Ronaldo features heavily in the club’s marketing
Kartik Krishnaiyer is a soccer writer at Word Soccer Talk and a published author for his book on Manchester City. He previously worked in the Communications department at the NASL.
Ronaldo and the Fort Lauderdale Strikers – An odd story
by Kartik Krishnaiyer
The Fort Lauderdale Strikers of the second-tier North American Soccer League made a splash this past Wednesday by unveiling the Brazilian legend Ronaldo as an owner and potential player.
The club made the finals of the NASL last season and just saw its leading scorer Fafa Picault sign with Sparta Praha (Prague) the largest club in the Czech Republic, and a club that regularly competes in the Europa League. This signing, which was missed by many in the US Soccer press who are solely focused on Major League Soccer was a big deal. However the Strikers in this new world do not want to be seen as a selling club.
That’s where the problems really come in. The Strikers got a nice national and international publicity bump out of the announcement. But underlying problems exist in Fort Lauderdale. As Simon Evans discussed Friday in the Guardian, the Strikers new Brazilian owners are long on ambition but short on modest goals.
Taking control of the club days after the Strikers lost 2-1 to San Antonio in the NASL Final, the owners wasted valuable time while showing a large degree of hubris. This offseason has seen the Strikers’ traditional rival, the Tampa Bay Rowdies upgrade its playing personnel largely at the expense of the Strikers.
Tampa Bay has signed three starters from last year’s Strikers side, including Darnell King, considered by many the best right-back plying his trade in the United States outside MLS. The Rowdies have also hired two of the best minds in American Soccer in former US U-20 coach Thomas Rongen and Farrukh Quraishi to run the club.
To the north in Jacksonville, the new NASL entry, Armada FC has impressed with a local marketing campaign that could rival any expansion club MLS has admitted in recent years outside the Pacific Northwest. Up the road in Orlando, the newly minted MLS club has even been able to find fans in the Strikers home territory willing to make the short two hour and change drive up the Turnpike to the Citrus Bowl.
The well-financed Brazilian group has gotten a slow start in building a roster, naming a coach and most importantly making the right community connections.
Tom Mulroy, who served as President of the club under previous owners Traffic Sports left the team days after the Strikers lost the NASL Championship game to San Antonio, and with him went a great amount of the work the organization had done locally. Mulroy’s efforts were beginning to gradually pay off as the Strikers approached 6,000 paid fans in each of the last two home games of the successful 2013 season. But since Mulroy’s departure the new ownership has chosen to shift tactics, moving away from a model that saw the Strikers attend dozens of community events a week and replacing that with big ideas and the type of hyperbole which Evans featured in his article.
Ronaldo’s arrival in Florida made global media headlines
The club has yet to name a Head Coach for the upcoming season to replace the successful Austrian Gunter Kronsteiner, whose services were unwanted by the new ownership. An announcement appears imminent that the well-regarded local youth coach Marcelo Neveleff will replace Kronsteiner. The Austrian, who was considered by some objective experts one of the best coaches at any professional level in North America was treated indifferently and voiced his displeasure publicly on Facebook.
Fort Lauderdale currently has six players under contract compared to 16 for the rival Rowdies, who have already begun preseason training. So either the Strikers owners didn’t put a priority on the technical side of the game, or simply disrespect the level of NASL so much that they figure they can assemble a team at the last minute and still compete at a very high level. While this later formula may have worked in the past, NASL and USL PRO are both becoming far more professional than in the past with teams beginning preseason earlier and earlier each season.The Strikers by an truly objective measure have fallen well behind the rest of the league entering the 2015 season, despite reaching the title game just two months ago.
My attempts since early December to discuss with the ownership group anything beyond Ronaldo have been frustrated. No question that Ronaldo becoming part of NASL and the Strikers is a big deal. Hopefully for local fans and soccer aficionados, with Ronaldo’s name and perhaps some hard early lessons learned by the owners, things will change for the better in very near future.
With the Ronaldo announcement out of the way, one can hope the Strikers ownership refocuses on building a team and connecting with the local community. After all before you go global you must matter locally.
More from Kartik Krishnaiyer:
MLS and the media – is loyalty displacing objectivity?
With just four black managers, is it time for an NFL-style Rooney rule in English football?<
