The Value of Being Present
This is Issue #2 of Seeing the Present, a newsletter about my thoughts on current global trends in soccer, with an eye toward what they might tell us about the future of the beautiful game.
TL;DR
Some professional advice for careers in sports
The influence agents have had historically on roster construction in women’s soccer
How that same professional advice can help clubs counteract agents’ influence
When people ask me for career advice in the soccer world, I quip that soccer is a team sport, but it’s also a people business. After all, sports are part of the entertainment industry, where customer service skills are paramount, and accomplishments in team sports usually come down to, well, teamwork. Working in sports can be very intense, and having colleagues who make a genuine effort to support each other will generally lead to better outcomes for everyone, which is why I think the best predictors of success are soft skills like being a team player and going the extra mile.
There is, however, one “skill” that I believe has the potential to transform someone’s career at any given moment: being in the right place at the right time. Of course, being in the right place at the right time often involves a good deal of luck. But if there’s anything I learned from Chicharito, who made his entire career out of just being in the right place at the right time, it’s that knowing where to be is a skill you can hone.
Because it’s hard to anticipate for certain where the right place and the right time is, sometimes it’s useful to move around. I took this idea to heart when I visited all 55 soccer states during my U.S. Soccer vice presidential campaign, making connections and learning things about how the beautiful game works in every corner of the country in a way that I simply couldn’t have if I hadn’t been physically present in places like Maine and Montana.
The good news about the digital age is that “the right place” is no longer restricted to physical locations. It could mean showing up in someone’s email or LinkedIn inbox at the right time—that’s how I got my first job out of college at U.S. Soccer as the Special Assistant to the President. Since then, I’ve made an effort to help others think critically about what “the right place at the right time” might look like for them as they contemplate their dream career progression.1
What does being in the right place at the right time have to do with the future of soccer?
To see where I’m going with this, it might help to know that when I stepped into my role as Assistant General Manager and Chief Soccer Officer at Gotham FC two years ago, I was surprised by the amount of sway that agents had in teams’ roster construction across the league.
But this makes sense in the context of the historical underinvestment in women’s soccer. Clubs today are still building out and bolstering their scouting operations; it wasn’t too long ago that a single person was expected to perform the separate functions of a head coach, sporting director, general manager, and scout all at once. When you don’t have a robust scouting structure, a clearly defined game philosophy, or even time for long-term planning, it becomes easier to text the few agents that represent the majority of players around the league and ask who they can help you sign than to scour the world to find the player whose profile best fits your playing style.
At Gotham, it was my job to design and implement a scouting framework to make good roster construction decisions, which in turn helped us counteract the league-wide reliance on agents as de facto deputized scouts. My first signing for the club, Bruninha, wasn’t only an under-the-radar player with a high ceiling—she was also a player whose agent had never done a deal in the NWSL. Yet during her first full season with us she managed to make her way onto the Brazilian national team roster for the 2023 World Cup.
The rest of the teams around the league are on this trajectory as well, by growing their soccer operations staff; more clearly delineating the roles of general managers, sporting/technical directors, and scouts; and investing in data analytics to complement their scouting processes. During my time at Gotham, I also saw the league itself, under Commissioner Berman’s leadership, take steps behind the scenes to address this imbalance.
Having a more robust scouting pipeline is good for many reasons; one of them is that it increases the likelihood of a scout being present in the right place at the right time. Just like in the context of advancing one’s career, this can make a huge difference.
With the USWNT off to a sizzling start at the Olympics, I want to share the story of how being in the right place at the right time helped me scout the player on the Olympic roster most likely to surprise an observer from a year ago: Jenna Nighswonger.
At the start of the summer of 2022, before I knew I would end the summer working at Gotham, I was on vacation visiting my college teammate Jorma in his German hometown of Kiel. Meanwhile, the U23 US Women’s Youth National Team was holding a training camp in Helsingborg, Sweden. Since we were already so close to Sweden (relatively speaking), I thought it would be cool to go watch my friends on the U23 team play. Jorma agreed; we hopped on a train to Copenhagen, a ferry to Sweden, and a bus to the stadium; and then we watched the US beat India 4-1. One of the game’s standouts was Jenna Nighswonger, who registered a goal and an assist, and Jorma and I were virtually the only people outside of the players and technical staff who saw that performance in person.2
Barely three months later, I was in charge of Gotham’s 2023 Draft strategy and armed with the #1 pick by virtue of finishing last in the league. In part thanks to that one performance in Sweden, we had been tracking Jenna’s final college season at FSU very closely. When we put together a holistic assessment from our scouts, data analysts, coaches, and GMs, we concluded that her readiness to go pro was being underappreciated by other teams. What’s more, because of my aforementioned trip to the U23 camp, I had been able to join several of the draft prospects for dinner on their day off in Copenhagen. Considering the lengths that teams in the NFL go to in order to gauge what their draft prospects are like as people, an evening in a no-stress environment like that was a golden opportunity for me to learn that all these players seemed like wonderful humans who would likely make great teammates wherever they went.
I’m simplifying a lot here, but the upshot is that we felt confident enough in our assessment of Jenna to tune out all the punditry, conventional wisdom, and unsolicited agent suggestions about what to do with the #1 pick. In fact, we were able to trade down three spots to the #4 pick and still get the player we wanted while picking up none other than Lynn Williams and Yazmeen Ryan along the way.
Today, Jenna is the reigning NWSL Rookie of the Year and the only member of the 2023 Draft class on the full Olympic roster. Given that I was the one who advocated most strongly for her selection, her performances reflected well on my ability to do my job. However, the truth is there’s a good chance I wouldn’t have been able to make that judgment call if I hadn’t been present in the right place (Helsingborg) at the right time (June 26, 2022).
Here’s a second, shorter example: if you had asked me before the 2024 Draft for my best guess at who could emulate Jenna’s trajectory, it would’ve been Hal Hershfelt. She wasn’t really on my radar until I watched her play live for Indy Eleven in the USL W League last summer, and I was only in Indianapolis because Gotham was playing in Louisville that weekend—I figured it’d be worth it to fly two days before the rest of the team to scout one of the strongest W League clubs only a 2-hour drive away. Even though Indy Eleven lost that game in a fluke to a team they beat 16-0 two weeks later, Hal was so obviously ready for the next level that her quality shone through, and she was a big reason why Indy Eleven ultimately won the W League last summer.
I think Croix Bethune is running away with the 2024 Rookie of the Year title, but what I mean is that there was already a consensus that Croix would be drafted very highly, whereas Hal was drafted highly because the Washington Spirit did their homework. Hal’s highest position in any mock draft on Google’s first page of results for “2024 NWSL Mock Draft” was #10; she was actually selected #5. Although even I was surprised when Hal got her first national team call-up and made the Olympic roster as an alternate after only three months of pro experience, her selection confirmed what I saw with my own eyes in Indianapolis, and it validated my belief that it pays off massively to be in the right place at the right time.3
The point I want to get across is not just that it’s important to be in the right place at the right time. It’s that sometimes being in the right place at the right time requires an extra effort, and that effort is worth it. I ended up in Sweden and Indiana on a whim but not by accident; I chose to go out of my way to expose myself to new opportunities without knowing for sure if anything would come from them. If you choose to go the extra mile, you are also drastically increasing your odds of being in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the right opportunities—that’s the value of being present.
If you’re interested in one-on-one career mentorship, you can check out my Calendly page periodically, although unfortunately I won’t be offering new free spots until after the Olympics. For paid career mentorship options, you can contact me through my personal website: natgoldc.com
I do have to give a shoutout to Kerry Abello’s mom, who not only was there to watch the game in person but also gave me and Jorma a ride back to the ferry station in her rental car after the match.
Our 2024 Draft strategy at Gotham was basically exclusively focused on a center-back, and since we only had the last pick in the first round after winning the league, Hal would have been an unrealistic target.
Great article !