I am part of a club that merger with another club last year. Nothing much changed until the season ended. The previous administration was very open with communication. I always knew what was going on. What the plans were. Whenever I asked a question, it was answered quickly. (Not to say that there weren’t problems. There were. Like money missing. Another story for another time). This group was much more focused on a positive experience and community feel. We were competitive, but having the best teams wasn’t the number 1 priority. We probably had some kids who would quit soccer if they got “promoted” to a better team that their friends weren’t playing on. Big of a “recreational” mentality, but we carved out a nice niche in the hyper crazy club soccer world. Added a lot of teams over the past few seasons. The new group is focused on making sure their older teams get better every year. By dropping players down. By heavily recruiting/poaching from neighboring teams. And their communication to coaches is awful. I’ll send an email, text and leave a voice message with a question and won’t hear back for days. Is this normal?
I would say that as clubs get bigger things it’s harder to reply quickly. There’s hundreds of things to take care of. Delegation is key, but also having a set time to respond to emails. Sometimes phone calls are easier because one can avoid an email or get bogged down trying to write a good response-since it will be in a quasi permanent record.
Every club is different, but ours is run more like you described yours before the merger. We're only around 200 players the season though, and we have fewer in the fall.
Update- I took my team to another club. The final straw- they wanted my team to practice at a field 30 minutes away. My entire team lives in the same neighborhood. We have a field permit on a full sized, turf field that is within 2 miles of our community. They say the other field has a “better soccer vibe”. Because it is a complex with 30 fields and tons of clubs practice there.
Some lazy adult wants to make one field permit application, saving time on one task, and doesn't care that it makes life harder for hundreds of other people for months.