When Willow Bay and her husband, CEO of Disney Bob whenbecame Controlling owners of Angel City Last July, they inherited a female football team that had lost more matches than it had won, had fewer appearances in the playoffs than suspensions from the league and would end the year by separating with its second director general and second chief coach in three seasons.
So, Tuesday, when Bay cut the ribbon on the team of the new team performance center at the California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, it is with the hope that would also mark the start of the reversal of Angel City.
“This is the vision of this team that we help to support and execute,” said Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, who joined her husband to invest $ 50 million in cash for the team to extend his budget and facilitate his losses. “It was very clear that we had to invest in football operations here and support leadership and support the players and make sure that they had all the resources they needed to build a winning culture.”
The Angel City's training center is delivered with a modern bodybuilding room.
(Al seib / for times)
The opening of the performance center occurs six days after Angel City announced the hiring of Mark ParsonsOne of the most prosperous coaches in NWSL history, as a sports director. Parsons said the new training center would be of great help to recruit women to come and play for its new team.
“If I can bring them here and make them work, then it will be very difficult for people who do not want to be in this environment,” he said. “When I think of Angel City and why I want to be here, which started with a property group and investors to build a brand world leader, how female athletes should be supported, knowing the ambition now and putting a performance center that no other female sports team has in the world, you have touched everything.”
The performance Center is part of a 9 -acres Angel City training base inherited from RAMS when the NFL team moved to Woodland Hills in August. It is the largest and most modern in the history of the NWSL, with a 5,400 square foot gym, three changing rooms, a movie theater, a medical treatment and hydrotherapy and a children's games room, among others. There is a complete football field and an adjacent half champ.
It is a big step at the top of the last three seasons when Angel City has worked in a pair of temporary trailers in a distant corner of the Clu campus and used a bodybuilding room that was not really a room, but a huge tent. Angel City would not say exactly how much he spent for the renovation of the establishment, but said that it was a “personalized reconstruction of several million dollars”.
The passage in the new installation occurs at a time when the league adapts to new radical rules which have changed the construction of lists. Last September, the NWSL became the first major professional league in the United States to abandon the draft, which linked the players to the team that selected them. The new collective barage agreement between the League and the Association of Players also allows players off to negotiate with each team of the League and gives players the right to block the professions to the teams for which they do not want to play.
Consequently, the signature of the players now means recruiting them first.
Angel City FC's general manager Mark Parsons is talking during the ribbon cup ceremony to unveil the new Angel City training center in Thousand Oaks.
(Al seib / for times)
“My work has just become much easier with this installation,” said Parsons. “Some additional clubs in recent years have invested. (But) it looks like nowhere else. I am delighted to be part of an organization that cares so much.
“But I am also delighted that my skills are a little easier, because everyone will want to be here.”
Christen PressA double World Cup champion and the first player signed by the team, said the installation would help make Angel City a destination.
“In the past three years, when we have been going as a club and let's talk to the best players in the world, we did not have this installation to offer,” she said. “It is a large part of our daily experience as an adult and it is important.”
It remains to be seen if it will be enough to transform a team that lost a franchise record at 13 games last season, finishing 12th in the NWSL at 14 teams. During the last month, Matt Wade, deputy managing director and technical director Mark Wilson, accepted a one -year contract extension with the press, added the French striker Julie Dufour and the Australian defender Alanna Kennedy and signed the Mississippi Macey Hodge midfielder.
However, the team will start in pre-season training on Wednesday without replacing permanent for coach Becki Tweed and with Parsons only a week in his work to replace the director general Angela Mangano Hucles.
A look at the locker room inside the Angel City FC training plant.
(Al seib / for times)
Parsons said that the team had signed Sam Main, who previously worked in Seattle and Houston, to manage the club on a temporary basis while looking for a permanent coach.
“Getting the right person is the priority,” said Parsons. “If the right person is available as soon as possible, very late. If we have to wait for this good person and that they are not available before summer, we are also open to this.”
For the moment, Bay promises to be patient and support. The results, however, must possibly follow.
“Bob and I were very clear to invest the resources in this team and the people who direct and manage it. And most certainly the women who play for this, ”she said.
But, she added: “We know how important it is to do our best to bring a championship to this city.”
