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The Orlando Pride will play in their new stadium for the first time this weekend, against the Washington Spirit.
The Orlando Pride will play in their new stadium for the first time this weekend, against the Washington Spirit. Photograph: ISI/REX/Shutterstock
The Orlando Pride will play in their new stadium for the first time this weekend, against the Washington Spirit. Photograph: ISI/REX/Shutterstock

Orlando Pride coach Tom Sermanni: 'Something special is happening here'

This article is more than 6 years old

The former US national coach is starting his second season in charge of the Pride – and believes the club, with its brand new stadium, is going places

At the new downtown stadium where Orlando Pride make their home debut this weekend, there are 49 seats that hold a special place in the team’s short history.

The 25,500-capacity arena, completed this year and shared with Orlando City of MLS, has included in its design a section of seats in purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red rows. It’s no random color scheme. The club plans for the seats to serve as a permanent tribute to the people murdered in the shooting at one of the city’s LGBT nightclubs on 12 June 2016.

“Orlando is a unique place,” says the Orlando Pride head coach Tom Sermanni. “You think of theme parks, and then there’s a city diverse enough to have most of the things a bigger city has but is also small enough to be very much a close community. The city is also a very tolerant place, and the club is very conscious of its place in the community. We take that very seriously. The Pride, in particular, has a very strong connection to the LGBTQ community, and the nightclub incident had a big impact on the club.”

Sermanni is starting his second season as Pride’s head coach and speaks with enthusiasm about the way the club, which shares ownership with their male counterparts, is growing.

“There was a sense of something special happening here,” says the 62-year-old. “The women’s team is an important part of the club and gets treated with the same respect, the same expectations, and the same seriousness right throughout the staff: the marketing department; the events team; game day management. The technical staff share the same space and the women eat breakfast with the men. The club is totally integrated and wants to be the best in the country whether it is men’s football or women’s football.”

Sermanni, who has coached men and women at elite level, believes there are distinct differences between the genders – especially when it comes to player management.

“Communication is far more important with women,” he says. “Men will get upset if they are not selected but just want to know if they are playing or not playing. Women will want to look at the reasoning as to why they aren’t picked. Men are individuals. Women are more team-orientated and more supportive of each other.”

Pride will begin this term wanting to improve on a patchy inaugural season in which they finished ninth in the 10-team league. Pre-season player movement was headlined by the acquisition of Brazilian Marta, widely acknowledged as one of the best female players of all time. USA star Alex Morgan, currently on loan to French club Olympique Lyonnais, will return to Florida in June to add extra quality to Sermanni’s lineup. Perhaps defining Pride’s relationship with its MLS counterpart, Morgan is married to Orlando City midfielder Servando Carrasco.

“We don’t have any problems attracting players here,” Sermanni says. “The greater difficulties are with the American system, where you don’t have a free marketplace to bring in domestic players, and there is now so much money that the salary cap makes it difficult to sometimes attract the highest-level international players.

“We tried to sign a Brazilian playing in China, where she is earning over $200,000. That is not happening everywhere, but it highlights the money going around the game for the very top-level players.”

Sermanni says investment in women’s football leagues around the world demonstrates an upward trend for the sport. He adds that investment is not just because of a new found admiration for female athletes: “Manchester City, Lyon, and PSG are putting significant investment into the women’s game because clubs are seeing the advantage of having a women’s team [economically]. If you are a business, and a big percentage of your customers are young females, you are going to put products in there for that growing market. If you are a football business, the area of growth is the women’s game.”

Sermanni has a seasoned perspective on football – both men’s and women’s. Born in Scotland, his playing career took him through the lower leagues of his homeland and England before turning out in Australia’s developing national league in the 1980s. He turned to coaching in the 1990s and was appointed to lead the government-funded Australian Institute of Sport elite men’s program, a system that developed many of that country’s pro players who later established themselves in Europe’s top leagues. He went on to coach in Japan and the US, as well as a successful spell with the Australian women’s team.

In October, 2012, after what was described as an “extensive search”, US Soccer president Sunil Gulati called on Sermanni to take over the US women’s national team from Pia Sundhage with the aim of rejuvenating a record-breaking roster. “He has the knowledge, experience and vision to take on the challenge of keeping our team at the top of the world,” Gulati said at the time. Sixteen months later, following a 2-0 win in a friendly against China, Sermanni was suddenly fired. Gulati ambiguously claimed: “We needed to go in a different direction at this time.”

The decision has never been fully explained. His termination may have been seen as controversial but Sermani still won’t be drawn into trash-talking Gulati or the USSF.

“Despite my ageing years, I didn’t anticipate that I was going into an environment that was significantly different to what I was in with Australia,” is all he will say, smiling.

Under his successor, Jill Ellis, the women’s national team won the 2015 World Cup that Sermanni had been preparing for, but was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the 2016 Olympic Games by Sundhage’s Sweden, a loss heightened by US goalkeeper Hope Solo calling the Swedes “a bunch of cowards”. Gulati again played hardball with the women’s team – Solo was banned for six months for her comments.

Sermanni sees the USWNT rollercoaster as another example of the game’s growth and something the federation and fans will need to come to terms with as boom and bust becomes a more-regular occurrence. The Americans can not take domination for granted.

“On any given day, any team in the top six can beat each other,” he says. “One of the downsides of international football is that if you lose a game you are out of the tournament. It is not a good thing for the US to lose but it is a good thing for the games to be tight at the highest level.

“The important things for the US to keep on top of is the continued growth of the NWSL and raising standards within the clubs to be good professional organizations, on and off the field. The other important thing is youth development. The US has a huge advantage in the number of female players – but that is also a huge disadvantage. It is almost like there are too many players.”

Sermanni says the recently-settled dispute between the USSF and the women’s national team over its collective bargaining agreement was a major issue for the players to resolve. Yet, tellingly, a separate wage discrimination complaint filed last year by five US players with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is still in play. The grievances are long-standing and a major distraction for some players.

“I remember being at the Algarve Cup in 2013, and there were at least two player meetings per day trying to sort out the issues,” Sermanni recalls. “That takes a lot of energy, and it can also start to cause conflicts within the team. I don’t think the players had someone to bring it all together for them. They had a good lawyer looking after them for a time who had their best interests at heart, but they had nobody except the senior players in the squad to guide them to what they wanted.”

Sermanni is focused on guiding Orlando Pride toward this season’s NWSL play-offs. His side lost 2-0 on the road to Portland Thorns in last weekend’s opener and he picks Portland and North Carolina Courage as the competition’s likely leaders.

“We are putting out a team that is capable of getting into the top four,” Sermanni says.

Club soccer is often described as a week-to-week proposition but, with his international experience, Sermanni also gets the bigger picture.

“You don’t often get an opportunity to put something in place and put your handprint on it,” he says of launching the Orlando Pride. “I did it in Australia, setting up the Matildas program, and then going into Asia, where we won the championship in difficult conditions. I really enjoy building something.”

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