The most common question I get is “Why start a club, and why here?”. Since the answer seems so obvious to me, my answers aren’t always great. The short answer is why not, and hey, it’s paradise. However, there’s a little more background to it that will create a better context for this Paradise story.
In 2008 I started my coaching career after suffering a knee injury playing in Norway. As many young coaches I was determined to become the best, and pored a lot of time, money and energy into developing myself. A decade later, I coached in the Women’s UEFA Champions League quarterfinals against Manchester City. So I guess the effort paid off.
However, along the way it became apparent to me that I wanted to more than coaching. I was always interested in the business side of the sport and how we could grow our organization. Too much time was spent thinking about marketing, sales and organizational structure.
You can read more about my coaching journey in my book “The Beautiful Game: How to become a more efficient coach” that takes the lessons I learned and passes them on.
The week to week chasing of results didn’t trigger me as much as it annoyed me. It disturbed the long-term process and strategy to improve the club. I wanted to do more, impact more people. When I started coaching the main reason was to help players achieve their dreams.
As a young player I never had that coach who believed in me, or had the tools to be able to help me develop. After a while I realized that coaching one team didn’t impact more than 20 players, but if I started coaching coaches my impact would expand.
However, my personal impact would still be limited to players and coaches. I believe that we are put on this planet to make the world a better place. So starting a team seemed like the logical expansion of my personal impact.
A club impacts the whole community. It creates jobs, joy and can facilitate positive change. From impacting twenty to potentially several hundred thousand people, helping them in a small way get one step closer to realize their dreams. That’s why I started Sarasota Paradise.
The second part of that question we started with is why here. Why start a team in one of the most beautiful places on planet earth? Well, actually that’s only part of the answer. I remember sitting down with the first commissioner of the MLS, Doug Logan for lunch some years ago. He’s leaned over and said in his raspy voice “Marcus, I’m not bullish on professional soccer in Sarasota. You’re competing against paradise”.
The joke is on him since we can’t compete against ourselves! But he was of course right, 5-10 years ago. Anyone who would said they would start a professional soccer team in Sarasota before 2018 should have been laughed at. Rightfully so. This was a sleepy retirement community with a very high average age. God’s waiting room.
However, when I came here in 2018 and hung out with my friend I saw what was about to happen. Reading the census data told me that old story about how it’s an older community etc. But driving around I could see all these houses being built for families to move into.
The trend of people moving to Florida had started to be visible after the 2016 election and this city was becoming younger. As I came back in 2021 after the pandemic delay, the city felt much more vibrant and still more houses were being built. Today everyone wants to start a team here. I’m just lucky that I came here in 2018 & 2019 to get started.
Now the demographics look better in terms of age, number of families and all the other relevant data for a professional soccer team. In addition the vicinity to Tampa and the beautiful beaches helps.
Something that is not well known is that for me, an important reason for why I call Sarasota home is its vibrant arts and culture scene. For me, soccer, art and culture go hand in hand. The beautiful game is considered culture in most countries on our planet.
There is in my opinion nothing better to watch than human beings performing at a high level. If that’s on a field or on a stage doesn’t matter much to me. I’m in awe of great performances which is part of the reason why I think Paradise can be a great compliment to Sarasota.
Hopefully this answers the question of why a club and why here. Please let me know if you have any other questions about Building Paradise that I can answer...
MW
