Lalas still pushing envelope
CARSON -- With his long, unruly, mane of red hair, scraggly goatee and side gig as a musician, Alexi Lalas looked more like a leftover from the Haight-Ashbury than a vanguard of U.S. soccer.
He was quirky and edgy, not at all what Americans pictured when -- if -- they gave the sport a thought in the early 1990s.
Turns out, he knew a thing or two about selling soccer -- long before he brought David Beckham to America.
See, Lalas understood he had to be a world-class entertainer as well as a world-class player. Sports -- especially ones scratching and clawing to carve out a niche -- need personalities, colorful characters who leave you eager to see what they’ll do next.
“I loved getting in front of people, being on that stage and having people react to that -- positively, negatively, whatever, at least eliciting some sort of emotion or reaction,” he said. “That was back in the time where not a lot of people cared, so we knew we had to make a noise. We knew we had to cut through the clutter. We tried to do that individually and collectively.”
Thirteen years later, the laid-back soccer star is now corporate cool. Scruffy has been replaced by a suit. The goatee is long gone, and that mangy hair is now fashionably shaggy.
But this is no sellout. Lalas is still making noise and shaking up the status quo. He’s just doing it a different way.
As general manager of the Galaxy -- known now to the world as Beckham’s team -- Lalas isn’t content to build a cornerstone of Major League Soccer. No, he’s got his eyes on the Manchester Uniteds, the Real Madrids, the Chelseas and the AC Milans of the world.
Just as he parlayed the 1994 World Cup into a lucrative Serie A contract, he might very well be bold enough to get it done.
“Make no mistake, we are hellbent with the vision of being the first MLS soccer team to emerge as a SuperClub,” said Lalas, who moved to the Galaxy in April 2006 after similar jobs in San Jose and New York. “I think what we’ve done in the past year has certainly established ourselves as a global brand in that there are people now that wake up and, when they think about American soccer, they think about the Galaxy.”
MLS hasn’t seen anything like this before. Leaguetype:bold,italic; officials have gone to great lengths to avoid the mistakes of other soccer leagues. There is a strict salary cap, and finances are not readily discussed. Expansion has been slow and measured; the 12-year-old league just announced the creation of its 15th team, in Seattle, last week.
“I admire and applaud big vision. I think it’s always a mistake in business to set your sights low, as opposed to shooting for the stars,” MLS commissioner Don Garber said. “I believe that where we are, much of the momentum we have today, is because of the cautious path we’ve taken.
“The only thing that can derail our current position is being too aggressive.”
Lalas not only understands that, he agrees with it. Although he’s occasionally chafed at the confines of the league’s structure -- he was fined $2,000 in July 2005 after saying “the training wheels have got to come off” -- he knows it’s the reason the league has thrived.
“We are only as good as our weakest link,” he said. “We don’t want a situation again where one team gobbles up everybody else and ultimately we kill the golden goose. We can’t have that.”
That won’t keep him from pushing envelope. To attract fans who don’t know Ronaldinho from Ronald McDonald, MLS must have a buzz. And nobody knows how to get people’s attention like Lalas.
He helped lure Beckham, a global phenomenon on and off the field, to the United States. He has the Galaxy trotting the globe in their offseason like top Premier League clubs: they’ve already played in Vancouver, British Columbia, and leave Friday for Australia and New Zealand.
When Frank Yallop returned to San Jose and Los Angeles needed a new coach, Lalas declared he wanted a “sexy” candidate. He got him in Ruud Gullit, a Dutchman who was one of the best to ever play the game.
Galaxy games aren’t quite the Lakers’ star-studded affairs, but celebs such as Katie Holmes, Eva Longoria, Kevin Garnett and Alicia Silverstone all found their way to The Home Depot Center this summer.
“For us as players, we want moves that are going to help us win. The other stuff is great, all that comes with it is great, but we want to win,” Landon Donovan said. “But you can’t be blind to some of the other realities, which is it’s a business and it’s entertainment.
“There’s give and take,” Donovan added. “I think Alexi would even admit that, sometimes, he’s a little too much on the entertainment side. But he gets that. I never really understood that part of it until I got here, frankly.”
That Lalas the exec would emerge as the grown-up face of the MLS might come as a surprise. This, after all, was a guy who toured with Hootie and the Blowfish in Europe in 1998.
But take a close look at Lalas’ career, and everything he did has led him to this point.
“Alexi doesn’t take himself too seriously. That allows you to play more loosely, in all areas of life,” said Jim “Soni” Sonefeld, the drummer for Hootie and the Blowfish. “It allows you to have fun putting on a suit. It allows you to have fun in leather pants. It allows you to have fun on a soccer field.
“The seriousness is in his heart,” Sonefeld added. “If it feels good and he believes in something, he’s going to go 110 percent.”
Lalas always has.
A scrappy defender, nobody got more out of his talent than Lalas, who was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2006. In 96 games for the United States, he had nine goals and 11 assists -- impressive numbers for a guy whose job is to keep the ball out of the goal.
After two seasons with Padova in Serie A, he returned to the United States as one of MLS’ inaugural players. He spent seven seasons in MLS, the last three with the Galaxy.
When he retired for good in 2003 -- his first attempt lasted the 2000 season -- there were plenty of things he could have done. But when Anschutz Entertainment Group asked him to be the GM of the San Jose Earthquakes, he jumped at the opportunity.
He spent 1 1/2 years in San Jose, earning praise for improving the financial fortunes -- attendance improved 24 percent his first year -- of a team that later disbanded. In June 2005 he moved to New York, where he oversaw the sale and transformation of the MetroStars into the Red Bulls.
“When we toured Europe with Hootie, he wore a Ratt shirt on stage. The same Ratt shirt every night for three weeks, never washed it,” said Chris Cicchino, one of Lalas’ bandmates. “When he was in New York, I went to a game at Giants Stadium. . . . He comes walking in with a suit, he’s got the Bluetooth in the ear, he’s talking to two or three different guys.
“I said, ‘Look at you, you have just fallen so far,’ ” Cicchino said, laughing. “But wherever he goes, he always brings that personality and flair.”
Though his outward appearance has changed, Lalas insists he hasn’t.
