RSL’s press release is quite rose-colored. Here is another disturbing take on Manning: William Manning’s only previous experience in MLS consisted of awkwardly watching his club go belly up. His main responsibilities were to determine how the team would dissolve its assets. For all of Manning’s vaunted sports sponsorship and sales experience, he failed to find a buyer for the team after a year-long search, before it had to be axed from MLS. Prior to Tampa Bay’s demise, he led Tampa Bay on a historic losing streak and was known for publicly feuding with the team’s coach, Tim Hankinson. He was constantly meddling in player issues without consulting the coach. Under Manning's 'management' Tampa went from a club picked to challenge for the league cup to a bottom feeder. Manning went through several coaches at Tampa. It’s ironic that John Ellinger was one of his finalists for coach at Tampa. All these retreads run around in the same circles. If RSL fans think we’ve been through some thin times in RSL’s meager 3-year existence, imagine what Mutiny fans felt like under Manning’s tenure. Suffice it to say that whatever success Manning had in the USL, he hasn’t been able to parlay that into success in MLS. The RSL press release states that Manning won a USOC in 1991. The truth of the matter is that he watched most of the 1991 U.S. Open Cup final while sitting on his car in the parking lot. As a defender for the Brooklyn Italians, Manning was red-carded and could not remain at Brooklyn College Stadium. Only heaven knows how Manning qualified to play for Puerto Rico. However, we know that the coach for PR at the time was later selected by Manning to coach Tampa Bay. Back then, Puerto Rico wasn’t even recognized by FIFA. Regardless, PR couldn’t even make it past Grenada. So to say that he played in World Cup Qualifying is a bit disingenuous. Manning has a habit of bringing with him people he's worked with in the past (players and coaches). Perhaps we’ll soon see some former Mutiny players in RSL kits. Or perhaps we’ll see Puerto Rico’s former coach (Alfonso Mondelo) take the reigns at RSL. He played for the New York Fever (USL-2), a team which folded after two seasons. He started his sports management career with the Continental Indoor Soccer League, which lasted only 4 seasons. Could it be that his Minnesota Thunder’s national championship was due more to the Thunder’s previous General Manager, Peter Wilt? In fact, it is my humble opinion that RSL has done itself wrong by not going with Peter Wilt. He was originally interested in the position of President of RSL. Once again Checketts’ short sightedness will come back to bite him. Undoubtedly, Checketts was most impressed by Manning’s supposed corporate sponsorship expertise and not by his track record of running an MLS club. Upon taking the position with the Eagles, Manning was quoted as saying, "When I made the decision to leave soccer, I knew the NFL is where I wanted to be. It's been a real good move both personally and professionally. I made a decision that I was going to try to expand my career beyond soccer. I needed to get to the major leagues.” So, based on Manning’s own words, you have to think that this move is a step back for him “personally and professionally.” …Or perhaps he had a run-in with the Eagles front office and RSL was his only option.
Wow, it is like you took the original press release and ran it through Babelfish but under the RSLFM setting...
What exactly are the duties of an MLS club president? Would Manning be as bad a choice if he were restricted to business operations (it seems clear to me that he would be unlikely to improve the team making personnel/strategy decisions)?
I really have no clue who this guy is, but after reading about him in the last couple of hours - it seems his meddling with the coaching side of the Mutiny was a big problem. However, Aurelius, I'm not sure that the rest of your points (playing experience, hirings, etc) are all that meaningful to this position. BTW - were those your thoughts, or was it something that you found somewhere else - it wasn't really clear. It doesn't really matter, if we see a repeat of the Mutiny experience then this is a bad enough sign. Although interestingly enough he was Executive of the Year the year before they ceased to exist. I also noticed that he was VP of Sales and Service for the Eagles. How does this fit with his President duties here, and as someone else brought up - what exactly are his duties?
if you could have hired Peter Wilt and didnt, than you made a big mistake. Chicagos been down hill since Wilt left.
He was named Executive of the Year while with the Thunder in the USL in 1999, 3 years before the Mutiny folded and the year before he took over at Tampa Bay. Once again, his "success" has come from the lower leagues, and only then after succeeding Peter Wilt.
Not a good assumption. Ever been to Puerto Rico? If you don't speak Spanish, you can function perfectly in English. However, I'm sure he has a great NY accent (of the Massapequa variety).
I love it. Is it possible to hire someone with a background in American Pro soccer with a history of more than 10 years and have that person not have a terrible track record? Wake up people, soccer in America has failed for the last 75 years (except maybe one black hole in the 70s) and maybe the last 5 years. I am willing to give Manning a chance. I am sure its a step up from Howes.
I remember a story from Manning's tenure with the Mutiny. Remember, he came there right after A) his Minnesota team had just won the A-League title and, B) Rochester had just blitzed a series of MLS teams to win the US Open Cup, then lost the A-League final to the Thunder. So, Manning came to Tampa with a VERY high opinion of the A-League and A-League players, his own soccer acumen and a belief that the A-League's elite could be dominate in MLS. Anyway, Manning gets to Tampa and immediately announces that the key to their success will be to "get us some A-League players that can show these guys how to play." In the 2000 draft, Tampa selects A-Leaguers like Amos Magee, Ernest Inneh and Mike Gentile, none of whom had much of an impact in MLS. Still, Tampa goes 16-12-4 and makes the playoffs in 2000. But, despite going to the playoffs, Manning cans Tim Hankinson and hires Alfonso Mondelo, who was coaching in - wait for it! - the A-League. Then in the 2001 draft, they used the second overall pick - gotten from fleecing DC United in a trade, for which Manning deserves credit - on Ali Curtis, whom few though projected to be a good pro despite a great college career. With the sixth overall pick, Tampa took Craig Demmin who was a veteran of - I bet you'll get this - the A-League! They also took the great Devin Barclay, Adam Throop, Mersim Beskovic, the latter two coming from USL teams. And, of course, Tampa proceded to go have one of the worst seasons in MLS history and was promptly contracted after the season. In otherwords, his tenure in Tampa was littered with arrogance and was pretty much a disaster. Now, he has a great resume and he has done some some good things since leaving Tampa and that should benefit RSL. And, with Kreis and Lagerwey, it appears they'll handle all the player moves so as long as Manning doesn't have control over personnel the fans shouldn't worry about the team going out and using an allocation on Joey Gjertsen. Hopefully if he's just handling the business side of things he's pretty qualified because his history making soccer moves in MLS is pretty bad.
Tampa Bay had its worst season under Manning's tenure: 2001 (4-21-2; 14 points) That's worse than even RSL!
Funny everyone usually blames Philly's Nick Sakiewicz for the Tampa destruction, but he seems to be doing well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Sakiewicz
Looks like DesNews has regurgitated the press release: read it here maybe asking some tough questions in the comments will result in a followup article with some meat to it.
I'm not sure what you think Peter Wilt brings to the table here. He seems like a great guy (who we all know spends some time on bigsoccer and might be reading this), and Chicago was probably wrong to get rid of him. He was good with the fans, made some good soccer moves in bringing in some good players and coaches, but he wasn't applying for Lagerway's job. We all know Checketts wants to sell, and NEEDS to sell, corporate sponsorships. I don't mean to undermine the strong support of the die-hard fans, many of whom are on this board, but without some corporate money there is no team in Salt Lake. This was the excuse for getting rid of Wilt in Chicago, and it seems Checketts wanted somebody who was going to go out and sell corporates rather than somebody who would be great with the fans. I hope he gave Wilt a hard look, and he would be wrong, IMHO, not to, but for me to say we should have gone with Wilt is something I can't do. We already have Lagerway handling the soccer operations, this guy's job description is to come in and bring in as much revenue as possible. I'll judge him based how he does that, and how successful he is. As for Manning taking a step back both personally and professionally, I strongly disagree. Think of what he left. There were very serious doubts about whether MLS would make it more than another year or two in 2002. Lest we all forget with all the talk of new stadiums, designated players, and expansion teams selling tickets as quickly as they can print them, the league was in dire straits back then. Leaving to get some "major league" pro experience was a huge step forward personally and professionally, but that doesn't mean coming back was wrong. He left a team that was in a state of disarray, with no long-term owner, no stadium, and in the middle of a league that might not be around longer than a year or two. He's coming back--a job he probably wouldn't have gotten without his NFL corporate experience--to a team with its own stadium, a financial plan, and in league that is looking more promising every day. I'd call that a step in the right direction professionally and personally. Sure, he may not be working in the biggest big league, the NFL, but he probably wasn't going to be President of an NFL team anytime soon. Note: None of this is an endorsement of Manning--I'll reserve judgement until I see a little more.
Bill Manning will appear on Spence Checketts' Reality Check show today at 1:20 MDT. Live stream available HERE
I'd like to say we should all withhold judgment until we actually see firsthand what Manning brings to the team, but there's no denying that it's really, REALLY unsettling that the prevailing opinion on here seems to be "he might do okay, as long as he doesn't get to do x, y, or z for the team..." Not what I would call a ringing endorsement. The fact that he still gets work in professional sports would seem to indicate that he is quite good at doing something. I just hope that he was brought in to do that thing.
Manning...Lagerway...Kreis... maybe we can be like Chelsea... play great most of the time despite all the fools in charge.
I have a hard time calling Lagerway a fool right now. Lets face it. His job was to bring in talent to the team and make us deeper, with honest starting talent at every position. Now according to most accounts, even those on here where we can all be really critical, he seems to have done a pretty good job doing that. On paper at least, we have some pretty good talent at many positions now. Now its up to Kreis to put it all together and make the team gel and play well together. We will see how well he succeeds at that, I know many of us have our serious doubts. As for Manning, if he brings in good endorsements to the team, lots of money, and doesn't meddle in with anything else other than that side of things, he might actually work out. But only time will tell I guess.
I have to agree. Go by position and we're a lot deeper - previous years starters (with little competition at their positions) are now either not good enough to be on the team OR are fighting to start.