So last night was the Sydney FC members forum, the board was there featuring; Scott Barlow – Chairman, Tony Pignata – CEO, Mark Arbib, Michael Crimsale and Jamie Samaha – directors of the club.
Lots have talked about Barlow and Pignata so I won’t go into details on those two, Tony is a great bloke and cops a lot of stick that I think he doesn’t deserve….
But three men I have only just met tonight and was shocked at what their backgrounds and qualifications was the directors; Mark Arbib, Michael Crimsale and Jamie Samaha. Arbib is an ex-politician who was the minister for sport under the Gillard government and according to Ben Clark (@Scouse_Roar on twitter, and a Sydney FC fan if you believe Lucy Zelic from the TWG podcast) he’s “Bad at whatever job he does, parachuted into important jobs because of his connections”, now I don’t follow politics much, but based on what happened with the Gillard government seems like Ben’s claims have some credibility about them, more will be talked about Arbib later.
The other 2 men, Micheal Crimsale – he’s a Foundation shareholder, board member and the Chief Financial officer, with knowledge on the financial and business side of things and lastly Jamie Samaha, who sounds like he’s our Marketing guru, but knows very little about football in general.
…so heres my round up of the forum, or should I say the 2nd episode of the Australian government election – Ft. Scott Barlow as Tony Abbott?
The Presentation
Firstly, the MC introduced himself and the rest of the board, and Barlow stepped up to present a speech and Pignata delivered a presentation…I won’t bore you into too much of the details, as it will all be up by everyone else soon anyway, but what I gathered was:
- First thing Barlow did was congratulate the Youth and Women’s team for all their success.
- The club has some sort of strategic plan, but they could only reveal a tiny snippet of it tonight and its stuff we already know and have been arguing about already.
- Our plan is to be Australia’s and Asia’s “premium brand” (a phrase continuously pushed by Barlow which I hate) and our goal is to ultimately win the Asian Champions League, and Barlow said that although he said it might seem ambitious, ambitious is exactly what people who live in Sydney are and this club reflects that.
- We have an elite Youth set up as shown by the Youth team’s recent success (winning the league with 3 rounds to go is a pretty damn good achievement) and we’re slowly trying to blood the players into the first team, players like Grant, Antonis and Triantis would’ve been in our first team at the start of the season, Hagi Gligor, Dylan Caton and Aaron Calver given first team exposure this season.
- TP then started talking about our global brand and using the fact that fake Sydney FC shirts were appearing In Japan and Europe during the pre-season before the official launch to the dismay of Adidas and he was very proud of this.
- Then he started talking about our partnership with FNSW and claiming we are the first A-league teams to have a club in the National Premier League and FNSW Youth league (though Brisbane and CCM have it as well), we also have a Football Centre of Excellence for young players in the works. A very important subject that is easy to miss on a night that smelled of political garbage.
Essentially, the whole presentation went from football to business then football, then back to business. Was very confusing, but Pignata and Barlow made the point that this was a short snippet of a presentation that was done in more detail to a select few of certain Cove members that apparently went for 4 hours and had 40 slides!! (Not sure if it was literal or exaggeration).
Q and A
The Q and A went for roughly an hour and a half, and not a single question was properly answered either than one gentleman who asked “would you take your kids to watch the style of football we play?” and everyone at the board essentially said “yes”, Barlow saying he’d take his kids to watch the game no matter what because he “loves” the club.
This question pretty much summed up the problem with the whole Q and A session, as the same questions about style, and strategic plan was being asked over and over again, but the problem with the questions was that no one asked a direct questions and therefore they got very vague answers, which made the board sound like politicians (which they played the part very well), essentially, Barlow and Pignata spent the night either talking themselves up by saying how much work they’ve put into the club and how much they love the club, or talked the fans up by saying how important the fans are, Cove is, community is etc. all very frustrating to me.
I had 2 questions I wanted to ask tonight: 1 was “why was Frank Farina given a 2 year contract despite finishing out of the top 6?” and the 2nd was “after the Melbourne Victory game which we thrashed them 5-0 on Australia day, why wasn’t anything done to use that game as a motivation for consistency and why wasn’t consistency achieved?”.
Both questions were very vaguely answered. Barlow had a very hoarse voice by the end of it, not even sure why as he’s not the one singing 90 minutes in the Cove… but his voice was obviously getting quieter and quieter as the Q and A session went on (maybe it was intentional?) as he kept on avoiding answering question after question.
But the most amusing moment of the night was when someone asked will the board step down if we did not make the finals or achieve the objective of the strategic plan (to be the best in Asia?) at the end of the 3 years, and Mark Arbib decided to step up and use some Horse training analogy saying that if the jockey’s objective is to finish top 4, but they don’t have to sack them just because they didn’t complete their objective, what a load of bollocks. What’s the point of having an objective then? I guess if you ask a stupid question you’re gonna get a stupid answer. I’m sure Arbib is a decent bloke when he’s not wearing a suit, but boy did he sound like the biggest something something I have ever seen, not impressed. Politicians may have their connections and have their reasons for being in high positions (a source tells me he might be able to help us with the Football Centre of Excellence) but I’d rather the football club keep its integrity and the little class it has left then get a football centre of excellence for cheap thank you very much, maybe that’s being a little too optimistic.
There was an interesting question about why didn’t we take on Craig Foster’s recommendation to hire Josep Gombau after Ian Crook left and why we hired Frank Farina and the answer was because Frank was good at sorting out short-term problems. “He did it, sort of, at Brisbane” Pignata replied, yeah right Tony, working out well for us eh?
Scott Barlow is the man that I point my finger at when someone asks me “who do you think is at fault for the problems at the club?” so it should be no surprise that when there’s a Sydney FC members forum he comes out and sounds like Tony Abbott after a shifty Federal Election Campaign, his (excuse?) of losing his voice on a night of an important Sydney FC fan Forum was the epitome of the disaster. Is it also worth pointing out David Tratovenko was a mysterious no-show, owner of the club and the man who the Cove, directed the banners to during the Adelaide game, not even show up? I guess I expected too much.
I have high expectations from this club and it hurts that it disappoints me time and time again, but if I don’t complain who will? Someone needs to keep prodding these board members on the backside to make sure they are doing their job, which in my opinion is steering this club to success. If the club is a boat, then the philosophy is the rudder and the board is the captain, and we’re the rowdy, drunk, depressed crew members that just want to go home.
It was a night full of political garbage, fancy suits, colourful but pointless PowerPoint presentations, nervous board members and terrible questions from an uneducated audience. I personally try to avoid TV these days to avoid these sorts of things, but it hurts when the political crap is oozing out of the club. Too many stupid questions and too many vague answers, making the night so disappointing that it became comical. Not sure if i was watching Sydney FC forum or Melbourne Comedy Festival half the time…
I tweeted earlier in the night that this was like some sort of off-field grand final for the club, and the club lost.
Someone please fix this, anyone at all… Messi? Del Piero? Terry Mcflynn?
