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| Friday, September 14, 2001 24:20 EST |
Sorry, Charlie; good luck, Nick
By Jamie Trecker
[Special to ESPN.com]
CHICAGO -- Finally, finally, the New York/New Jersey MetroStars closed the chapter on Charlie Stillitano on Wednesday. Why it took four embarrassing years of vile performances at Giants Stadium to end this general manager's tenure is inexplicable, but Major League Soccer today is kind of like that: many of the moves the league makes defy logic.
Consider this: Stillitano's replacement is Tampa Bay GM Nick Sakiewicz, a nice enough fellow who comes from a team that has been a perennial underachiever at the gate and of questionable quality on the field. Peter Wilt this guy ain't.
But Sakiewicz is competent, if unspectacular, so I can't really find too
much fault with his appointment. What I find bizarre is that in removing him from Tampa, MLS has left a void in a very unsteady market. And what is MLS going to fill that void with? The Tampa Tribune's Bill Ward reports that Bill Manning, president of the A-League Minnesota Thunder, has been offered the job, which would make him the latest in a string of A-League guys to get call-ups.
This, folks, is lunacy.
Why MLS persists in elevating people from a league where budgets are
routinely falsified (see my column on the San Francisco Seals, where their president revealed his team operated nowhere near the $1 million mark the USL claims its team adhere to), where no team save Rochester makes money and where the average crowd wouldn't fill the average high school gym, defies any sort of rational analysis.
In a time when MLS has gone out of its way to hire a heavy hitter like Don Garber, why are individual teams allowed to hire GMs who lack major-league clout into a league that has the word "major" in its very name?
MLS needs people who can perform extraordinary tasks at this point in time: this move just throws another log on the fire. Realistically, what moves can a guy with no contacts, no clout and few inroads in the community make?
These same questions entered my head when I interviewed the last guy from the A-League that MLS elevated: Curt Johnson joined the sinking Kansas City Wizards from the A-League Richmond Riverboat Gamblers. When I spoke with him, just before Christmas, he had precious few answers for the big questions. Why? Because he can't have the answers -- he's another young guy who's probably underpaid and seriously out of his depth.
Johnson has no pedigree to speak of in the Kansas City business community, and he has little to no clout in the world of sports at large. Despite being a "soccer person," it has become apparent that soccer isn't what sells most MLS games -- even Johnson admits as much. "Our biggest successes were the women's game and the final game of the season, which featured a concert. We have to provide a good entertainment value," said Johnson.
Ironically, Johnson's words echo some paragraphs in the Tampa Bay Mutiny press release I received about Sakiewicz's departure. To quote:
"Sakiewicz's strong marketing skills brought Central Florida soccer fans
some great entertainment options with concerts such as the Village People, 10,000 Maniacs ... and the Goo Goo Dolls."
To my knowledge, none of the above are particularly good at beating the offside trap; it seems from this as if Sakiewicz's strongest credentials as a "soccer person" revolve around non-soccer events!
So, if this is the case, why hire a "soccer guy" at all? Why not hire a
good business man, a good manager, or a good marketer? Why, why hire someone from a league where 98 percent of the teams aren't remotely profitable?
I can't answer that, unfortunately. I suspect it's because once again,
MLS owners are unwilling to promote the few good people from within that they have cultivated (I am now convinced that John Borozzi, despite having shored up not one but two teams, will never get a job at the top) and furthermore, unwilling to spend the cash to hire people from other -- successful -- leagues.
Oh, and by the way, about Charlie S.? He's not going away. No, not in this league. He's going to MetroMedia, the MetroStars' parent company.
His job? To oversee the formation of a second New York MLS team. If it wasn't all so sad, this really would be funny.
Jamie Trecker, editor of Kick! magazine, writes regularly for ESPN.com. You may e-mail him at jamie_trecker@go.com; while he guarantees he will read all letters, he regrets that he cannot guarantee a reply because of overwhelming volume.
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