Bob Watkins was speaking less than a mile from the new stadium in Oceanside, North County.
On Monday night, the National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) finally submitted its application for Division 3 sanctioning from the US Soccer Federation.
Bob Watkins, the league president, had to resign his role at the San Diego club 1904 FC, to take over at league HQ in Chicago, following Peter Wilt’s decision to help build a USL League One club in Madison.
Nonetheless, he was involved with much of the activity in building the club before he left. Prost sat down with Watkins in Oceanside less than a mile from the intended new club about how he made that switch and gave us the latest progress on the stadium in Oceanside.
Q. How did you become the league President?
“NISA approached me to join them.
“They needed some help from a leadership point of view after one of the founders had died. Peter Wilt asked me to step in and do this. So I went to Alex (Gontran) and to Demba (Ba) and I said “for me to do this means I can’t do both. I can’t be 1904 FC President.”
“So now I’m a NISA guy.”
Q. So are you no longer the driving force behind 1904 FC?
“Demba Ba is the driving force behind 1904 FC. And Alex Gontran. I’m the casual interloper they brought in to help.”
Q. Many people in the area and across the country had been wondering what had become of 1904 FC. There had been few updates on the website and only rare tweets from the twitter account. What can you tell fans about the recent lack of updates?
“The silence we’ve had for the last six months is because we’ve put so much concentration into building the brand for 1904 that we didn’t want to say we’re jumping into NISA – and if that doesn’t work say we’re disappointing San Diegans again.
“So we’ve kept it pretty quiet, focused our attention on NISA to make sure we have the financial resources and the stadium opportunities in Oceanside which we now do. We want to keep that going with 1904. So 1904 is well positioned to continue the opportunity.
Q. Obviously having four international players, Eden Hazard, Demba Ba, Mousa Souw and Yohan Cabaye, gives the club a PR boost. How closely are they involved?
“Eden, Mousa and Demba are all actively involved with what we are doing. So with all the kind of things that we’d be looking at with their celebrity, they are doing.
“I don’t speak to Eden every week. He doesn’t need to be talking to me. He needs to be talking to Demba. Demba is the Chairman of the Board at 1904.
“But they are fully engaged and they will do whatever they have to do to support the program.
“They’re interested in the development side of the game as much as they are in the professional side of the game. So they want to make sure that from an academy point of view, from a player development perspective, that we’ve got those kind of activities going on and they’re going on right now.”
Q. What message would you give to those who had already bought 1904FC merchandise?
“Wear it. Be proud. I wear my 1904 stuff all the time.
“However .. now, as the President of the league, I can’t be promoting one club over another. So if you’re buying, buy stuff across the league for NISA, which will soon have a store of its own. You can buy 1904 gear and from other clubs as well. Keep it up, buy the merch, keep the support going.
“(Locally) Let everybody know you’re in love with this opportunity to help professional soccer in North County.”
Demba Ba is the driving force behind 1904 FC
Q. Earlier you said that the new stadium could be built in seven months. That would belie the belief of any Tottenham fans for example. How exactly do you build a stadium in Oceanside or anywhere in that period of time?
“It’s really (about) doing business in California. If you think about the timeline, that MLS, Soccer City and San Diego State were on, the amount of time it takes to get into all of the intricacies of development,whether it’s a new house or a new stadium, you go though a lot of a similar kind of machinations.
“Given the fact that the property we’re talking about in Oceanside for 1904 is on a facility which is a soccer complex already, and it is also zoned for temporary use only. So you can’t build anything that would be permanent on that particular location because of the designation of that property.
“That became an interesting challenge while we were looking at trying to figure out how to bring professional soccer here, whether it’s MLS, whether it’s USL, whether it’s NISA, whatever it is.
“We’ve got to deal with all the restrictions there are developing property. So when you look at something like a temporary stadium, you ask how do I deal with a temporary site, all of a sudden you start thinking about things like …. “if you go to a golf tournament, temporary stands are built. If you go to tennis tournaments, temporary stands are built. All these things are built in a temporary fashion. So couldn’t you build a soccer stadium in a similar way?
“So that was my task. My involvement with 1904 has been to come up with a concept that we could get into a stadium relatively quickly.
“If you look at San Diego County, we’re venue poor. We have two basically that meet the standards of professional soccer. Qualcomm and USD. Then, all of the rest of them don’t qualify either because of size, width, length, or material on the surface.
“So this became a question. When you look at Qatar for the World Cup, 19 or 20 stadium are going to be built in Qatar.
“19 of those stadiums are going to be temporary. That gave me the impetus to say with the property we have here, a temporary or semi-permanent facility, why not take a look at that?
“So we had a phenomenal architecture partner Populous which is out of Kansas City. Them and a company in France called GL Events who merged the two concepts together. One is a temporary construction company. The other is a design firm, which looked at this. They came up with an absolutely fabulous opportunity.
“We went to the City of Oceanside. And by gosh I can tell you I have never been so happy with a municipal organisation in terms of the attitude that they had to what we wanted to do. They were very open.
“The temporary facility that we’re looking at had not been produced before. They were willing to experiment with this opportunity so that we would conform with the rules and regulations of Oceanside and the people of Oceanside and to make sure it was a safe and attractive looking facility that we would put up in Oceanside.
Q. What’s the current position?
“(This is) where we are at the present time. The plans are drawn. Everything is ready to submit to the city of Oceanside. The time it will take will be through their planning process which we have to go through. We’re not looking for any shortcuts with them at all. We haven’t asked for any favors. We go through the normal planning process.
“The planning process will take 4-6 months. The actual permitting process will go through the building department and that should take 3-4 months.
“So within that same time frame of six months, hopefully we’ll get the planning permission to be able to build and the building permit will be issued to be able to do that and we’ll start construction. And so construction would start and that would take four months to build the facility.
“Most of the stadium will be fabricated off-site and brought in like a lego set if you will. In fact, we’d love to have lego as our sponsor. We could paint a lot of it looking like lego blocks. But you plug it together like a lego set and make it work. So it’s all assembled on site and not manufactured on site.
Q. Is there any chance it will be ready for August next year?
Yes. It’ll be tight but we could probably get it about the middle of August next year. That’s why sanctioning is so important because we can’t commit to build something until we get sanctioned so it’s like a chicken and egg.
“So give us the sanctioning, US Soccer Federation. Give us the opportunity to build a stadium in Oceanside for the fans in Oceanside and North County and wherever else they want to come from to see us.
Maybe you can get some away fixtures initially as you’re the league President?
“(laughs) Scheduling will be an issue from that standpoint but we have some alternatives on that location as well. We could put up some temporary facilities there to meet the needs of home games if we want to but it’s not the optimum thing to do.”
Prost will have a further part of the interview with Bob Watkins later in the week where he talks more about NISA, his hopes for the new league, relationships with other soccer bodies and the vision he has for soccer.
