Athletica, Women's Professional Soccer Reminded: Shared Ownership With Men's Clubs Finds Women's Teams Overlooked

Apr. 27, 2010 - Fenton, Missouri, United States of America - April 25, 2010 Athletica forward Eniola Aluko (9, left) kicks the ball past Breakers defender Amy LePeilbet (6) in the first half. The St. Louis Athletica and the Boston Breakers tied, 1-1, at the Anheuser-Busch Soccer Park in Fenton, MO on Sunday April 25, 2010. Content © 2010 ZumaPress All rights reserved.

New New Jersey Nets’ owner Mikhail Pokhorov doesn’t have an email address. He doesn’t use a computer at all. He doesn’t own a cell phone and, according to Bill Simmons at ESPN.com, has no use for the mounds of information that can be accessed by such things.

“I don’t use a computer. We have too much information and it’s really impossible to filter it.”

When I read that quote earlier this week, I patronizingly thought “how quaint.” I’m pretty sure the word “Grandpa” as amongst my thoughts, though as I tried in vain to find a vaguely remembered passage on Jennifer Doyle’s From A Left Wing, I started to empathize with Pokhorov.

I recall reading Doyle’s thoughts on women’s clubs operating under men’s clubs’ umbrellas, yet I could not find the piece on her site. Sample size be damned, I’m forced to assume Google searches are useless (a conclusion I share without regard for SPA’s blog rank).  I’m also forced to persist with my dime store recantation of her thoughts, though I suppose it’s possible I’m incorrectly attributing them to her.

Not that dime stores are still relevant.

Regardless, I believe it was Doyle who introduced me to the idea that women’s club teams operated by men’s clubs was a poor idea, an opinion I immediately adopted as my own. The support for the view is so obvious that I felt ashamed while reading her column – as if I had failed in not realizing the logic on my own. Clubs which have men’s and women’s teams but are built around the men’s instance are always going to meet the men’s needs first. At least, I know of no example of a group at the professional level that, already having a men’s team, started a women’s team and eventually decided to make the women their focus.

Unfortunately, as the Los Angeles Sol organization reminded  us in January, the women’s game gets far less commitment than the men’s. After one year in Women’s Professional Soccer, Anschultz Entertainment Group abandoned the Sol. The league, unable to find another buyer, folded the team. I wish I could say I wondered if the Colorado Rapids would still be around had AEG applied the same standards to their 1996 Major League Soccer entry, but I don’t.  Where the Sol an equivalent men’s team, they would have been given more time.  Whether it was a gender issue or another difference in circumstance, AEG didn’t afford the Sol the same opportunities it did the Rapids.

Were the Sol owned by a group more committed to the women’s game, Los Angeles would still have a Women’s Professional Soccer team; however, the second the team was folded, the Sol became a reminder of the unfair, uphill battle for legitimacy being fought by women’s professional soccer.  And unfortunately for WPS,if ownership groups have commitment levels that differ because of gender, the league’s battle will sometimes be waged against its own owners.

Over the last week, AC St. Louis has provided another reminder of this reality.  During that time it came to light that AC St. Louis did not have the cash reverses to make it’s Friday, May 21 payroll obligations.  This meant WPS’s Saint Louis Athletica, who are operated by the same ownership group, were also out of money, putting both teams on the brink of folding.  The United States Soccer Federation stepped-in and helped AC. St. Louis make payroll, and people working the problem now seem optimistic both AC St. Louis and Athletica can make it through this season.

Nothing has been finalized, though, and until something is, Athletica remain on a cliff’s ledge, a ludicrous situation when you consider AC St. Louis’s financial obligations for the remainder of the season are three times those of Athletica’s.  Why does Athletica have to be dragged-down with their nascent brother club?

The needs of AC St. Louis have been prioritized such that the men’s club has been allowed to compromise the women’s.  The amount of money they have paid for the likes of Steve Ralston, and Brazilians Gauchinho and Alex Titton would go a long way to running the Athletica for the year.  They paid for Claude Anelka to come coach the team and hired former Manchester United Academy director Francisco Filho as their head of player development.  And as St. Louis made each of these moves, they vaulted AC ahead of the club that deserved to be first in the pecking order.

Nevermind the fact that Athletica are one year older than AC St. Louis. Forget that they have performed better on the pitch and overlook the fact that their operating costs are roughly one-third those of the USSF Division-2 team. Oh yeah – AC St. Louis is a Division-2 team, not a top-division club like Athletica. Athletica is in a USSF sanctioned league, while AC St. Louis (of the North American Soccer League) is in a provisional USSF-run league.  As far as crowds, the teams draw about the same.

But forget those facts.  None of them matter, as Athletica still could disappear, just like their less successful, less established, more expensive brethren.

Adding insult to Athletica’s neglect has been some of the reaction from some AC St. Louis fans towards the WPS team. Pointing to losses announced last year, some ACSL supporters ( be it on Big Message Boards of your choice or neophyte fan blogs) are blaming the women’s team for taking down their storied men’s club. Implicit in this criticism is the unreasonable expectation that Athletica should have broke even or made a profit in year one of their history. Also implicit in the criticism is a denial that the men’s operation could have any fault in the crisis.

As it concerns Athletica’s story, AC St. Louis – or, more readily, the tunnel vision that supported it – bares all the fault. Unjustified largesse had the nascent team spend for the boys while failing to secure the future of their women’s team. As we are seeing, neither Jeff Cooper nor his other investors put aside money for Athletica, even though that sum would have been small compared to the operating costs of the men’s team. The money that would have sustained Athletica was available for the men’s team to waste.

It’s difficult to speak in absolutes because a small change – be it in priorities or a sense of fairness – would have had St. Louis Soccer United provide for Athletica.  Without such provisions, the AC St. Louis story becomes an example of why women’s clubs need independence from men’s teams. There is still too little regard for women’s sport. There is still too much sexism as it concerns what’s deemed the appropriate place in the pecking order.

Athletica should have been first. They were the first to play. They are performing better, at a higher level, and for less money. Financially, they are easier to save.  Athletica players and fans should have been at the top of the pecking order.

But because, at this critical point in their history, Athletica is in competition with AC St. Louis to see which team’s needs are met first, this may be the last year for Saint Louis Athletica. If it is, let’s hope the fiasco can at least serve as a learning experience.