Monday, March 27, 2006

Absolute Required Listening

I cannot stress enough how much I think that every fan of soccer in America should listen to this Q & A with new United States Soccer Federation President Sunil Gulati. He is a fairly incredible human being in the brains department, and I think, the perfect person for the job.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

SUNIL GULATI BIO
President
U.S. Soccer

With nearly 30 years of experience at all levels of soccer in the United States, Sunil Gulati has helped the sport rise to new heights across four decades of hands on involvement.

Elected as U.S. Soccer's President in Las Vegas on March 11, 2006, Gulati currently serves as the President of Kraft Soccer Properties, taking the position after serving as Major League Soccer's Deputy Commissioner from its launch until 1999 and teaches in the economics department at Columbia University



The native of Allahabad, India, has played a role in the development of U.S. Soccer since the early 1980's and has been intimately involved in the rise of the U.S. National Teams to prominence. He served as U.S. Soccer’s Executive Vice President from 2000 to 2006 before stepping into his role as President.

He has served in numerous other positions for U.S. Soccer, including Managing Director of National Teams, Chairman of the International Games Committee and Chairman of the Technical Committee. He was also the original Managing Director of U.S. Soccer's Project 2010 and served as Chairman of both U.S. Cup '92 and U.S. Cup '93, two events that helped showcase U.S. Soccer’s rise and prepare the federation for the upcoming 1994 FIFA World Cup.

At the highly successful FIFA World Cup USA 1994, Gulati served as Executive Vice President and Chief International Officer, helping to guide the sport to heights never before seen in the United States. Gulati was also on the original U.S. World Cup bid committee from 1986 to 1988 that helped bring the event to the United States for the first time.

The 1994 World Cup was a spring board to a prominent presence on the international soccer scene for Gulati in representing the United States. He currently represents U.S. Soccer on the CONCACAF National Team Competitions Committee and serves on the FIFA World Club Championship Committee, as well as the FIFA Task Force for Clubs.

Additionally, Gulati served on the Board of Directors of FIFA Women's World Cup USA 1999 and 2003 and is currently a member of the Board for the U.S. Soccer Foundation and National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Gulati graduated Magna Cum Laude from Bucknell University and earned his M.A. and M. Phil. in Economics at Columbia University. He served on the Columbia Economics Faculty from 1986 to1990 before joining the World Bank through its Young Professionals Program in 1991 and serving as country economist for the emerging country of Moldova.

Gulati, 46 and his wife, Marcela, have one son, Emilio, and one daughter, Sofia. They live in New York City.
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Needless to say, I am really high on this guy and think U.S. Soccer is in very good hands.
bq

12:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting to find out that the US Soccer Federation did contribute towards the creation Pizza Hut Park.

1:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting nugget in the interview: The USSF's surplus is in the $30 million dollar range! I just checked out the group's 2005 income tax form. The exact amount: $37,486,675. That's a heck of a lot of dough.

3:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Demko-
Part of this is the trickle down thang. Sort of like a pyramid scheme. There are 17,641,000 active youth or adult players in the U.S. The bulk of those numbers are youth. Every youth system has fee's to play. Some of that money trickles down to the state organization like MYSA and some of that money then goes onto United States Youth Soccer Federation which a portion then goes to USSF and some of theirs goes to F.I.F.A. Which if you count all the players in the world and all the youth and pro. organizations funding FIFA, you understand why they are practically richer than the Catholic church.

4:58 PM  
Blogger brucio said...

i would think that the vast majority of the USSF money has come from sponsors

10:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A couple other points. I probably shouldn't refer to the money as a surplus. That $37 million is the total assets of USSF as of the end of its 2005 fiscal year (3/31/05). For that year the organization had $36,261,103 in revenue and $33,738,030 in expenses. So the surplus for 2005 was actually about $2.5 million.

I'm not sure exactly how this speaks to bq's point, but the income breakdown is given thusly:

Contributions, gifts, grants: $1.5 million
Program service revenue: $27.7 million
Membership dues: $6.4 million
Then there's about $675,000 in investment income and other revenue.

For those who want to see the numbers themselves you can look it up at guidestar.org

12:31 PM  

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