Tony DiCicco on MLS clubs and the local factor

More and more MLS clubs are adopting a local approach to find the best fit with their local markets. There are three basic ways clubs can identify with their local populations and all are somewhat controversial. One way is to represent the ethnicity of the area to help fans identify with the team and among others, FC Dallas recently trends in this direction by signing more Latin players. A second way MLS employs local marketing is by developing regional rivalries through strategic expansion in the Northwest and Northeast and now is considering a second New York team, a relaunched Cosmos, to rival the New York Red Bulls in essentially the same market. A third way MLS clubs use the local angle is by developing their own youth club systems and bringing local players through to sign with that team. While most agree a strong MLS development system is a necessity to improve the American level of play, those new MLS youth clubs can send shockwaves through existing clubs that can result in poorer relations with some of their fan base.

For more insight on the ups and downs of the local marketing of MLS clubs, I spoke with Tony DiCicco, who has coached the WPS Boston Breakers for the past two seasons, provides commentary for ESPN, and works with the Soccer Plus club. DiCicco guided the USA to the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal and1999 World Cup Championship while accumulating a record of 103-8-8, making him the all-time leader in U.S. National Team history. DiCicco also served as the WUSA’s Commissioner in 2002 and 2003 and earlier in his career coached the U.S. Men's National U-20 team in 1993 and was a goalkeeper in the American Soccer League. More recently, DiCicco led the USA to the 2008 FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup championship in Chile.

LE: What did the LASA League have that MLS hasn't been able to replicate? The social clubs, the natural rivalries – what was it that made those clubs so successful?

DiCicco: What all those ethnic leagues had is that they brought over, in this case from Portugal, the club aspect. We have country clubs here with golf courses, but in most of the world their country club is a soccer club. They might have other sports, but their main sport is soccer. In some cases, they have hundreds of thousands of members of their club and that’s their fan base and it’s colored their identities and fans, their social network. The closest we have are probably church groups, but soccer and religion are side by side.

We haven’t really created that yet here. But MLS has gone beyond the ethnic team like the Portuguese team or the Polish team and brought in hardcore sports fans, ethnic sports fans, American sports fans, women. They’ve done a great job of having diversity to their fan base. Right now MLS is probably in the top 15 or 20 best attendance in the world with their soccer and averaging 15,000-18,000 fans a game. That’s pretty unique. That’s where WPS is aspiring to right now – we’re averaging 4,000-5,000 which is also pretty good, but we need to keep reaching out to our demographic and expanding that demographic.

LE: Was the close proximity of the teams in the LASA league a key to their success, where teams were based so close to each other that fans were often rubbing shoulders with rivals?

DiCicco: Yes. On Sundays everybody’s home team in the Hartford area played at the old stadium, you had the Hartford Italian American Stars, Hartford Portguese, Hartford Inca, a kind of Latina team, a Polish team -yeah, they were neighborhood teams. In Hartford there was an Italian neighborhood, a Portuguese neighborhood, a Greek neighborhood, it was awesome and I learned a lot from playing in those leagues. A lot of my coaching philosophy came from playing in the Connecticut League and and the LASA League.

LE: Jurgen Klinsmann recently expressed that although US Soccer should embrace it's own identity, MLS teams should carve their own identities from their local regions. What's your take on this?

DiCicco: Here’s the two-edge sword though. Right now soccer in America is big business. MLS teams that are establishing now are doing that, are becoming more local. How are they becoming more local? They’re starting they’re own youth teams and they’re starting from the top down – U-18, U-16, but eventually they’ll have kids that five, six, seven and eight years-old in their club and that’s how you become club and build that club system like the rest of the world. But to do that now you offend many of your customers. You’d be taking their players, players that are in their market. And those established clubs are the people that MLS goes to sell tickets to. When you go after their best players competing for that stud athlete, when that stud athlete goes to Red Bulls Academy, when the three best players leave a club to go to Red Bulls Academy, you start to create competitive issues that could affect your fan base. I think MLS is too well positioned and established for that to happen, but I think that early on, you can’t just go and create your own youth clubs because you will end up cannibalizing your own fan base.

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