 |
deutsch Adrian Hanauer - Shaping a club in his image? Photo: Joe Armand
'I’ll do whatever’s necessary for the team to succeed.'
On November 11, 2007, Major League Soccer announced that the next expansion franchise was to be based in Seattle. It was a dream come true for many but none more than Adrian Hanauer, owner of the Seattle team plying its trade in the United Soccer League at the time. Hanauer had brought together an ownership consortium consisting of Hollywood producer Joe Roth, himself, Vulcan Sports and Entertainment (owners of the NFL Seattle Seahawks) and comedian Drew Carey. The Seahawks brought a wealth of marketing experience and QWest Field, Carey brought the novel approach of making Seattle Sounders FC, as it is to become, a membership based organization where the General Manager can be fired by the club members. In bringing an MLS franchise to Seattle, a dream had been fulfilled. Now the task of building as team, a fan base and a economically viable business has begun. And Hanauer's in charge. Prost Amerika sat down with him and tried to get some insight about his vision to see what the club he is shaping will look like, and became the first to reminisce about the end of the USL era in Seattle in his first full length interview since Seattle Sounders turned the page on the USL chapter of its life.
PROST AMERIKA: You used the word ‘philosophy’ at the launch of this franchise and again when Kasey Keller signed, so what is Adrian Hanauer’s football philosophy? ADRIAN HANAUER: Adrian Hanauer’s football philosophy, I haven’t been in the game 35 or 40 years, so when I talk about philosophy, certainly it has to do with football but it probably has more to do with overall business and management philosophy as opposed to football philosophy per se. One of the things that I found that worked for me and, this is just me, is that when I got involved in the business seven or eight years ago, I did look at all aspects as a business. Businesses are successful by having clear goals, clear strategies for achieving those goals, consistent philosophy of purpose, people who are on the same page. I like to say in the same boat rowing in the same direction. You can just accomplish much more as a team, in business or a nonprofit organization or a sports team. So when I talk about philosophy it has more to do with the pillars, the foundation than it does necessarily…I have opinions about the tactics of the football but the philosophy would have more to do with hiring a head coach who is in line with the overall bigger picture of building a great football club. If your goal is to create a great football club that can compete on the pitch with any team anywhere in the world over the next five to ten years, if you start with that as your core, what are the philosophies you need to put in place to accomplish that? It’s not anything particularly complex or unique. It’s putting people together of the highest character, winners, hard smart workers, people who are dedicated, obsessed with the details, people who put team over self. Putting a group of people like that together with experience and football knowledge who know how to achieve the goal, and then I see it as my role on the football side and Gary Wright’s role on the business side -- Gary Wright, Tod Leiweke and John Rizzardini, the group over there -- to provide tools and resources for these smart dedicated people to achieve their objectives and to lead us to the goal. I always look at myself in several roles in a business or in this case a football club, number one to be a leader and to provide good direction, to be there and stand up to face the music when things don’t go well, and to appropriately reward and support those who are responsible for the successes. One of the important parts of being a leader is taking responsibility for what goes wrong and pushing the rewards of success down to the people who did all the hard work and got you there. That’s the core of leadership. And then being that intermediary to make sure that you have good people in place and they have the tools and resources to do their jobs well. Clear goals, good people and the tools and resources to do their jobs well. PROST AMERIKA: The thing that caught me is that you used the word leader there. When we do have a head coach, if we lose a game 5-0 or 6-0, are you going to be out there in front of the microphones and the baying press pack if you feel the manager doesn’t need to be there. Is that what you mean by taking the bullet for the team? ADRIAN HANAUER: Sure, that’s necessary. Because I guarantee if we lose 5-0 or 6-0, I’ll be more upset then anyone out there. I’m certainly not going to say ‘well if the coaching had been a little better.’ So if it’s appropriate for me to take the bullet as you say, I’ll do that. I’ll do whatever’s necessary for the team to succeed. And this is something I’ve always said in any position I’m in. If I’m the wrong guy and someone can do it better, please stand up and let’s bring somebody else in. I’m doing this because modestly I think I’m a decent person to get the job done of creating a great football club. I don’t have such a large ego that if there’s someone better, and when the time comes, and the time certainly will come, for someone who can do it better, bigger and faster, then I’m happy to step aside and let someone else do that job. Which is why this whole four year term is brilliant and it’s a good way to continue to try and improve the football club. PROST AMERIKA: This brings me to another word you’ve often used – character. At the launch and at Kasey’s (Keller) introduction you spoke of “Players that make good decisions both on and off the field”. Would you envisage a situation where you look at a player who has everything but the character isn’t there – and not sign him on things other than his ability? ADRIAN HANAUER: Yes. Absolutely. Obviously it’s gray and it’s difficult. Brian Schmetzer and I have been there many times with the USL team; a player comes in, great quality on the pitch, clearly a good soccer player but just doesn’t quite feel right from a character standpoint. It’ll kill a clubhouse. We’ve got it wrong before and we will again. But if we can figure it out early enough that will influence our decision making. PROST AMERIKA: Moving onto the USL (United Soccer League). We are at a very unique point in soccer history in this town and the USL emotions and memories are still fresh in your mind after Montreal. Although we have an exciting chapter ahead of us, is there part of you that’s looking back and thinking, 'I’m sorry to be losing some of that'?  "We Have a City-Wide Love Affair Beginning" Photo: Joe Armand ADRIAN HANAUER: A very small part of me feels that way. But, to your point, this is a very exciting new chapter. When I think back on what was such an important part of my childhood, it was a city mesmerized by the North American Soccer League Sounders. The city was not mesmerized with the USL Sounders. There was a small dedicated hardcore committed following and I’m ultra-appreciative of that group. But that had its own set of challenges and frustrations. Having busted my ass and all of our asses over the years to try and move the needle to get that excitement out there in the community and now to have it by going MLS, to now have that city-wide love affair beginning, it just eases any pain or confusion or sentimentality of leaving the past behind. Now if we weren’t moving on to MLS and it was just the end of soccer, I would be feeling much differently than I do today. And I know this just sounds maybe not as thoughtful, but I’ve just been so busy, that I’ve maybe not had as much time to process it as I will someday. PROST AMERIKA: How glad are you that the name Sounders has survived? ADRIAN HANAUER: I’m very glad. It’s soccer in Seattle. When I came into it, when we began the process, I tried to be as objective as possible. And it’s a big enough investment, long term enough; that I wanted to get it right. Whether it was Sounders or it wasn’t Sounders, I wanted to get it right. And we got it right. That was the important part. If Sounders had been wrong and we’d kept the Sounders, I wouldn’t be happy about it. I didn't want to keep Sounders just for the sentimentality of it. I wanted to keep Sounders if it was the right thing to do for the long term of the football club. PROST AMERIKA: At what point did you become convinced it was the right thing to do? ADRIAN HANAUER: Really honestly, not until the vote, and it was clear that the community out there was fervently supportive of it. PROST AMERIKA: Did it surprise you a little? ADRIAN HANAUER: It did. Yeah. It did. PROST AMERIKA: Will you miss the USL? ADRIAN HANAUER: I will miss some of my friends in the USL. Obviously I’ll stay in touch with some of them like Bob Lenarduzzi in Vancouver, Gavin (Wilkinson) in Portland, Boris (Jerkunica) in Atlanta, Nigel Cooper and some of the guys in Charleston. I’ll miss interacting more often with those guys but I’ll still see them on down the line. PROST AMERIKA: We’ll see if the word ‘sportocracy’ gets into the Oxford English dictionary in the next four years. ADRIAN HANAUER: Yup. PROST AMERIKA: I’d like to pick up on something else you said about facing the media. At the moment we have a small media covering the USL side, they’re mostly local and they’re mostly friendly. That’s going to change perhaps. ADRIAN HANAUER: It is. PROST AMERIKA: We’ll have a more national media and they may not be soccer friendly or Seattle friendly. How are you personally going to cope with interviews being more difficult, people trying to catch you out? Will MLS change the way you approach the media? ADRIAN HANAUER: Probably – I think it already has. By the sheer volume that’s part of it. As much as I’d like to be accessible to everyone, I can’t. I just don’t have enough time in the day, and if I did I wouldn’t be doing the ‘job part’ to try and build a great football club. So I think that by the sheer volume of the media, it will affect me. I will probably be more guarded in my communication just because, to your point, the media was extremely friendly, and if I let an F-bomb slip, it wasn’t going to be on the front page and no-one was going to make an issue of it. I had friends enough in the media to say, ‘I know I said this, but this is what I meant’. I’m a very open and honest person by nature and so I just realized that I probably will need to rein that in a bit. I guess on the other side of that, I’m not sure you really asked this question, but I do see a number of the articles out there ripping people in MLS, whether it’s coaches or general managers, and I know my time will come. That will probably be sooner than later. That probably, maybe not consciously but sub-consciously, changes people. You think “why do I want to do all these nice things, if I’m just going to get attacked about it?” I’ll try and remain as rational and objective about it as possible. But I’m sure these things make people crawl into a hole a little more. PROST AMERIKA: Are the players that are here this year going to get any specific training if they’re here next year? ADRIAN HANAUER: Certainly anyone who is signed to the team will get specific media handling. Nothing dramatic. Here’s an easier way to deal with answering questions. It’s clear that around the globe players can give a consistent answer “well if it weren’t for my team mates, none of this would have happened.” We’ll do a little bit, hopefully to make them feel more comfortable, not that they need it. That goes back to the idea of providing tools in general. That’s a tool to make someone more comfortable, more successful. Here’s how to deal with the media. Here are the best schools in the neighborhood for your kid, here’s a great dentist or eye doctor, here’s a training facility. PROST AMERIKA: You’re building a kind of family here then, that the players can be part of? ADRIAN HANAUER: Yes PROST AMERIKA: Looking from a historical perspective, I often look back and wonder what it must have been like creating a football club, what it must have been like deciding whether to call it Sheffield Wednesday or Thursday. Do you ever take a step back and think, I am retreading the path, not just of those who created modern soccer franchises here in the US, but of the European and South American footballing pioneers over a century ago, and view yourself as part of a historical process in this city? ADRIAN HANAUER: I try not to think about that too much because I’m afraid I might get paralyzed by the enormity of what we’re doing. Certainly, every once in a while. The times it really hits me is when I run into people on the streets who either I don’t know or are loose acquaintances, who talk about how big this is, and how amazing it is -- and thank me. For me it’s so much fun, and something I’ve been doing now for a while, it just comes naturally. I don’t step back and look at it that way as often as maybe I should. When people mention how big of a deal it is, it’s like “this is actually a pretty big deal what we’re doing here. It’s a major sports franchise in North America.” PROST AMERIKA: Another word that has cropped up, you used it and Joe Roth used it, is ‘international’, as in ‘the vision for this team is a truly international brand’. Every club in the USA obviously by dint of the country’s demography has to be international. Is there anything over and above that which would make the Seattle Sounders an international brand? ADRIAN HANAUER: We are actively looking for relationships with international clubs, with clubs all over the world, from every continent. We do want a broad mix of international talent on the pitch. We don’t intend to have six players from one country and focus on one style or type of demographic. We intend to make the stadium and the atmosphere at the events an internationally appealing event. Whether that means food or flags flying or languages spoken, we think about the game day. Although we haven’t executed it superbly well to date, but I think we all hope over time the website is in several languages and accessible, and we’re able to mine fans out there in the world, maybe fans in Russia if we happen to sign a Russian player. Certainly try to get French fans because of Sébastien le Toux and Gambian fans (because of Sanna Nyassi). And we also want to build a team over time that can travel and that has a big enough brand, that can travel internationally and can continue to develop the brand around the world. So I don’t know other teams and how much they are thinking about this. We certainly think about it or talk about it often. Whether it results in a more international brand or not, we’ll see over time but we feel like we’re uniquely situated in the United States to have a chance to create this world brand, and also not incidentally our affiliation with Microsoft being here in this great technology region makes us believe that we have some tools at our disposal that others may not. PROST AMERIKA: Given everything you’ve seen his year, are you convinced we’re going to a better league? ADRIAN HANAUER: (laughs) Ah - yeah, I am. PROST AMERIKA: Only because we’re moving to it? ADRIAN HANAUER: Certainly there are some USL clubs that could compete in MLS, but I do believe that over the course of 35 or 40 games -- 30 regular season -- on average MLS is a superior league. There are lots of things the MLS can do to become an even better league and create a larger gap between itself and USL, so I do believe it is a better league, but there are a number of things the league can, and I assume will, do over time to get even better. PROST AMERIKA: Can I ask you to put your gambling hat on, and not be Adrian Hanauer briefly for this question? If you were a gambling man and I asked you to answer this question in just one number; how many of the current Sounders players will be on the squad next year? ADRIAN HANAUER: I don’t think I can answer that question without being Adrian Hanauer, so I probably shouldn’t answer it. But we’ve told all of the players, they all have a chance. We know them and we like them and they have great character. They have a slight leg up on a random person who we bring in because we know their character. So all things being equal, if there were two players that were of equal quality on the field, it’s likely we’d go with the one that had been with us for three, four or five years. PROST AMERIKA: Does that perhaps extend to the coaching position?  Brothers in Football - A Partnership Made in Heaven ADRIAN HANAUER: It’s a different discussion on the coaching position. If all things were being equal, I’d take Brian Schmetzer in a second. Brian and I talk every day. He understands the process we’re going through. I know he would like to be the head coach. Whether it’s now or some day in the future, he’ll be a spectacular MLS head coach. The process will play its way out over the next month to six weeks. And we’ll have an answer. PROST AMERIKA: Is the choice of the name Seattle Sounders FC not conclusive proof that the name of the sport is football and not soccer? ADRIAN HANAUER: (laughs) I believe it’s football. And it is interesting - and I know you’re not asking me this question, but one of the things that’s going to make this franchise successful is the partnership between the Seahawks or Vulcan Sports and Entertainment and the soccer side of things -- again it’s Joe Roth, myself, Paul Allen and Drew Carey, but the Seahawks are really the ones running business operations and I can’t over emphasize how embracing they have been. As the USL Sounders, they were helpful but they didn’t have a vested interest. They didn’t get behind it 100%. The fact is that the majority of the people over there are working for the Seahawks and Sounders FC. I’ve been blown away by their support and how they’ve embraced this. If you call the Seahawks, they answer the phone, “Seahawks and Sounders FC”. Everybody on their voicemail says “Hey this is Chuck Arnold, Director of Ticket Sales for Seahawks and Sounders FC”. I’ve been absolutely blown away and it really comes from the top and Tod Leiweke who is in my mind the best sports executive in North America. It’s a long way of getting to the fact that that the Seahawks are American football and we’re football but I imagined being here and using ‘football’ for soccer and having them scowl at me a little bit or something but they’re completely enthusiastic and they’ll use football for soccer interchangeably as well. It’s been a fun process to build that relationship on that side of it. PROST AMERIKA: Doesn’t it show the sport’s truly arrived if you’re training them to call it football? ADRIAN HANAUER: Exactly! October 10, 2008 |