Club Leadership - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

First off, great topic. Second, I'm new to the board but have an 07 daughter who is going into her 5th year playing club after 4 years playing for a church rec league with yours truly as her coach.  I have 2010 twin daughters, one of whom is going into her 2nd year playing club.

Oldest played her first 2 years at Concorde Central. I was the TM both years and frankly we didn't have a great experience. I never once met anyone with "director" in their title at Concorde.  We flirted with UFA Norcross after our 1st year at Concorde (she made their Premier team with Coach Renata) but decided not to make the jump due to the commute to practices 3 times/week combined with family concerns/logistics.  Looking back, I wish we had just jumped in and made it work.  After our 2nd year at Concorde, we finally pulled the trigger and moved her to UFA.  She made the 2nd team and Renata was her coach. We loved the feel of the club and I had regular access to the directors, especially since I was the TM for the team. Communications were much better, they published the coaching assignments well in advance of tryouts, etc.  Renata was again her coach this past year playing SCCL-P at U13.  Her coaching was much better than anything we got at Concorde.

I know UFA has had some issues (with a change of directors and the firing of a coach that's been discussed on this board recently) but I think all clubs have their warts and we've just had a much better experience at UFA and were happy to continue there as my daughter moves into U14. I've been very impressed with our new coach, Jeremy McNeill, so far.

My younger one played U10 for Chiefs this past year.  Great experience, great atmosphere, really like the coaches and very impressed with Neil McNab as director of the club. I really like his vision of what soccer (and really, youth sports in general) should be for these kids. We're staying with them for next season, although I hate that they're losing the "Chiefs" name as they change to "Rush Union". But I know why they made the name change so it's all good. I've been impressed with Matt Cross and Steve Reid, both of whom coached my daughter's U10 team.  Also should mention Tiffany Rodriguez, who helped run practices a good bit and coached a few games in a pinch.  Steve Reid is GREAT with the girls in the U9-U12 age group.

I'll be interested to follow this thread to see what others say about clubs in the metro Atlanta area.

Truth is there is very little “leadership” at the mega clubs. There are plenty of highly paid people with titles but little in the way of leadership. The smaller clubs seem to do a better job of leadership but once it grows to a mega club the leadership suffers.

Original poster mentioned DOC. He is for the boys sides. Great leader, great coach, outstanding person for players to be around. If you answer the question "who is your kids coach?", all you say in Georgia is Nuno and everyone knows who you are talking about just as did you in your response. That says it all.

We had very poor communication at a small club and much better at the big club. Still there is much to be desired with regards to communication.

My experience with big clubs is that Mirza, Tavani, & Vince Hayes have been great leadership at AFU. Open to discussion and talking about problems, tons of weekly and sometimes daily communication as well.

On the other hand we never had that at gsa/dacula. Both were a hot mess of crazy. Unless you’re on the top team or play for another club you’d never see or here from Campbell, Judson, Drew or Nuno. You wanna know when we met Campbell? When he tried to recruit us from AFUs and he had no idea we were at gsa beforehand.

On a smaller club note, Kenny Costello at Steamers was great. He’s definitely a small club guy and wants to do it all so things do fall through the cracks at times but you can tell he cares and he’s trying. Always visible at the field, always working with the Rec kids and trying to bring new people into the club to help rebuild it after the old DOC wrecked it.

I've heard similar about this coach from elsewhere.

I am not sure that Concorde even knows that communication is.  At the club level, Concorde sent an email in March that play was being suspended.  The next communication from Concorde was sign up for tryouts.  The final communication was that tryouts were cancelled.  Very hard to get anything out of Greg or Ken without finding them at the field and asking directly.  

That is certainly what Greg and Ken think and will tell people. They believe that everyone is there because of the Concorde name. They don’t realize how many people play there because it is the closest big club. That arrogance is what cost them Concorde North and Concorde South. The lack of communication is what allowed tophat to make the announcement that Concorde lost girls DA several years ago. They also think that the tophat girls came to Concorde this year because it is Concorde instead of it being the closest ECNL club to the Buckhead girls. In a post covid world, concorde’s lack of communication will cost the club.

I would agree with that. Same thing happened to my daughter. Left after they didnt keep their word as well.

Director at North left along with a lot of teams and started NTH Milton. South director left and program fell apart and now no longer exists.

For us it was during the Hoover days.

Director at South took teams and coaches to AFC.