Payne definitely lets his emotions get the better part of his mouth in that episode. I get where he was coming from, but it's one thing for us Internet Nuts to say it, another thing altogether for the president of a team that is supposed to be bringing the area together to say it.
Payne lost a LOT of Salvadoran fans when he did that. My next door neighbor went to MLS Cup '97 with me. That was the last DCU game he ever attended. He still hates United over the way Payne handled the RDA fiasco.
To paraphrase Randy Newman, he may have been a fool but he was our fool. You guys have touched on a lot of stuff that could have been done better - dredging up some really bad memories, too . It remains to be seen whether the new guy they bring in will be an improvement. We may end up remembering the Payne era as the Golden Age! But let's hope not.
At the risk of opening a can of worms, I want to first admit that I don't have specific knowledge of what KP may or may not have done regarding the ES fans. But to me, who went to a lot of games the first couple years (and many other years), the ES fans very early on seemed to be a lot like "fairweather" fans, and in this case, the "weather" was RDA. To be clear, I'm not calling them fairweather fans or devaluing their support for whatever they wanted to support, but it seemed to me they were first and always fans of RDA before they were fans of DC United. Which was fine, I don't mind for whatever reason people come to games, but it always seemed like the writing was on the wall that whenever he wasn't a DC United player some of them weren't going to stick around either. I have no intention to label all those fans that way, but it seemed like a lot of them fit that description to me, so I hope nobody gets upset if you or someone you know is the exception, that's fine, I realize that. So regardless of whatever he did, which was probably incredibly stupid, I think we would have lost a lot of those fans anyway. As for the future relationship of the FO and the SG's, I would hope it is ingrained enough in the permanent culture of the club, and even if it isn't, I think the fact that Will Chang, and especially Ben Olsen remain, I think it might stay in healthy shape. Ben's comments about the fans and fan groups in the last Capital Soccer Show were really awesome. The guy gets it.
Really, short of keeping a token El Salvadoran player on the squad, this was ultimately a no-win situation. Seriously, what would you have wanted the team to do?
Not only that but we did have several Salvadoran players in the subsequent years : Quintanilla, Cerritos, Castillo and it didn't do much to mend the relationship. I think the Salvadoran perception at the time just didn't quite get why RDA would be let go after having so much success at DC. For them it may have seemed like unfair castigation and the negative sentiment spread like wildfire. At that time it was also very tempting for them to switch allegiances to LA out of protest since the other ES icon in the league Cienfuegos was so established there
I wish I could remember the exact quote but I remember KP saying something which was not helpful and only served to infuriate some ES fans. It was obviously an emotional resonse by KP but not helpful or productive for the possibility of bringing te ES fans back. Sandon or Jeremy, is your memory any better?
Yeah, I don't remember what it was exactly but he said something along the lines of "as long as I'm president we won't have another Salvadoran player" or something like that. To be clear, I don't fault the team for trading RDA. It's pro sports and players come and go. Because DCU and MLS were new, RDA was basically the first high-profile player to go and it surprised a lot of us. DCU was like a first girlfriend and RDA leaving was like breaking up the first time you do it. (I've broken up with lots of girls since my first, but I still remember that first one clearly!) That it was an icon of the Salvadorean community and they made up a large part of the fan-base exacerbated the problem. They felt taken advantage of and reacted, well, poorly. Again, to this point in the RDA saga, I don't think what DCU did was wrong. But as tensions between the team and the Salvadorean community increased, Payne made some comments that not only didn't help the situation but made it worse. Again, he was speaking emotionally and commented like a fan would - impulsively. While we can all relate to that, as we've all said impulsive things we later regret, none of us are president of a sports team that needs as many butts in the seats as it can get and can't afford to go alienating a big chunk of the soccer-going public. At the end of the day it wasn't a huge issue and in many ways, Payne was right. They SHOULD be fans of the team and not just one player. But you still gotta watch what you say.
Edit: Boloni86 beat me to the punch Exactly. And they did try to win some ES fans back with RDA 2.0 (which, painfully, didn't work), as well as Quintanilla, Cerritos, and Castillo. There may be a few ES fans which attend DCU matches, but I wouldn't pander to any group to try and inflate attendance. We lost all of the Bolivian fans after Etch & Jaime left, now we're going to lose all the Montenegrin fans, and probably the Albanians too, once Hamdi leaves.
It's well documented that ethnic based fans in MLS don't always stick. It all depends on the fan. A lot of 1st generation fans that have been in the US for a short time will probably not have deep emotional ties to the city they live in and that city's sports scene. I think the Bolivians and Salvadorans that stuck around were mostly the ones that were born in DC or at least lived in the DC area for a large part of their lives. I know a good friend of mine from Walter Johnson HS in MD who was Mauricio Cienfuegos's nephew and he still goes to DC United games. But the guy grew up in MD since he was like 4 years old so it was never likely that he would switch allegiances to LA or any other MLS team.
Well, it would have been a lot better if they hadn't marketed the team to the Salvadoran community in '96 and '97, and then got rid of one of their heroes after those two seasons. IIRC, RDA was still playing well, but I don't remember if he was dumped because of salary cap reasons. Maybe a better explanation to the Salvadorans that they had no choice but to trade RDA rather than just dismissing them as fans. IIRC, he more or less told them to get over it, and if they didn't want to get over it that they should just stop coming to games. Not exactly that, but words to that effect. So they did stop coming to games, except when Salvadorans were playing for the opposition.
To me the problem was the pandering that occurred in the first place. Kind of like Tampa Bay using Valderamma as a way to draw Colombian fans back in the day.
My memory tells me that is basically correct, however, back then especially, the whole mystical salary cap thing was even more mystical. I sorta remember that although I think he was playing fine, his production had dropped a little (but so had the team I believe) and the issue was that we traded him prior to an option year or something like that so that the salary didn't become an issue then, and we could get value in the trade-- smart move of course. Obviously some would have liked us to pay him whatever it took. Clearly if we have even fuzzy memories of these inane details, we have found our home here.
Dude, I've killed millions, no make that billions, of brain cells at a lot of tailgate parties, so I can barely remember who the hell I am sometimes.
I thought the Salvadorian reaction was excessive and chauvanistic, but KP's reaction just added fuel to the fire.
I have to snicker just a little bit, lots of previous sins and praises dredged up over KP's past. I think the simple answer, at least from an owner's perspective, I'm not going to keep someone as a President/CEO that is losing money each and every year since the inception of the team. You might blame the business manager, Stephen Zach, but Kevin Payne was the one that hired him, and kept him around. Finally, for those who are happy that KP was let go, I said it when Mc/Chang purchased the club, be careful what you wish for! KP had a reason to keep the team in DC. A new President/CEO has no legacy to protect. Clearly the new owners aren't too shy about getting rid of important parts of this organization. I'm sure the new President/CEO, assuming it is one person, will make one good effort to keep the team in DC, but ultimately this is a business, and that person(s) will look to make the best deal.
To be fair the risk of relocation was and is very real with or without KP ... or frankly with or without our current owners. I don't think KP would of had any influence on that decision either way unless he was willing to offset the annual losses out of his own pocket. In the end I think we're in a good position for the stadium. The political climate is better now than 2, 3 or 4 years ago. So far the club, the league, the media and city officials are using positive talking points. There's no reason to believe that the new owners bought into United without being prepared to make a concerted and serious effort into getting a stadium. And honestly if they put in 100% effort and put up all the construction costs and the city still doesn't make it happen ... well I can't blame them if they start looking elsewhere
I have a hard time remembering who you are, too. I agree that a lot of the ES fans may not have understood the salary cap issue, since AFAIK, no other league in the world has that. Hell, we internet nuts don't even understand it.
I think in the early days of the league there might have been a bit of a language barrier too. I don't know how much effort the front office made to explain why RDA was being traded, but if memory serves (keeping those dead brain cells in mind) not much of an explanation was given at all, even to English speakers. I know that I didn't understand why we traded him. I always looked at him as part of that "magic triangle" and I was very upset when he didn't come back in '98. That was until Lassiter started scoring nearly every game.
According to MLS, it was because of the salary cap. We traded John Harkes away, IIRC, the next year, for the same reason. Instead of keeping DC United a strong team, and building up the rest of the league, MLS chose to tear down DC United in the name of "Salary Cap" and "Parity." Then see the shenanigans/Calvinball MLS did later on for LA & NY regarding "Salary Caps" "DPs", and "Parity."
If the new owners made it clear to KP that he would be moved out, why hasn't his replacement been named? If it was all part of a plan, you would think the new owners had someone waiting in the wings.