Yes, with the NSC regular season just a couple days away, I’ve been focused more on the micro lately. A step back to the macro and a look at the weekend’s Summit for American Soccer hosted by Chattanooga FC. Regular readers know my passion for the health of the game at all levels. It likely pales in comparison to every one of these folks.
While no large group is going to reach complete consensus on every topic, simply bringing together a number of different voices to discuss how to make soccer economically viable – and accessible – for all those with a passion for the game is important in itself.
Enter the Summit for American Soccer. Last weekend, Chattanooga FC invited a number of stakeholders in lower-division US Soccer clubs and leagues to the Scenic City for a discussion of the future of the game.
“My executive committee and I just kind of looked around and said, ‘if not us, then who? We’ve gotta do it,'” explained CFC chairman Tim Kelly. “‘We can do it on a game day, and if five people show up, it’s better than none.’ It turns out quite a few showed up. We just stepped into the gap and put it together over the course of a couple of weeks.
“The crux of the thing was, ‘how do we create economically sustainable teams independent of league.’ I think one thing you could argue is the major malfunction of American soccer at this point – and the difference between the way we do it and the rest of the world – is that here, we put leagues above team, as though leagues are the most important thing. Leagues are not the most important thing, teams are the most important thing, clubs are the most important thing. That was the functional thesis of the meeting: how do we create an economically-sustainable ecosystem for teams, for clubs? Thinking of leagues more as networks and platforms that hold clubs together. It’s not a revolutionary idea, right? It’s the way the rest of the world does it.”
Certainly those who would like to see the game excel in our country – for example, those dismayed to not see the USMNT in this Summer’s World Cup – know that there’s an importance in the health of soccer at all levels. The Summit for American Soccer certainly had a ground-up approach to the solution there, rather than the top-down (effectively MLS-down) approach we’ve seen in our country since that league’s founding in 1996.
Giving clubs the resources they need to budget for varying lengths of season, how to be focused on the community, rather than the league, and how to secure or plan funding for sustainability was a key to the meeting’s run of show. With speakers from various relevant parties – investment capital firms, supporters’ groups, successful clubs – there was plenty of material for participants to digest.
“We covered a lot of areas, both from general best-practices to some of our team economics, to we had a section on financing where we brought in a very smart lady [Kim Arnone] from Cutting Edge Capital out in Oakland, who talked about ways to do supporter group financing – crowd-funding,” Kelly explained. “We talked about options and interest from private equity, if critical mass can be reached, I think a lot of things are possible, I think there’s a lot of investment that would come into the space if we were able to get critical mass. We definitely made progress. I had a couple people tell me afterwards that they thought it was he most productive meeting they’ve been in in 20 years as far as American soccer was concerned.”
There were plenty of “lightbulb moments,” with ideas – or even topics – that had gone previously undiscussed by many of the participants brought right to the forefront.
“There were more than one: there were quite a few,” Kelly continued. “Robert Palmer, the owner of Jacksonville Armada, had what seemed at first like some offbeat ideas, but honestly I was very impressed with him after meeting and hearing him out. I think coming into the meeting, I was a little suspicious of his motives, but afterwards was very much impressed and I’m a big fan of his. I think some of the ideas he had about modular stadiums were interesting.
“Obviously, we’re looking for ways to play more games, basically for some of the clubs that are ready to do that. The USASA was there. The ASL up around Philadelphia uses the USASA as a professional sanctioning body, essentially: they play pro soccer under USASA, so that was a really interesting idea. Those are just two of the many. There were a lot; it was definitely a brain-fry. We basically had three days of meetings in six hours.”
The discussion of United States Adult Soccer Association as a potential sanctioning body for professional (or semi-professional) teams has been a topic of discussion in the world of US Soccer in recent months. To put it bluntly, there’s not a ton of confidence that organizing leagues – or groups of teams, to use some of the philosophy Kelly has mentioned – within the United States Soccer Federation’s Pro League Standards is a possibility from outside the MLS/USL structure. Certainly, we’ve seen leagues like the NASL fail to cope (though one must assume the take of most at this meeting differs from mine when it comes to the decision to sue the federation to cover for one’s own incompetence) with sanctioning under USSF.
Using USASA – which is granted authority by USSF to sanction leagues, though the vast majority are amateur (per its charter) – as a way to establish competitions outside the structure of the federation itself is a mechanism that was particularly intriguing to those in attendance. That’s, in part, because of an impression that there are simply other priorities at the top level of governance within the United States.
“I’m not a hater, I’m not that guy really,” Kelly said. “They’ve got a lot [to focus on]; I think they just need some strategic clarity as to what they’re doing. Their job, I think if you asked the general manager of US Soccer, he’d say, ‘look, my job is to up every day with one goal in mind: how do we get to the World Cup? And can we host a World Cup?’
“You’ve gotta connect a lot of dots to get all the way back there to the health of the grassroots ecosystem in lower-division American soccer. That’s where I think maybe the USASA comes in: that is the appropriate vehicle for what we’re doing. US Soccer’s got a lot going on, and Carlos Cordeiro says he’s going to bring new leadership and a new focus and a new direction to it, and I hope he does.”
As is often the case when talking about the big picture of soccer in our country, there was plenty of discussion of the concept of promotion/relegation. Understandably, given the standing of many of the clubs and representatives in attendance, there was a strong groundswell in favor.
While the group acknowledges the difficulty in implementing such system, the necessity of it outweighs the cost. It will be one of the points of emphasis when a joint statement is released later today.
“I think the statement literally says, ‘play the world’s game by the world’s rules,’” Kelly explained. “Everybody in that room – I don’t think anybody’s naïve about how difficult it would be to institute in the United States, but we all think it’s very important. Not only to give smaller clubs the opportunity to move up, but because it introduces the economic dynamism necessary to attract investment to create academies at lower levels, and to create investment in lower-league teams for the chance to fight and go up. That’s the engine that drives competitive development around the world. We don’t have it, so we need it.”
There were certainly solutions bandied about in Chattanooga this weekend, and it’s unlikely anybody in attendance would claim to have all the answers. However, Chattanooga FC took a major step in bringing those who want a say, or want to have a voice in the discussion, together. Simply knowing the passion for the game – and the passion to find solutions for those who want to ensure its long-term health – is being supported is a huge benefit to the growth of the sport in our Soccer Nation.
Return later today for an update with a link to the joint statement being prepared by conference participants.
Club and Country 