Mostly, Europe doesn't do HS sports. Every town has real clubs with real fields and clubhouses and they play at many levels aside from youth. Heck even the village I lived in at a HS exchange student (couldn't gave been more than 80 houses) still has a team to this day, with youth and adult and even an O-30 side. One visit, my buddy (who has since passed) took me and Mrs KG to their local club to eat, where their boys played, as a lot of these have (small) restaurants on site. We have some of this in the ethnic clubs in the US, though there are not many, if any, in Columbus any more (when I first came here 40 years ago, Germania was a powerhouse in our league on the north end). FIFA has rules giving clubs compensation for players they develop, which means that the clubs get something out of it if a kid of theirs leaves for a bigger club and makes it--and some of the clubs develop players through their youth system from the start. Phillip Lahm played for Bayern Munich youth at 12. ter Stegen was a youth player for Gladbach. At four. There are many other examples. So, it's a different way of doing things.
Great inclusion of the word "opinion" I'm not sure we will ever get those details in a manner that appeases the fanatics. A couple of your details are different than how things have been explained to me. I'm not saying you are wrong and the following is just IMHO: I thought HSG was looking for a local minority partner here in Columbus, and several candidates came forward. Then out left field (coast) Precourt came forward and offered to purchase the team in it's entirety with the "at the time" largest offer for an MLS team. The deal was done in principal before local investors had a chance to make a counter offer. HSG inserted an initial "no relocation" clause in the contract. Precourt requested that he could have a limited relocation scenario. Details of the sale switched from the initial contract HSG had to MLS handling the contract, and that it was a joint Precourt/Garber super secret Austin clause inclusion. Garber is on record that he encourages some sort of exit clause to be included in all the contracts. (speculation this came about due to the Bridgeview debacle.) I'm not sure I agree with @Ueberjames in saying FCC was completely independent from the Columbus -> Austin relocation. I do think that MLS gave the Cincinnati bid more consideration when it looked like Columbus was going to depart. All that to say Yes Garber is an ass, but I think Precourt is just a culpable if not more than Garber in all the shenanigans. And just to be Devils advocate, I do think Columbus rested on it's laurels, and took for granted what was needed to be a successful club. Partner that with an absentee owner, (Precourt is definitely on the Austim spectrum.) and our beloved Crew fell off the pace of other clubs. Business Metrics!
Taking this to where it should go... I guess from my observation....I've seen a guy...who while stumbling left and right....has still managed to get what hes wanted. He has a team, that the league has announced, in his city of choice, with a local government bought and paid for, and a stadium site approved. While I doubt hes happy with how slow its all going and how rough of a path it was to get there....hes there. Well see if he can pull off actually getting the stadium built plus a training center. Plenty of richer people in the past have failed to get stadiums built though so I also dont know if that qualifies as incompetence. He failed to move his first team, but that was because he underestimated us. Sports history would have suggested he would be able to move us easily. I dont think that makes him inept in anyway. Just short sighted maybe. Where I would say he IS incompetent is taking advice from Dave Greeley and entrusting Andy Loughnane to run his team. They will not be able to create a team anywhere as good as the Crew from scratch....but like I said before...long term success probably isnt even the goal. Just getting the team off the ground and into a stadium so they can flip it to someone else. I'm done talking about why Precourt might not be a failure though. He failed here and thats all that matters.
So not meaning to be a d!ck here but my opinion is that your very post describes the word inept. Not you by the way but your description of PSV and that guy who once owned the Crew. As evidence I have taken the definition of inept and posted it below. in·ept adjective having or showing no skill; clumsy. "the inept handling of the threat" synonyms: incompetent, unskillful, unskilled, inexpert, amateurish, crude, rough Seems like the perfect word IMO. Inept.
While I agree, being inept under that definition doesn't disqualify Precourt from being an MLS owner. Actually, he'd have a lot of company. Now, most of those teams suck and have struggling "business metrics." Still, they manage to plug along, year after year, in MLS. I certainly agree that Precourt will probably seek to sell an Austin franchise (for a huge profit) if he gets his stadium built. As an active owner, I don't see his team there performing any better than other clubs with shitty/inept owners. He'd quickly lose interest in Texas the same way he lost interest here. Plus, he does't have the same kind of deep pockets as some of the league's other crappy owners.
This just in, being the recipient of a trust fund doesn’t make you smart or capable of building anything. Garber allowed the Austin clause as a means to eliminating Columbus. He underestimated how utterly incompetent Precourt is and it backfired. Precourt has put few dollars and little effort into the move, all the heavy lifting was done by their mayor, as proven by Garber speaking to their mayor directly, going around PSV. Precourt isn’t capable, nor are the people he has hired, of building a team and stadium, from scratch, simultaneously. Unless he sells, there won’t be a team taking the field in Austin.
Oh look. UTexas implicated in a cheating/bribe scandal. Bribe/Campaign donations seem to be common place down there....
I won't blame UT about the college admission scam. They'd just point out Columbus is a place where a vice cop was arrested for sex crimes.
As someone who is also on the spectrum I agree. Its fine being on the spectrum but you need to know that about yourself. He seems to not be well adjusted or high functioning at that. Also, lots of people on the spectrum were gift with intelligence he was not.
I find it shocking that someone apparently paid $500,000 to the USC rowing coach to get him to tell admissions two girls were recruits. First of all, USC isn't exactly Stanford. If your daughter can't hack USC admissions, she ain't gonna last long anyway: she's stupid. Secondly, any idiot knows that you can take that same half million bucks, DONATE it to the school of your choice and they'll happily let your kid in. Why bother bribing someone secretly when you can bribe them openly and legally? Side note: the soccer coach at Yale apparently is on tape accepting $400k for one kid and $450 k for another, neither of whom ever played the game. Soccer! I'm shocked.
I don't think there's been enough emphasis made on this point. Compare and contrast: Doc & Dee want to build a successful team - on and off the field - and they hire Tim Bezbatchenko to run the thing. Toronto wants to build a strong team, they hired Ali Curtis. LA Galaxy: Chris Klein. Atlanta: Darren Eales, former Executive Director at Tottenham Hotspur. Point being these are serious, accomplished professionals. And they didn't come cheap. Assface McDouchenuts is supposedly trying to build a successful team and he hires Andy Laughlame. Who the hell is serious about building a professional soccer team if they hire that jackass to do it? I'm sure he works a lot cheaper than a Bez or a Curtis, but please: this is a guy who didn't know that Acura makes cars 30 miles from his office. Laughlame isn't fit to wash Bezbatchenko's car. He's an incompetent, a fool and a joke. No one serious about this would hire AL. Only someone who pretty much didn't give a crap.
The only explanation I can come up with is that it was easy. If there is one thing we learned about AP, we know he will hit the EASY button in lieu of actually doing work. Everyone AP hired was recommended to him by Garber or otherwise fell into his lap. He just doesn't have the ability to do anything on his own and has to hope the yes people that have attached themselves to him are competent. I hope they all take advantage of him.
I've sometimes wondered if Bill and Maddox (http://maddox.xmission.com) could be related in some way.
Easy, cheap and willing to work for Anthony Precourt. I mean, there's not much overlap in that Venn diagram of potential PSV employees. None of it makes much sense past a certain point, of course. What you see happening here in Columbus. The recent news out of St. Louis. The investment being made in Cincinnati. Sacramento landing a billionaire and seemingly on track for a downtown stadium. And so on. And then you look at the puny achievements in Austin. Not just that, but that nothing ever really seems to happen down there. Every few weeks there's another Q&A with Andy event. Woo-hoo. It just seems implausible that Precourt has any intention to run this team himself. At the very least, he'll need a major local investor who can do all of the day-to-day oversight work, like we have in Dr. Pete. But it just seems so obvious that Precourt is exactly what he appears to be, once you scratch the surface: a relatively small private equity firm that's just investing temporarily in MLS in order to sell its holdings for a profit at some point.
I particularly love how the Garbs came out and said every other expansion hopeful is basically in line behind St. Loius and Sacramento for clubs. Sacramento! I mean, that is Assface McDouchenuts' backyard. You'd figure there is little to no work to do there if he had become one of the majority investors. Instead, he will fly out to Austin twice a year (on avg, you know, putting in twice the work he did in Columbus) to compare success sticks, and likely will find his lacking in size and girth to that of the club in his backyard.
San Francisco types, especially those with a hard-on for Austin, look down their noses at places like Sacramento (or San Jose), proximate though those places are. Very similar to New York soccer fans who cannot be bothered to support a team in nearby New Jersey or LA soccer fans who sneer at suburban Carson. Lots of snobbery in play all over MLS.
I can't remember where I heard it (which is rare for me) during the year-long relocation saga, but this Austin billionaire has been linked to PSV.
I didnt know precourt bought a club in cbus “I was called by Easton’s developers,” he said. “When I came to Easton and Columbus and saw what they were doing, and saw how incredibly vibrant and relevant Columbus was, I was blown away. I really was. It’s a very sophisticated city, everyone is very nice and welcoming. I literally couldn’t find a way to talk myself out of the deal. It fit really well in my wheelhouse. “I’m excited to see how my concept works in this Midwest flagship.” Kane is so enthusiastic about the project that he plans to buy a home in Columbus “and become part of the community,” he said. “I take very seriously opening a venue — I’m an owner/operator.”" https://www.dispatch.com/news/20190313/burlesque-club-to-open-at-easton