A new story from Men In Blazers

Men In Blazers
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No wonder on a winning tear, it should be noted last game, three null triumph over the Phoenix rising, take that bit below and fascinated. San Diego, one of the biggest markets currently without an MLS team to often struggle as a football town if we're being honest, short lived teams, San Diego Toros, 1968, San Diego jaws in 1976. I love that teammate. And then the San Diego soccer's 1976 to 84 also a hilarious name. But tell us about the culture, the vision, tell us what you're building in San Diego with all of you. Yeah, I've been here 7 years, so I have just enough context now to understand this town. The reality is, is there's just so much to do here, that you have to be different if you really want to capture people's attention. So on a Saturday, you can go to SeaWorld or the zoo or the beach or go sit at the park or the Padres when they're in season. There's so much to do here. So if you want to be if you want to be legitimate and be people's choice of entertainment, not just, oh, that sounds interesting. We'll do that. Meaning people decide and plan ahead every week that they want to go to ascend to the San Diego loyal game. You have to connect in a real way with a community. And that's taken a lot of time, partially because we started in 2020 during COVID, so we weren't in front of our fans. But the beauty I had in the early days of me living here, we had soccer city group that was trying to bring Major League Soccer to San Diego in the beauty, you know, I talk about trouble as opportunity while, although that didn't happen, the amount of relationships I built and people I met along the way. A lot of the same people I see in the stadium filling up are terrible stadium every week. So that's been a big benefit. And we've just built a genuine connection in our city and that's very unique in especially at this level. It's hard at the MLS level, but it's very unique in U.S. cell. There's no there's no fan base like ours. And there's no connection between the club and the fan base like there is with ours. So we're very proud of that. But it's taken a lot of time. And just to the earlier comment about the national team and how important it is to have continuity and all those ways. Fans connect to players that connect to a culture and an identity that they can identify with that they're proud of. And when there's constant turnover, it makes it really hard to have that. So one of the things we've gotten right is lots of continuity with our staff with our players with our front office with our owner who's fantastic and that's led to the first outdoor men's successful professional team ever in San Diego. Yeah, we have every city in the U.S. has a different distinct soccer culture, San Diego, you've got league AMX's show low across the border in Tijuana where it draws fans from San Diego, the San Diego wave during a huge NWSL crowds into that new stadium and you've got the loyal penalty beating or comers. In your words, in your experience, how would you describe the San Diego football culture and what's unique about it? It is really unique and it's a great question. So in San Diego, you have south San Diego, which is borders Mexico City of a heavy Mexican Latin influence. You have north San Diego, which is more of your sort of suburban white moms, families, et cetera. You have downtown San Diego that has a really vibrant urban center that is what you would expect from a major city with lots of young professionals. So there's that. And then you get east San Diego, which is sort of more rural, more country, that kind of stuff. So it makes for a really unique culture, but what we've been able to do is shape the way people expect our team to play. And you watch football over the world, our beloved Everton. Over the last few years, you never know what you're going to get. When you turn the TV on. You know, you know it's not going to be fun to watch. But as far as what you expect to see from a team every week, is what our fans now expect to see. And I think we've helped them really grow their minds to understand what good football can look like. And so that's been a really enjoyable piece of it. And now our fans are so knowledgeable, right? No matter where they come from, the common denominator is that they love the game. They love San Diego and they love San Diego loyal. And that's been really fun to watch that evolve. I've got to say, I love the USL to me, it's really the lungs of a game in this nation where it's incredible array of teams. It's levels, the two levels, the development work, that it's doing at the grassroots level. Your EVP of soccer operations, which when I think about that, it's responsible for the everything. What you're doing, and looks importantly, what you seeing that makes you optimistic about the future. I've been able to sort of craft a role over four years that one I enjoy doing in two I'm good at. There's things I like doing that I'm not good at. There's things I am good at, but I don't really like doing. So what I do now is help with a lot of the recruitment and retaining of our players, whether it's with agents and speaking to them and getting contracts done that kind of stuff. I don't get great joy out of that, but I built a lot of relationships in the game over the years, so it's allowed me to utilize those relationships and help our players, which I really enjoy. One sort of twice a week, I go down to the field. I review film with all the attacking players from the game. I work with the I work individually with the attacking guys on our team and that gives me great joy. Great pleasure to go down and help them. And then over the course of weeks in the year, watch them get better at certain things. One thing we forget at all levels, MLS, even with the national team, is

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