’ll have spent a couple of million dollars.

And that’s pure investment. I guess you get a marketing kick in and around those kids and communities, but many would say there is no payback there, short of years down the road they become solid players. There is no immediate pay off anyway.

Absolutely not. Some people looked at us as if to say, “are you quite sure you want to do this, this way.” But if you said Jozy Altidore was one talent you exported, not only did he do extremely well for the Red Bulls, but you then export him as a country, and he does well with the national team, or he has a transfer value, and that’s the equation. You invest in youth to sustain the business moving forward.

The first rumor with Paul bought the team was that it was going to be a traveling all-star team. That’s been shot down by you guys in the past already, but now these inspirational games have me wondering. Are we talking joining a D-2 league for a season or two or strictly exhibition games with names that will never be on the MLS team?

We’re looking at and will have a PDL team for the younger group. I use the term inspiration team as opposed to exhibition team. I want to bring in some of the best players in the world to play inspiration games for the Cosmos, but I want to put some of our academy kids along side them, to learn from them, when we play our games. The first game will be next summer in the U.S. And then the other two will probably be international friendlies. 2012 will probably be a combination of 3 games here and 3 games internationally. So the idear is to give the Cosmos fans a number of games that are here before the proposed MLS team, to build that fan base again.

In a perfect world, when would you sign your first player?

We will have to sign players to play in the games this coming January. So there will be signatures from players on contracts for next year’s games this coming January onwards. For a supposed MLS team, it would be the year before. There will be two different types if you like.

I’m curious to pick your brain about your learning curve coming into MLS. Your time at the Galaxy is well known, but what even did you know about MLS before that, and what has your experience thus far taught you?

I do understand it a little bit better from working with Tim Leiweke and the Galaxy guys a few years back. I had to gain an understanding of it then, and I think things are changing year on year. I think the league evolves. I think the commissioner has done a tremendous job, genuinely, on growing and developing the league worldwide. Each year there is a slight salary increase, or there’s an adaptation of the number of marquee players. All the things are being done positively step by step by step, nothing drastic that could come back to bite the league.

What did you learn from your time at the Galaxy and what will you take from that here with the Cosmos?

I learned that 3-4 years ago, there was no youth structure. And that’s why we’re doing it like we’re doing it. If you speak to the guys in Vancouver, or to Joe Roth in Seattle, they are investing heavily in their youth structure, because they know it’s the way to produce their own players for the future. That’s a major change, but there are so many things that you are good at in the U.S.—talk about surgery and things on the medical front where you were very advanced compared to Europe in some cases, but there were other things when I first went to the Galaxy that they weren’t doing, that in Europe we were doing tens years ago. So I think the integration of some of the marquee players helps. I think that is what evolved the Premiership, when Gianfranco Zola, Gianluca Vialli came over.

When it became the global league.

It did. Dennis Bergkamp changed the mindset at Arsenal if you speak to their players. After the game they used to drink in the players bar. But Dennis explained to some of the players that drinking alcohol after exercise dehydrates the body. It’s just what they did ten years ago. Today I think he has transformed that side of it. What the players eat—diet and nutrition has become critical now. I look at David’s rehabilitation from his Achilles injury. He came back within five months. And two or three years ago, players weren’t doing that.

Or before that perhaps his career would be over.

Yeah, and quite possibly with a lesser character, it might have, but I think worldwide soccer has got so much faster, it’s improving technically, and I think the same is happening here in the States.

What specifically were a few of those things that the Galaxy weren’t doing that they were doing in Europe?

Even just silly things like after training, players weren’t provided with the right carbohydrate meals, or food wasn’t being supplied. I’m not gonna name the kid, but one of our best players at the time was leaving training and going to McDonalds. When you sat down and analyzed the salary he was on, the reason he was going to McDonalds is that was all he could afford after training. So I think as the salary cap improved, those players earned slightly more money, so I think the players are benefiting more and more over the last few years from the training. But it has taken the owners of MLS to be willing to make those changes.

I know Tim will do whatever it takes to make the Galaxy more successful, so he’s always been open to ideas in a positive way and was never ever once, “You’re not going to do that because it costs us more money.” What he actually asked me to do was act as a consultant to him and look at three or four things. One was scouting; how do you identify players and set up a scouting network? Two was the youth academy. Three was diet and nutrition, physiotherapy and fitness training. Well, those were things that probably we were ahead on slightly in Europe because of the evolution of the league. I think he made a lot of positive changes for the Galaxy, which the players there now are reaping the benefit from.

One of the last quotes I read from Tim about your time at the Galaxy is that he considered you still friends but that you probably weren’t too happy with him. Is that relationship repaired? What do you take away from your time there, the Beckham Experiment book by Grant Wahl…

It’s really interesting.

…the secret hierarchy that was said to be going on?

Yeah. I’ll talk about Grant’s book first. When Grant wrote the book, he called me afterwards, having not spoken to me, and asked me to explain my side of things. When I explained it, his words to me was, “I wish I had spoken to you beforehand; the book’s already gone to print.” I said, look Grant; I’m a big boy. I’ve been in the game a long time. I’ve got broad shoulders. If people want to paint me as the bad guy, I’m an easy scapegoat, not a problem. I had a great relationship with Tim, and if I saw him today I’d give him a hug, just as he would give me a hug. I have nothing but respect for Tim and what he has achieved, and as a person, he is a great great man. If he thinks that I am angry with him about the way that it was ended, I think it was just because I was hung out to be the scapegoat at the time. I wasn’t the only person who recommended Ruud Gullit at the time, and you know, you live by your mistakes. If it was a mistake at the time, it was, but I have nothing against Tim whatsoever.

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EDIT: I spoke to Grant Wahl after speaking to Terry; this is what Grant said about the phone call:

“I wanted to make sure he was saying this on the record because the conversation took place on background and the agreement was I would not name him, and I held to my end of that agreement. I never said publicly that I spoke to him. But if he is saying on the record it happened, then I feel like it’s ok for me to comment on it. I told him at the time that it was right before we began to close on the book, but that we could have a few changes that could be made, and a few changes were in fact made. It wasn’t as extensive as maybe he would have liked, but it added to the context because he was providing his side of the story, which I had been looking for for a long time. I would say for almost two years I repeatedly asked Simon Oliveira, David Beckham’s representative, if he could set up an interview between me and Terry Byrne for the book, and they never agreed to it. I said I would go anywhere on Earth to meet this guy. The only reason a conversation took place was because the first press release came out for the book a few months before it came out, and it talked about how, if I recall correctly, Beckham and his best friend Terry Byrne engineered a shadow take-over of the Los Angeles Galaxy. And only once that went public did I get a call saying Terry wanted to talk to me now. We had a fairly lengthy conversation; I remember saying to him, ‘Terry, it would be nice if this conversation had taken place several months ago. Then I could have gotten more of your voice into the story and had that perspective.’ It was a cordial conversation. I spoke to him again a few weeks ago about Cosmos stuff, and I am hoping to meet him up in New York again for lunch pretty soon here.”

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The city’s youth got more than a rare glimpse of the Cosmos during their heyday

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Is the youth development the biggest thing you learned at the Galaxy? Is it that important in your mind?

Two things: one is the style of play you have to have. Bruce has done a fantastic job and instilled his style of play, and for the Cosmos, I think we have to have an entertaining style of play. I’m sure everybody will be saying it’s all about winning. For me, it’s just as important, the Cosmos are, to play an entertaining style of football. So our under-8’s currently are playing the same style as the under-18’s. They play a 4-3-3.

Easier said than done, but a man after my heart.

Yeah, but there is a reason behind it. If you analyze what Cruyff did going to Barcelona, Pep Guardiola is the first team coach, but he played in that system. So it’s no coincidence when Spain goes on to win the World Cup, and they have 8 out of the starting 11 at Barcelona.

You could argue for Germany too, at least playing a much more entertaining style than years past.

And Jurgen changed that. Look at what he did with that team. In six months he completely transformed them. The way Spain play, I’d pay every week to watch that if I could. Every day you want to watch a game with that style of play. We’ve gone from big physical midfield players to Iniesta being one of the best players in the world to watch. David Villa as a striker—his movement. And that’s not even mentioning Lionel Messi, you know? So we’d like to play a 4-3-3, and we will teach it from a young age to our first team.

Did you pull some of your youth knowledge through the Beckham academies?

Not really. His academy was built off the back of, originally, David giving something back to the sport. We were never about elitism. We took boys and girls who never kicked a ball before and gave them a fun experience. The only thing that it taught me is in building facilities and stuff like that, the infrastructure. I now know what is needed for an academy, where as at Chelsea, I wasn’t very involved in that.

The most recent press there of course was it disappearing. Was there a main reason for that? Did it fail, or was it just a personal or business decision?

No, the truth be known, the London one, firstly, was a fantastic facility, but it was on a short lease on land. We could only have it for five years, and then it was going to be a part of the London Olympic facilities. So it was only going to be for five years in London. In Los Angeles, we never built the facility we said we were going to build. And that was probably an AEG decision based on David’s potentially going to Milan or wherever, and I think that all came to a grinding halt.

And the last $60,000 Beckham question relating to the Cosmos—the clause in his MLS contract that says he can be a team owner when he retires. With your involvement, people want to assume he is joining you guys. Is he?

It’s really funny because I had dinner with him this week in Los Angeles. And I said to him, every time my name is mentioned everyone thinks it’s because of David that I am doing this, or David is behind it.

Not really knowing you had left David at the time, and though impossible to avoid the connection, I kind of saw it initially as a surprise: Terry’s stepping out.

Completely you are correct. But there was a phase between—I managed David for a reason. One, he was my best friend at the time, and we still are the best of friends. I am godfather to his kids, and he is godfather of my son. I did it for a five-year period. We agreed that I would do it for a period and step away from it. When David went to LA, I went and had the school done for the kids; I went and got the house. I was secure that Tim would look after David, and then it was my time to step away. I then had our first child at home back in the UK; I also represented the England current squad commercially. I own the company that manages the England commercial program. So I concentrated on that for the next two or three years and this opportunity came up.

So, it’s very much me doing something for me, for my family. I keep David abreast of the situation of course. Everybody says to me David, Pele, and the Cosmos are a golden ticket, but I don’t think that’s the plan. I don’t think that that’s—David has an option on a franchise definitely, but it was never our intention, and even in the board meeting we had recently, we discussed it because everybody is mentioning it. It’s not our intention to approach David. We are the New York Cosmos. If David wants to join us in a couple of years, fine, but right now it’s not on the agenda. Genuinely, it’s not. And I wouldn’t be that disrespectful of Tim in LA. David is a LA Galaxy player and has another year on his contract. And that’s what everybody forgets.

It would seem to me that if you learned anything from LA, it was that one guy does not make a team, much less a league. Which so relates to the Cosmos history. David got the stadium treatment of big crowds the first season or so, but then it went back to normal for the most part.

I agree. You need more than one player on any team that is marketable. I think the Red Bulls have done a tremendous job in getting Marquez. I think he will be as influential as Thierry if not more with the Hispanic and Mexican community, but I think you need three or four potential marquee players in any club. I remember when Tim and I were discussing, more than a year before David was coming, we were talking about bringing Zizou, David, Ronaldo, and four or five players out of Real Madrid that could have had a major impact on the league. And for whatever reason that didn’t happen, but I don’t think any one player can change a league for sure. I think you can raise the profile slightly, but are you going to affect results week in week out? No, one player can’t do that.

As Director of Soccer, what are you looking for then? What is your perfect team?

My perfect team is a combination of homegrown and international players from wherever they may be. If that’s the best players from the U.S. and some from Europe, that would be my dream. I won’t unveil my dream team because we will probably never get to it, but I’m thinking positionally specific. There are certain players that suit the 4-3-3, and I will play around with that on a little board week in week out. We had a really good meeting with Gio Savarese and Teddy Chronopoulos (director of LA academy) about what kind of system we would play. I said go away and write down your starting 11 in that system. And it’s amazing how many players you come up with that are similar in their positions, but if I said in the holding midfield position the best I’ve ever seen is Claude Makelele, and then use that player as an example of what you are looking for, then you have to look to develop those kind of kids. If I say Marcus Cafu at right back, you need someone who is up and down. Got the engine to get up and get back—that’s the style of players we are looking at, not necessarily the player.

I’d love to see more defenders like that. There’s not too many of those here.

Chris Albright, before he was injured.

Bornstein.

Bornstein is a good example, but there aren’t that many players like that in Europe.

A big defensive signing would be a different approach. Are you open-minded enough to throw a DP spot on an outside back?

I remember Glenn Hoddle when he first came to Chelsea. He said he wanted to sign Laurent Blanc as a sweeper. He wanted Paul Ince, Les Ferdinand, and Alan Shearer as a spine for his team. He said if you build the spine strongly, everything else around it will feed off of it. I think if you were allowed to bring in a great keeper, a central defender, a midfield player, and a striker, you’d have a great formation of taking the team to a new level.

Right now the Cosmos rest in the eyes of most fans as little more than a marketing engine. There is some worry, some cynicism, ‘oh what is this going to be?’ One of those people walks up to you on the street and recognizes you: “Terry, what the hell is going on with the Cosmos? I see a bunch of posters, but am I supposed to buy into this?” What do you say? What’s your sales pitch?

Judge me by my actions, not by the words at the moment. Within six months people will realize what we’re doing. From January onwards, once we start to announce the games, the players. I think after the first game that we celebrate next summer, and it will be a celebration game as opposed to any normal game. Next year is the 40th year since the birth of the Cosmos. So next year will be a massive celebration of the rebirth if you like, but judge us on our actions. We are going after the MLS franchise, we are going after building a stadium, we are going after the MLS team, then judge us over the next two or three years, not at the moment. You need something. The marketing side as you quite rightly say is what people are seeing, because you need people to be aware that it is coming back, but then we have to back up what we’re talking about. I didn’t leave what I’ve been doing in England—running the England national team’s commercial program for the last four years and move my wife and family out here because I didn’t believe it was substantial enough for us to deliver what we say we are going to deliver. So that is why I am here.

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Check back in the coming days for Part 2 of The Cosmos Interviews, with Executive Director Joe Fraga, where we dig deeper into the Cosmos’ grassroots progress.

Follow TIAS on Twitter.

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You’ve probably heard of the soccer documentary Pelada, and probably wished it had been you who made it. If not the travel alone, than how about the film? To have that document for the future–stories for the grandkids–and the pride of success and awards. We should all be so lucky. In a sense.

When one of the filmmakers, Gwendolyn Oxenham, first wrote me, I congratulated her on the success of the film; it seemed like every time I updated Twitter someone was talking about how good it was, or how excited they were to see it.

“Oh I’m glad you think it’s a success,” she replied. “Sometimes I don’t know. Great to hear you think our film has been successful in the soccer world; as someone who spends my days cold-calling clubs (”Hi, my name is Gwendolyn and I made this movie about pickup… you should come to our screening…”), it’s hard to believe it.  None of the coaches have ever heard of the movie, and I’m rebuffed in the same way you’d get rid of someone trying to sell you insurance.”

I should have known better. First, Twitter’s knowledge and reach is only as great, as wide as your followers, and anyway, the telling signs are plastered all over TIAS. The reality of the soccer reporting, the soccer storytelling world is hardly one of easy success, and the stories of the hardships and compromises of those who toil away in the fields are at TIAS like midfielders for the men’s national team: plenty to choose from, all about the same, take your pick.

I should have known an independent documentary about soccer was not going to be easy to make, much less get out to the public (marketing is a hell of a drug). So I asked Gwendolyn to share her creation story…

a movie introduction as only Ray Hudson could give.

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The Making of Pelada

by Gwendolyn Oxenham

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Over the past three years, we slept in twenty-five countries, reversed down two main highways, got mugged in Argentina, attacked by a baboon in Kenya, detained in Israel, and reported to the government in Iran—all in the process of making a documentary about pickup soccer around the world.

Luke and I are has-beens.  He was a center midfielder for Notre Dame who scored big goals in big games.  I was the youngest Division I athlete in the history of the NCAA, a starter and leading goal scorer for Duke at sixteen-years-old.  By twenty-two, our careers were over.  We tried the whole find-another-life thing:  Luke worked with billboards and I lived on a writing grant.  But we still played at night, doing one-v-ones in the parking lot of the social services building.  During an alumni weekend, I went back to Duke to sit on the sideline and watch 90 minutes of my old life.  Afterward, I met up with my friend Ferg, a freshman on the team when I was a senior.  Like me, she’d gone on to spend all her time in the Documentary Studies program.  We were both the over-thinker sort, spending as much time wondering what the game meant as we did playing it.  So we spent a late night in the library, drinking coffee and jotting “pickup” and “around the world” onto a legal pad.  As far as we could tell, pickup was the part of the game with the most to offer…and the part of the game no one ever talked about.

Then it was two weeks of “Are you serious?  I’m serious.  Let’s actually do it…” When we applied for the $5000 Beneson Arts grant, they told us not to mention the around-the-world part—it sounded too big, too impossible.  So we wrote about South America and won the grant.  Luke was easy to convince.  Then we called up Ryan, my camera partner from college, a guy with a great eye and great instincts, and talked him into wandering around the world with us.  We ambushed our favorite professor, who took us to the Provost, a man who happened to have spent the last thirty years playing in pickup games.  He gave us a Duke Arts Initiative grant, and suddenly, the notes on our legal pad were things that were actually going to happen—we had enough for two cameras, fancy microphones, and a tripod.   We spent the next six months raising more money—writing fundraising letters to anyone from my grandma’s eye doctor to friends of distant, distant relatives.

It’s not easy to ask people for money.  “So let me get this straight,” Mr. Davis, my dad’s friend, said into the phone.  “You want me to give you money. So that you can travel around the world.  Playing soccer.”  Um, well…yeah.  I tried to explain what the game had to offer:  the connective quality, it’s ability to provide a window into the spectrum of culture.  I told him about the Mennonites who play in the Bolivian Jungle and the Peruvian women who herd llamas all day and then play in hoop skirts way up in the mountains—but my heart pounded and I stuttered and mumbled and paced, until I just said bye and hung up the phone, sinking down into the couch.  But some of those sweaty-palmed phone calls went a little better; people liked the idea of helping kids chase down a long-shot idea.  In six months, we raised enough for plane tickets to South America.  Then we tracked down places to stay, looking for couches and floors of friends of friends.

On June 16th, we took off.  First stop: Port of Spain, Trinidad.

I imagined the “Caribbean”—cool breezes and palm trees—but it was the city and it was hot.  My club coach was a 6’2’’ Trinidadian who used to train dogs for the Port of Spain police force.  He brought his family to the US when the drug corruption from Venezuela seeped into his own department.  After one winter staying indoors in New York, they headed south to Osceola, where he’d heard of a conversion van factory with job openings.  They stopped in Pensacola on the way down and never left.  At a Sunday pickup game, one of the guys he played with asked him to coach a team of eight-year-old girls.  He laughed and said no, but he went out to the practice just to watch.  After leaning against the fence for forty minutes, he walked over to the dad.  “Man’s out there doing a bunch of junk.  Give me the balls.”   He coached Samba for the next ten years.  He got us scholarships to Division I schools across the country—Harvard, Vandy, Duke, Naval Academy, Southeast Louisiana, Auburn, Florida, USF.  Now, each time one of us gets married, the guy calls our dads first, our Coach second.

So Trinidad is the logical first stop—we’ll be able to speak the language, we can stay with Coach’s family, and his old soccer cohorts can help us find a game.  Ron Laforest, a former T&T forward who once scored a hat trick against Arsenal, told us to meet him at the field. We’d explained we were looking for pickup…but hadn’t yet realized that “pickup” doesn’t translate:  when we got to the field, semi-pro players were lacing up their cleats and getting ready for a practice.  Practices are exactly what we weren’t looking for, but we didn’t have the heart to tell Ron:  Luke and I joined in.  They’d lost their last two games, so Ron made them run punishment-fitness.  Because Luke and I didn’t want to be the Americans who were too good for sprints, I found myself running at top speed while desperately and futilely attempting to keep up with tall Trinidadians.

When the practice ended, we tried again to explain what we are looking for—informal games, games that don’t count, games played just because.  “Ahh,” he said, smiling hugely, his gold front teeth shining in the sunlight.  “You want to take a sweat.”  We stared at him blankly.  “Taking a sweat, that is what we call it.  You must go to the fields at 5 pm.  You will see.”

So at 4:30 pm, we arrived at the fields.  They were completely empty.

This is when we begin to deflate:  we thought people played all around the world but maybe we were wrong, maybe this is a bad idea, maybe we shouldn’t have given up our apartments, our jobs, our health insurance in order to search for soccer.  Maybe this wasn’t going to work.

We formed a depressing little circle and began to juggle.  Over Luke’s left shoulder, I saw a man coming out to the field, and then I saw another, and then another—it was like the scene from Field of Dreams when the ballplayers materialize in the outfield.  The four of us looked at each other, eyes bright with the optimism we lacked ten minutes ago.  Luke and I made our way over to the players.  The guy closest had long, long dreadlocks and he stared straight ahead when I asked, “Do you think we could play with you guys?”  He still didn’t look at me but he nodded his head, almost imperceptibly, and I made a note to myself that I needed to get better at asking to join games.  Fifteen minutes later, we were playing, and all that awkwardness had gone away: we were no longer Americans, just players, playing with everyone else.

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Next it was three months in South America:  we searched for gauchos that may or may not still exist in the rural countryside of Uruguay.  We drove eight hours along dirt roads in search of those Mennonites who play in the Bolivian Amazon.  (When we got there, they said, “No, no, we don’t play ball here—our farm keeps us busy.”)  We went inside a Brazilian favela where an eighteen year old with a giant machine gun in his hand hummed the theme song from Kill Bill and called out to us in perfect English, “Welcome to Rocinha, the most beautiful place on earth.” We played with eighty-year-olds who drew up rosters on a Playboy, stretched for a very long time, and then played barefoot, knocking the hell out of each other every Sunday morning.  We bribed our way into a Bolivian prison and played on a triangular court with inmates.   We played with a thirteen-year-old so good the neighborhood nicknamed her Ronaldinha.   We left the continent convinced that we had something, that one way or another, we had to find a way to get to the rest of the world.

(In Trinidad, whenever we told someone what we were doing, they’d ask us, “How many countries have you been to?” Then we’d mumble, “Well, uh, it’s actually our first country,” and you could see in the nod of the person’s head that they didn’t believe we’d really do it.  We weren’t sure we believed it ourselves.)

Back in the United States, we edited around the clock in Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies.  They gave us keys to the building—two of us did the day shift, two of us took the night shift.  We slept at friends’ houses and ate the leftover bagels and cheese platters from the CDS photography events.  Our college professors watched rough cuts and helped us try to figure out how to shape hundreds of hours of footage into an hour-long cut.  On the other side of the country, Luke’s mom sent his hometown paper a my-son-is-doing-this-movie sort of email.  A week later, a big article appeared in the OC Register; the reporter called us:  “There’s this guy with a Scottish accent who saw your story in the paper and told me, ‘I want to make this happen for these kids’…and he sounds like he might mean it.”  Les Allan, soccer-loving Scot, watched the South America cut and signed on as an investor.  We understood that we were very, very lucky.

After two months in Africa and Europe, we returned to Durham, North Carolina, only to pack our lives into our cars and head out to Los Angeles, where we’d meet our investor and finish our film.  The economy crashed during our drive across the country.  When we arrived in LA, Les took us to a Mexican restaurant and told us apologetically that he couldn’t fund the rest of our movie.  Our old cars had too many miles on them to make it back across the country.  So we overstayed our welcome at friends’ apartments, ate peanut butter sandwiches, filmed weddings and answered flyers that say things like “Get paid $100 to drink”—all while we figured out how to finish the film.  We raised $11,000 through $20 Facebook donations and anonymous checks from generous strangers who said things like “Show America the world speaks the same language; show the world America speaks the same language.”  It was enough to get us to Japan, China, and Iran…but, we were still in need of computers and editing systems, so to use the money for travel instead of hardware would be a giant risk.

Ferg saw an ad at the Melrose Mac store in Santa Monica: submit a trailer to win $10,000 of Apple merchandise.  She brought back the flyer and we all sat there staring at.  There was a fleeting moment of great hope, followed by a feeling of contest-despair—what is the likelihood of actually winning a contest?  But we made the trailer and were selected as one of ten finalists—then we had to figure out how to get votes.  I convinced an old coach to give me the login info for a server that allows you to send an email to every college coach in the country. Luke and I sent so many emails our yahoo accounts were turned off for two days.  Then the soccer bloggers got a hold of it—soon Soccerbyives put us on his site, and our hits went from 30 something to 600 something. Then it was months of waiting—we were supposed to find out June 1st but then it was June 15th and we still hadn’t heard.  We took off for Iran—which was foolish; if we lost the contest, we’d have no way to finish the film.  We were sitting in an internet café in Tehran, Iran when we got the news—we had 900 more votes than second place.  Ferg and I both jumped up and gasped while the boys patted our arms and mumbled, “Shh.”

We had editing equipment—we had a way of finishing the movie.  The next six months we carted the computers between apartments.  (“My cousin’s out of town this week—we can work at her place.”  “Maisie said she didn’t care if you guys slept over again.”)  Then there were what we refer to as Ferg’s crack-addict days; between odd jobs and a night-shift bagging groceries at Trader Joe’s, she finally saved up enough to rent a bedroom in an apartment listed on Craigslist.  It was big enough to fit a computer in the corner, so we sat on her bed, eating trail mix and sweating from the heat of the monitors and the heat of the Los Angeles summer.

One morning, after we’d worked until three or four am and then passed out, three of us sprawled across her bed, we got back up at 9am.  When we heard a knock at the door, Ferg went to answer it.  She came back holding an eviction notice in her hand. She sat down on the bed and mumbled, “It says three months unpaid rent.”  Ferg has one of those faces that turns colors any time she’s angry or embarrassed; you could see the red spreading up her neck and across her cheeks.  “Where the hell has my rent money been going? I’ve been writing him a check every month.”  (This is around the time we develop our theory that Ferg’s roommate is a crack addict.)

Pink flyer in hand, she knocked on his bedroom door.  Ryan and I sat there listening as their voices got louder and louder:

“That was the landlord—why are we getting an eviction notice?”  She tried to keep her voice calm but we could hear it tremble.

“What are you doing with my mail?” he asked, emerging from his room and shutting the door tightly behind him.  (He always kept it tightly shut and entered the room from the balcony.)

“Where has my rent money been going?”
“You need to mind your (expletive) business.”
“It is my business—I need to know if I’m still going to have a place to live.”
“Listen (expletive), my check is going to get here tomorrow.  You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
“How do I know that?”
“Are you calling me a liar?” he screamed.  “Get out—get out now.”
“What do you mean get out?”
“You have one hour to be out of here. Pack your shit and get the (expletive) out of here.”

You can’t just throw your roommate out without warning, so we sort of ignored him, Ryan and I continuing to edit as Ferg sat back down on the bed, fuming.

Then the roommate came in.  He stood just past the doorway, “I want you to get the (expletive) out of my house. Get the (expletive) out of my house.”

Ryan, maybe because he’s slightly older than we are, is better at arguing.  Calmly, he said, “You can’t do that—you have no rights to throw her out.”  He turned away from him and continued to edit.

Ten minutes later, as we trimmed final shots and adjusted subtitles, our computers went dead.  From behind us, we heard a sinister voice: “Yep, I turned off the power,” he said, cackling, arms folded in front of his chest.  “Now get the hell out of my apartment.”  In the kitchen, he threw Ferg’s pots and pans off the shelves.  He grabbed garbage bags and tossed Ferg’s belongings into it. “Ok, ok,” she said.  “I’ll leave.”

Even though, after three years, we were only about an hour away from finishing the first full cut of our film, we surrendered the fight and started helping Ferg pack.  Like the roommate, we packed her things into garbage bags and started making trips out to the street, filling our cars with her life.  My car was a solid eight hundred yards away and when I went to find a closer spot, it wouldn’t start.  It had made it through 190,000 miles, but today, it refused to kick up.  We filled it up anyway, not knowing where else to stick her stuff.  I called Luke, who’d started law school a few weeks earlier, and tried to get him to explain the trick for getting it going.  Still, I couldn’t get it.  Two hours later, Ryan drove a load to his friend’s house and Ferg and I sat on the curb with her Craigslist-dresser.  Her arms draped over her knees, she looked pretty defeated. “Do I make bad decisions?” she asked, more unsure than I’d ever heard her sound.

“There’s no way you could have known he was a crack addict,” I told her as I patted her head.  We sat there in silence, sweating.  It started feeling funny, really funny.  Three years ago, we were in a library, hatching a plan; now we were here, on the curb.

When Ryan returned, we packed up the file cabinet and the dresser.  We gave my car one last go—Ferg gunning the engine, then throwing it into drive.  The car started rolling down the hill, Ferg hopped out:  “Get in!” I jumped into the seat, getting my foot on the break right as I got to the stop sign.

I look at that day as one of our best:  there’s something great about pursuing something you believe in, even as everything falls down around you.  (Of course, I wasn’t the one who’d just gotten thrown out.)

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On March 14, 2010, after spending months huddled around the bed, editing 400 hours of footage into 90 minutes, we made our international premiere at SXSW.  In the time since then, we’ve set up screenings across the country, filling indy theaters, high school auditoriums, community churches, any place we can afford.  On September 21st, we had our New York premiere.  Not at a theater—which would’ve cost $3500 we didn’t have—but at Legends Bar, a three-story venue with a projector screen, a dozen-odd flat screens, and a Scottish lady named Geraldine who was willing to let us take over for a night.

The soccer bloggers have been massively helpful, embracing our film—from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, from New York to Ft. Lauderdale, the writers have played a huge part in getting people out to the shows: we feel incredibly grateful. Still, most of the soccer people I talk to have never heard of our doc. Since we have no money for traditional promotion, I cold-call soccer clubs:  Hi, my name is Gwendolyn and I made this movie about pickup…you guys should come…  I must sound like a weirdo.  Sometimes a coach will be enthusiastic—he’ll say, “That sounds great—my players have got to see it,” but a lot of the time coaches rebuff me in the same way you’d get rid of someone trying to sell you insurance.  Last week, I called a club in San Diego and the guy who listened to my schpeel replied, “No, I don’t think that’s something our players would be interested in.”

“You don’t think your players would be interested in a movie about soccer around the world?”

Click.

Yesterday I called a club director in New York who said, “Look I am very, very busy.  I don’t have time to talk to you.”

“But I swear you would like it,” I mumbled.

“Have a good day,” she said, hanging up.

Next I called up a group of Brooklyn-based Italians and the guy cut me off mid-pitch—“I’m busy,” he said, hanging up.

And I get it—I’d be skeptical too if some stranger called me up and tried to pitch me something. I know there’s got to be a better way to do it. When you’re making the movie, when you’re playing with moonshine brewers in Kenya or riding a bus with a broken window on an all night drive in the middle of the Bolivian winter, you’re not thinking about the next stage—how you’re going to get anyone to watch.

Reaching beyond the soccer community is even rougher.  At the film festivals, we’ve overheard people say, “Oh, Pelada—the sports movie right?  I don’t want to watch a movie about soccer.”  I’m the dorky dad of the bunch, the embarrassing one who will go up to them and say, “No, I swear, it’s not just about soccer.” When we do get non-soccer-lovers, they seem shocked by how much they like it:  “I didn’t want to go!  My boyfriend forced me to come!  I am so glad I did—I get it now, I get him!”

One way or another—most likely not because of my phone calls—people have been hearing about our film. We’ve gotten great reviews in the New York Times, Variety, and papers across the country. About 400 people showed up in New York.  Six hundred people came to our outdoor screening in Durham.  Four-hundred and fifty plus people watched in DC and Irvine (some people sitting on the floor).  We sold out Kansas City, Irvine, Newport Beach, and Atlanta.  In Portland, we had a week-long theater run:  while there were only thirty people at the first screening, by the end of the week, we were the theater’s highest grossing film.  After a screening in Vail, one-hundred-plus people walked to the neighboring field and started playing in pick up games.

Still, I’m always convinced no one’s going to show. There’s a scene in Little Man Tate where he passes out flyers for his birthday party and then no one comes.  (And this sort of happened to me: I had my seventh birthday party at a Burger King in Slidell, Louisiana and only one kid came—the two of us sat there with our little crowns on, eating French fries.)  So now, before every screening—and we get there an hour early to start taking tickets—I spend forty-five minutes positive no one is coming.  But ten minutes before show time, people begin to arrive.  (Well, most of the time—there have been a couple of screenings where my Little Man Tate vision came true.)

In the next couple months, we’ve got screenings in Calgary, Corona Del Mar, San Antonio, and Gainesville…and we’re still trying for St. Louis, Salt Lake, and Miami.  In between my real job as a professor at a community college, I’ll call every soccer club I can find on google, write posts on the soccer forums, and email as many addresses as I can pick off the Internet.  Hopefully, people will show up.

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Photos and text courtesy and copyright of Gwendolyn Oxenham.

Learn more about the film, buy the DVD, and find screenings near you at pelada-movie.com/.

Got a soccer story to tell? Join the Diary Project by writing the editor at thisisamericansoccer@gmail.com