This is an interesting interview with our team president. It is mostly about his career and the marketing side of soccer but he has some interesting things to say. Not all positive though you can draw your own conclusions. Apologies if this has been posted on here already: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...oins-andy-dolich/id1436505516?i=1000439938234
Maybe the moderators could move this to the Tom Fox thread? That was indeed an interesting interview. These are my takes on it (from memory, as I was driving, so i couldn't take notes): With quite the peripatetic career, Fox admits that he tends to get jobs for which he is not really qualified. He seems to prefer to always be in learning mode. He was a polisci major and had never taken a mktg class, so he learned on the job Aside from his first 2 jobs, and the Arsenal job, he's been changing jobs every 1.5-2 years. To me, that's not really enough time to make a difference. I predict he'll do the same thing here. I don't recall his referencing any accomplishments other than climbing the ladder Gatorade > NBA > Nike > Arsenal > Aston Villa > Quakes For a marketing guy, he seems to be very analytic and really likes to cite numbers. Now I understand why last year, he was imprudent enough to tell us that the Quakes were 7th in ticket revenue. Fox analyzes the market a lot and seems to cite excuses fairly often, such as hard for Quakes to be relevant in the bay area, i.e. compete with Warriors, Stanford, and Cal (I didn't notice if he cited 49ers & MLB) a legacy MLS club doesn't have the advantages of a new MLS expansion team that can target young urbans instead of soccer moms The only thing he really seemed to be positive about at the Quakes was the Development Academy and that, since a bunch of them get to train with the 1st team, they are learning directly from Almeyda Basically, i came away from this pod thinking that Tom Fox is not the kind of guy to create visions or objectives for the club. Based on what we've seen so far, he doesn't seem to be much of a problem-solver either.
Tom Fox had his introductory press conference with the Quakes the first week of June 2017. If he's leaving the Quakes within two years, that means next week.
wow, then he's already surpassed his average tenure-length. I forgot to add 2 more things he said during the pod: He had only attended 2 live soccer matches in his life before taking the marketing job at Arsenal He pontificated on how the EPL is currently the top league in the world, but that could easily change, that MLS or any other league could easily take over the top spot. He gave Italy as an example of how they were the top league, and then suddenly weren't, for which they were still scratching their heads to figure out why. I guess he doesn't know that the Serie A collapsed after all the match fixing and other scandals, followed by sanctions, which led to the league being unable to pay top salaries.
Good question. I saw a Tweet from Andy Dolich who was the interviewee. Ex A’s GM and an experienced sports biz executive.
That’s a pretty good summary of the interview. As for getting jobs he was under qualified for, I think that was just him being humble, or faux humble at worst. Agreed the lack of accomplishments was startling. He was at Pepsi for 8 years and Arsenal for 5 per his LinkedIn profile. I think it just sounded like he changed jobs more often when rattling through it all quickly in an interview.
I think the Serie A fall off had a lot to do with the weakness of the Italian economy, the fall off in Italian talent and the lack of stadium investment so that many if the games have crappy atmospheres in TV and supposedly in person too.
I think this quote nails it: “ Basically, i came away from this pod thinking that Tom Fox is not the kind of guy to create visions or objectives for the club. Based on what we've seen so far, he doesn't seem to be much of a problem-solver either.” On balance, I was unimpressed with Fox from the interview. I would not have ever said that about Dave Kaval.
That said, I’m rooting for him to succeed. To fill the stands, to get a kit and stadium sponsor, to get us more media coverage and so on.