Clash course
Rothenberg discusses plans for San Jose soccer team
Posted: Tuesday August 11, 1998 08:28 AM
SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Major League Soccer founder Alan Rothenberg on Monday toasted a brighter future for the San Jose Clash, the struggling team he and other investors are buying for a record $25 million.
Rothenberg was confident that the Clash, despite its last-place standing in the West Coast Conference, is ready to succeed on the field and in the stands.
"We intend to make this the stellar team in Major League Soccer and the showcase for how it should be done," he said at a news conference. "I think the pieces are in place. It's a great organization."
Rothenberg intended to boost marketing of the Clash, but planned no major changes during the nine remaining games this season.
The sale of the Clash, one of three teams run by the league, was announced July 31. The investor group Rothenberg heads also includes the Japanese advertising company Dentsu Inc. and Peter Ueberroth, former major league baseball commissioner.
The $25 million price outstripped the $20 million investors paid last year for the Miami Fusion.
Rothenberg, in addition to being a charter investor in the MLS, is outgoing president of the U.S. Soccer Federation. He was commissioner of soccer for the 1984 Olympics, and head of the group bringing the 1994 World Cup to the U.S. He also owned the Los Angeles Aztecs of the North American Soccer League in the late 1970s.
His acquisition of the Clash is considered a much-needed boost for the team, which has won nine games and lost 14 this season. The team finished in next-to-last place in 1996 and at the bottom last year.
"He's a man of tremendous qualifications, tremendous clout, a man who will be tremendously useful to us," said Clash president Peter Bridgewater, who will remain with the team.
He, Rothenberg and others at the news conference opened a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate the Clash's future.
The Clash, despite its dismal record, enjoys the sixth-highest attendance in the 12-team MLS. That's due largely to the San Jose area's Hispanic and affluent suburbanite residents, the sport's core markets.
But that attendance has slipped over the last year, a trend Rothenberg is determined to reverse.
Rothenberg said he would not change the way the team is promoted but would simply do it more aggressively. He was confident that the Clash and Major League Soccer, after a decline from an initial flurry of interest, were building solid bases of popularity in the United States.
He also explained -- and poked fun at -- comments he made a couple of years ago, calling San Jose a "rinky-dink town."
Rothenberg, after going out of his way to praise the city and region, said he used that term to whip up support for the Los Angeles team, playing off California's traditional north-south rivalry.
"This guy from LA-LA Land has always admired San Jose and Northern California," he said.
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