Corporate Hoods and Futbol Minds

By: JustJack | August 15th, 2008

$Big Tim and another \"Big guy\"$ Man of the People

I’m still sort of recovering from last nights match. Hopefully someone will put up a post-mortem, but not likely not me; I’m still too raw from it all.

The day before yesterday, well the night really, I couldn’t sleep, I was thinking that this is the kind of Corporate Hood think that really really makes my guts clench (From the LA Times Grahame Jones piece):

“Tim Leiweke, chief executive of AEG, which owns the Galaxy, said Monday’s developments cleared the way for the Galaxy to “straighten the ship out” and regain some forward momentum.

“Unfortunately, you can’t fire 22 players,” he said, a comment reflective of AEG’s considerable unhappiness with the Galaxy and the way it is underperforming. Leiweke had only recently described the team as “dysfunctional,” a description he repeated Monday.

“I think they’re all responsible,” Leiweke said of the players. “What I told them this morning was, ‘Now no one has any excuses.’ I eliminated all excuses.

“Now it’s up to Cobi to straighten it out with the team and on the pitch, and for us to make a decision on how we structure this organization going forward so we no longer have the split we clearly have.”"

I mentioned in a recent comment to Nathan’s last post about the Shakeup of 2008:

“As far as GM, that’s a business thing and there are far too many corporado types who have no biz being in the biz in the first place but all kinds of privilege that seems to put them there regardless. I stay up late at night worrying about that. But I know of no artful leaders who can abandon themselves to the strengths of our side.”

Leiweke’s statements pretty much exemplifies what I consider far-too typical for biz types in corporate America. ‘I paid for results and when I don’t get them, I replace whomever it was that didn’t gimme what I wanted and paid for.’ On a small level that sort of seems reasonable, but mostly it just sounds to me like my 8 year old’s justification for the necessity of ice cream from the ice cream man each and every day of the year. Do the players feel responsible? I think they’d be hard pressed not to. But the last thing they need is some corporate owner-yutz “reminding” them of it. OTOH last night there was clearly a fire under everyone’s butts. Maybe I’ve just had too many of those big-rich-guy owner comes down to the trenches and delivers ultimatums before in my own working life. It’s never been a positive experience for me and I can’t imagine it was all that swell for the boys either.

While perusing the boards at BigSoccer , the other morning I ran across a brilliant analysis of AEG’s history of monkeying that seemed to fill in the blanks I’ve had for years about the Galaxy’s historic shakeups, Zambrano’s axing, Sigi’s casting off, Luis “the spitter” Hernandez’ strange orbit around LA. I might be committing Offside blogger heresy by referring fans to another discussion board’s shores but it’s a compelling analysis by a skillful fan and deserves a read.

The aspect of this whole shakeup affair that concerns me is the typical corporate sham nonsense that impacts daily life… meaning I am worried about Cobi being the next futbol pro dropped into a corporate meat grinder. I adore Cobi Jones, he’s our hometown kid who did good and made something of himself, and amongst all the Westlaker CEO set, it’s a fine thing to see a young man from non-CEO class origins with as much integrity, wits, humbletude and transparent humanity as Cobi now have his moment in the sun on such a big canvass. But he’s got to deal with this Tim Leiweke character whose behavior sets a pattern of typical Westlaker CEO set hoohah and class arrogance that seems poised to put a torch to our club altogether. I so don’t want to see that happen, not now.

Of course, there’s the issue of “our club” as well… it’s really an MLS franchise, a sports brand product owned by a corporation, AEG, not really a local LA “club” like other sides in other leagues are where they stand on their own and are members of a league where their event-related activities are transacted every week between other members who are also stand-alone clubs. It’s just that a lot of Galaxy fans want this to be “our club” because that’s futbol and that’s how we all roll. But my experience being around owning class types like Leiweke is that they see only the brand, the product and have no conceptual comprehension that while the LA Galaxy is indeed their product, it’s really not just another owned “thing” but a futbol side made up of human beings, players, managers, trainers, etc. Owning classers are skilled compartmentalizers, quantifiers and unfortunately, all too often the result is that those skills make them grinders of human experience that chew up magic and transcendence and artful athletic prowess and spit out… well, mush.

Not all corporate guys are like that though, take Max DuPree of Herman Miller, Inc. I hear he’s quasi-retired. Maybe he’d like to apply his artful leadership to a staggering futbol side down in a little coastal hamlet called L.A. One can dream, yeah?

Maybe I just feel protective towards Cobi. I can’t help it. I want him to succeed, to step up and fill Ruud’s shoes, making that superior futbol-think work for our boys on the pitch in a hostile or at least dysfunctional American corporate milieu, and for our side to make an upshift (and get into the playoffs and maybe the Cup too!). But I wonder if that’s really possible under the AEG corporate hood.

I wonder too if there can be an MLS shakeup, where fans put up the dough and buy those franchises, reforming them into local pro-sports club structures that may ultimately transform MLS to “normal” futbol like the rest of the world has.

But then, maybe that’s just my Marxist fantasies in overdrive and I really just need another beer…

I DVR’d the Leiweke comments on ESPN2 so I’ll have to go comb through that later… there was a lot of loaded statements spoken from the booth about Bruce Arena, a fellow I have to admit I’m real uncomfortable with, so more on that later.