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Surprise! The worst sports exec in Philly is NOT Ruben Amaro Jr.

Nick Sakiewicz can't be fired as Union CEO -- and that's a problem

    by Will Bunch | Columnist
    Published 

My bio on the upper right of this blog claims that I blog here about my "obsessions," one of which is soccer. Luckily  for you, that's mostly false...I have Twitter now to rant about the many various screw-ups of the Philadelphia Union, Liverpool or the United States (men's soccer, I mean...I strill do rant about the screw-ups of the actual United States here on the blog, of course). But there's a sports situation in this town that's so egregious that I have to weigh in.

For well over a decade, thousands of soccer die-hards here in Philadelphia wanted Major League Soccer to come here in the worst way.

In a way, that's exactly what has happened.

The man pictured at the top of the blog is Nick Sakiewiez, the CEO of the Philadelphia Union. I know this will come as a shock to the 700 Level (now the 200 Level?) WIP-listening "lol soccer" fan reading this, but Sakiewiez has backed more inane player decisions, and done more to prevent his team from winning, than Ruben Amaro's disastrous tenure with the Phillies. I know, I know, hard to believe -- and while it's true that the Union don't have a big slow lumbering guy on the right side of the pitch who kicks and misses at the ball a lot, the Phillies don't have a GM who signed three goalies (note to non-soccer fans: only one goalkeeper can play at a time!) but hasn't brought in a guy who can score goals.

Let me outsource some of this to more knowledgeable folks. Here's John Smallwood of the Daily News, a great writer on all things soccer:

Whatever the ultimate reasons for the ugly divorce between [inaugural coach Peter] Nowak and the Union, Sakiewicz cannot be absolved from a bad decision that ultimately wasted the franchise's first 2 1/2 years of building and forced a reset.

Being a "hands-off" owner is good, unless the people you hired and let do their jobs aren't doing them well.

What it comes down to is that, for whatever reasons - whether it's been bad player identification or a refusal to commit the funds necessary - the Union has not acquired enough talent in five seasons to be a playoff team, much less a legitimate MLS Cup contender.

That's unacceptable.

The good people at the Philly Soccer Page pile on:

What the fans want is a team that will grow with them, meeting their loyalty and patience with coherence and determination on the pitch. A team where the local kid, signed at age 15, will slowly become a regular part of the squad. Where the team's draft picks, after years invested in their growth, are treated with respect. Where the team matches the commitment of their words with their commitment on the field.

That's not what we have here.

Ironically, there was a stretch in the middle of this about-to-end season when it looked like the Union were on the verge of turning things around -- in part because of the slow, steady growth of the team's young goalkeeper Zac McMath. Then, inexplicably, Sakiewicz signed a new goalie, Algeria's Rais Mbolhi -, who'd been in the recent World Cup, apparently for no other reason than the team's weird notion that bottling some of the magic of soccer's greatest event would get people jacked up...instead of, you know, winning. Instead, it was Mbolhi whose last-second blunder cost the Union a win and sabotaged their playoff hopes.
What is that they say about karma again?
Anyway, Philadelphia doesn't deserve a lot of things -- but we definitely didn't deserve this. I'm not going to pretend that the Union have as big a fan base as the Eagles or even the Flyers -- they don't -- but this city's soccer supporters are nonetheless remarkable. It was Philadelphia that had a rowdy, raucous fan group -- the Sons of Ben -- for years before the city even had a team, or before the team even had a name. That's incredible.
No one in the Union's passionate fan base expected a title in Year One. Instead, the fans patiently filled all or most of their handsome riverside sports palace, PPL Park week after week  -- and expected smart management that would patiently reward them with a winner. Instead, they were "rewarded" with a bizarre revolving door of players, coaches, and strategies that often zig-zagged several times in the course of a given season, going nowhere.
The solution is an obvious one: Fire Nick Sakiewicz -- but, as Smallwood and others point out, the CEO is also a part-owner, which means that he's not going anywhere. This is a tragedy of sports that we see so often, and especially here -- that there can be no correlation between the quality of the fans and the quality of the owners and the team that they put on the field. There is only one affirmative action that a spurned sports fan can take, and it is a sad one, indeed. To stay home. But that is what will happen -- and soon, as in 2015 -- if the Union do not do something, ASAP.
    WB
    Will Bunch