USL President Jake Edwards
Thank you all for joining us. On behalf of our CEO Alec Papadakis and the entire USL family, welcome to the 2017 USL Cup. Thank you for being here for this press conference as we kick off this championship weekend. This 2017 season has been a landmark season for our league for many reasons. We had three new teams join the league in Reno, Tampa, and Ottawa this season, making this the largest field of clubs we’ve ever had. We also had numerous senior internationals, world-class players, veterans, and some of the rising stars of the game in North America competing week in and week out to make this, I believe, one of the strongest and most competitive seasons we’ve had to date. We opened several new soccer-specific stadiums as part of our destination 2020 stadium initiative program, and we’ll have more coming in the years ahead. We launched USL Productions, and the USL television network to great effect this season, taking our games and our content truly to a global audience. This growth has been supported and recognized by our fans, and I’m thrilled to say over two million fans have come out this season to support their local teams and local USL clubs. This is a huge accomplishment. Never in the history of US Soccer has a second-division had so much support. We thank all of our fans for turning out in those record numbers. All this will culminate Monday night, in a fantastic USL Cup match.
Let me give a few thank you’s. I would certainly like to thank the City of Louisville for their hospitality in hosting this great event. This is our marquee event, so we appreciate all the hard work that is going into this weekend and Monday’s match. I’d like to thank Mayor Fischer and Louisville Metro Council for their passionate support of Louisville City over the last few seasons, and their commitment to finding this club a fantastic new home in Butchertown. Finally, I’d like to thank all the fans of this club, especially Louisville Coopers, who over the last few seasons have demonstrated phenomenal passion and have really made this into a soccer city. What better place to find ourselves in today than the Muhammad Ali Center, as we launch our championship weekend in the home of “The Champ.” This is a phenomenal building, an iconic building in this city and we thank the Ali Center for letting us kick off the weekend here. It’s only fitting that we have these two heavyweight sides, who are meeting now after a couple seasons in our league, on Monday night in the USL Cup.
Swope Park becomes the first team in USL modern history to go to back-to-back USL Cup finals. Coach Popovic and his side have played an exciting, attacking style of football all season, and I congratulate them on a magnificent campaign that they’ve had.
Louisville City led the Eastern Conference practically all season. They make their debut now in the USL Cup. I would like to congratulate Coach O’Connor and his squad on a fantastic season and for truly inspiring this city to get behind our sport and behind this team. I’d like to congratulate the club’s management as well. Under the leadership of Steve Livingstone and Brad Estes, all the work that has gone into hosting this USL Cup final in such a short space of time, both this weekend and Monday’s game, I really congratulate them. It’s a heavy lift and you guys are executing it marvelously. I’d also like to extend our appreciation to Chairman John Neace, to Mike Mountjoy, and to the wider ownership group for their hard work and their commitment to make this organization one of the very best clubs in the USL. Monday night’s game will be televised on ESPNU nationally, and carried with our radio partner SiriusXM on satellite radio. I’d like to thank Sirius and ESPN for their continued support not only of the sport but our league and partnership with the USL.
Finally, as we wind up the season, it’s an opportunity for me to recognize and thank the quality of the individuals I get to work with everyday at the USL. It’s a real privilege. We have some phenomenal young sport executives who come into work everyday trying to make our league and our teams better. They don’t accept the status quo, and they’re always pushing, and I’m always challenging them. It’s a privilege to work with them. We have a number of them here this weekend, and I’d just like to recognize a few. Brett Luy and Dan Lohrs, who run all the competition and all the operations for our league and support all our team operations. Lizzie Seedhouse, Vincent Wiskowski, AJ Coleman. They’re here, and they’ve transformed our digital and social media efforts to make us look a lot cooler, a lot hipper. We thank them for all their efforts. Lenny (Santiago), and Nicholas Murray who head all our communications and content production and do a fantastic job. I would also like to recognize our Executive Vice President Tom Veit who has a multitude of tasks at the league office, but he is the chief architect behind USL Productions and the USL TV Network and has done an outstanding job supporting our teams. We’ve gone from one team with a local television market deal to 20 moving into next season. Finally, I would like to recognize our head of events Jo Dragotta, who works tirelessly. We have a ton of events that we have to put on throughout the year. This is our big one, so Jo has done an amazing job leading the team and doing everything that goes into the weekend, as well as working with the host club. Congratulations and thank you Jo, for all her hard work.
Monday night, the USL Cup will be the only live professional soccer game on TV in this country, so we have the potential to reach millions of soccer fans. We need you all at Slugger Field. From what I’m told, there may be 1,000 or so tickets left, maybe less. It’ll be a full house, standing room only shortly. We need you there, get out there. This is Louisville’s chance to show it’s passion, and show that it is truly a soccer city, and to do so on a national stage.
With that, I want to thank you all for your support of this team, over the years and into Monday. Thank you for your support of the USL, and without further ado I’ll step aside so you can hear from the two contenders up here. Thank you everybody.
Louisville City FC Head Coach James O’Connor
Good afternoon everyone. I’d like to obviously echo the sentiments that Nikola (Popovic) made. I’d like to welcome Nikola and all his players and his coaches. I think they’ve had a phenomenal season, and I think to win two Western Conferences back-to-back, to get to two USL Cup finals is huge. They have huge respect from everyone at Louisville City. I’d also like to thank the league. I think when you look at Jake (Edwards) and Alec (Papadakis), you look at the job the league has done and the growth of the game. Myself and Christian (Duke) use to play together a few years ago in Orlando, and we were just commenting before, the magnificent strides that the league has been able to make in the last three years. I think they deserve enormous credit.
So, I think when you look at the way Swope play and their style of play, and the way we play, I think it’ll be a very entertaining game. They’re obviously a very formidable team, but it all points to a really exciting game on Monday night.
We’re very encouraged by the supporters and the fact that we have so few seats left in the house, so again I’d like to touch on that. Make sure if you haven’t got your ticket, you’ve probably got the rest of today to get a seat. After that it will be standing room only.
It’s a game we’re very much looking forward to, and again, thank you very much for all your support throughout the year.
