"Hope is a bad strategy." -- Nick Sakiewicz's Guide To "Fixing" Hartford Athletic
30+ years of experience, a fresh roster, brand-new, high class training facilities and a long-term "identity" -- all coming to Hartford in 2024.
Working at a bank with his professional playing days long behind him, Nick Sakiewicz received a call in 1995 that would change the course of his career and professional soccer in America, forever.
The man on the other end of the line: Alan Rothenbuerg, Sakiewicz’s former national team coach and then-president of U.S. Soccer. His call gave the experienced executive an offer that few in his position could ever turn down.
Later that year, In a small office in Los Angeles, Sakiewicz sat among eight other executives with one goal in mind: building a true professional soccer league in the United States from the ground up.
Looking to capitalize on the historic momentum of the 1994 FIFA World Cup and needing to fulfill a promise made to FIFA that allowed the group to bring the world’s biggest tournament stateside in the first place, the group had momentum on their side — now it was up to these nine men to bring a longstanding vision to life. That’s exactly what they did — and in 1996 — Major League Soccer was born.
Serving as the league’s first-ever Vice President of Commercial Sponsorship sales during his two-decade-long stay in MLS, Sakiewicz went on to take charge of two original MLS teams as the General Manager and President of both the Tampa Bay Mutiny (1997-2000) and the New York MetroStars (2000-2006).
In a successful nine-year stint at the helm of the two clubs saw him earn league Executive of the Year twice and take home the Eastern Conference title in 2000, Sakiewicz also played an integral role in the sponsorship deals that saw the rebranding of the MetroStars to the Red Bulls. Additionally, he orchestrated the deals responsible for the construction of two of the league’s oldest soccer-specific stadiums: Red Bull Arena (NY) and Subaru Park (Philadelphia).
The executive’s deep-rooted involvement with America’s top flight does not end there. In 2006, Sakiewicz co-founded Keystone Sports & Entertainment, serving as the CEO and Operating Partner of the company that ultimately became the ownership group of the Philadelphia Union, the league’s 16th expansion side that eventually began play in 2010. This is where Sackiewicz stayed before eventually leaving the league in 2015.
“It was kind of an inflection point when Philly came in,” Sakiewicz told The Blazing Musket. “We opened that stadium, sold out every game, really did well, and then that gave a little bit of fuel to the league…and it just exploded from there. [I’m] really proud we were able to get that done, there’s a lot of stories behind the Philadelphia Union that I had to navigate through, but we just wouldn’t take no for an answer and we got it launched.”
The origins of the Union did not come without their challenges. Amidst the huge financial strain of the 2008 recession, Sakiewicz described the project as one that almost didn't happen. But with a close-knit support group and a massive outpouring of support, the founding group were able to overcome major financial concerns and grow what has turned into one of the most successful academy programs and most storied franchises in Major League Soccer.
“Getting the MLS franchise fee paid was enormously difficult at that time because investors, everyone was running for the hills, hiding their money,” Sakiewicz said. “That was really hard…You find out a lot about people’s character during tough times.”
Ultimately, Sakiewicz and his team got it done. Now, three teams, two stadiums, and 21 years later, he is bringing what he calls “an enormous sense of pride” with him back home to the Constitution State, where he spent four years as a goalkeeper for the University of New Haven. His goal: using his experience to orchestrate a much-needed turnaround of Connecticut’s professional soccer team.
In five years since the club’s inaugural campaign in 2019, Hartford Athletic have amassed just one playoff appearance (which was lost in a last-minute heartbreaker at home to now-dissolved St. Louis FC in a COVID-shortened 2020 season), and are coming off a club-worst four wins in 2023 — just two losses off the USL Championship record.
“When I came here in the summer and I saw the fanbase, and I saw how robust it was after five pretty rotten seasons on the field, I was like, ‘This is a special market,’” Sakiewicz said. “I knew it was a special market, because after five years of mediocrity, that level of fandom does not exist anywhere in the world.”
After missing the mark with the hire of potentially one of the most recognizable and iconic names in American soccer the season prior, the 2023 offseason was always going to be a turbulent one for Hartford. However, with Sackiewicz now at the wheel, his plan may come as a breath of fresh air to Hartford fans.
“[With] six coaches in five years, you can’t build an identity with that kind of turnover anywhere,” Sakiewicz stated. “I know, and the people I hire and surround myself with know what success looks like. So after 30 years, you get enough things wrong where you don’t do those things wrong anymore…It’s not easy to fix, but you kind of know what buttons to push to fix it.”
In his office, posted on the wall just beside his desk is a four-page checklist, entitled, “Who is a Hartford Atheltic player?” This, according to Sakiewicz, is the first step in creating an “identity” — something Hartford have lacked in years past. Players will be recruited based on this specific set of ideals, sorted by position in a “painstaking” process in order to build on a new vision: one that Sakiewicz said will revolve around fast-paced, physical, attacking-minded soccer. Although he warned that it may not happen instantaneously, hours of recruitment behind the scenes are the beginnings of what will turn into a noticeable style over time.
For the first time, fans will able to identify a recognizable brand of soccer on the field from day one, something Sakiewicz said was the first step to long-term success.
“Fixing Hartford, that’s the easy part,” Sakiewicz said. “We can get it right. It’ll take us some time, but we know what success looks like and if the owners of this club invest in building it the right way, that’s the easy part.”
From signing new players to multi-year deals beyond just one season to focusing on the development of younger players and academy teams, Sakiewicz is hoping to avoid what he calls the ‘scrambling’ that occurs when non-playoff teams pick at a mass group of free agents that emerge at the end of every season. His ultimate goal: a more long-term, sustainable, and development-focused roster that spans over a multi-year project — something seldom seen at the bottom half of the USL Championship, and something especially rare in Hartford.
“We’re trying to build a roster with the budget we have that is more sustainable,” Sakiewicz said. ”When you look at what Hartford Atheltic has done historically, they haven’t really approached it that way. They just approached it like, ‘Let’s just go grab the best player we can with the budget money we have and hope we win.’ Hope is a bad strategy.”
Although building a brand-new team takes time, the beginnings of that roster have already started to take shape for Hartford — well-known league names such as Anderson Asiedu, Renan Ribeiro and Marcus Epps are just a few examples of acquisitions that have turned heads among the network of people Sakiewicz has grown in his 30 years in the sport.
“[Over time], everyone in the soccer universe is like', ‘Ok, these guys are not screwing around anymore,’ and we’re signing them to really good contracts, contracts that make sense,” Sakiewicz said. “The agents learn about that, the GM’s of other teams start to see that, MLS teams are starting to see, and so that begins the momentum of, ‘Hartford’s not just a dumping ground anymore.’”
Sakiewicz's new-look Hartford team will span far beyond a fresh roster. The organization are in works to bring improved infrastructure to the club, beginning with the unveiling of the Day Hill Dome in Windsor as the club’s new training center. The Dome itself features a full-sized, climate-controlled indoor training field and viewing deck. An outdoor complex is set to be completed in the spring at the site, featuring a natural grass field and two turf fields.
Additionally, Hartford’s team offices will be seeing an upgrade in 2024, complete with first-class team lounges, first-team locker rooms, video rooms, and a cafeteria, to name a few — a “proper training facility” and key part of recruiting top talent, according to Sakiewicz. The facilities are set to be complete by the summer.
But the first, and perhaps most important part of the rebuild for Sakiewicz was finding a coach that shared those ideals. That called for a timely reunion with a man who got his first opportunity under Sakiewicz almost two decades prior.
“In Philly, when I started that club, there was handful of really important people that were part of that building, and Brendan [Burke] was one of them,” Sakiewicz said. “He was a new, young coach at Reading United, a PDL club of college players that played in the summer, he caught my eye straight away. Another one was Jim Curtin. Jim had just retired from an amazing career at Chicago Fire and he was looking to get into coaching.”
Curtin, the two-time MLS Coach of the Year and 2022 MLS Cup Finalist was initially scouted and given his first opportunity as a coach under Sakiewicz, taking charge of the Philadelphia Union U-19 Academy team. After reaching the national final with the team in his first year at the helm, he’d go on to spend time as an assistant with the first team, before eventually being appointed head coach of the in 2014, where he still resides today.
As for Burke, his young coaching career also started under the watchful eye of Sakiewicz, who appointed him as the first head coach of Bethlehem Steel as Philadelphia’s second-tier affiliate in 2015. Burke went on to spend four years with the Union before going on to bring Colorado Springs Switchbacks to a pair of postseason berths and most recently, helping lead the Houston Dynamo to one of their most successful seasons in recent history as an assistant.
“He was one of those calls on my phone, and I didn’t know he always wanted to get back here, so I was like ‘Hm, this is a good opportunity,’ and we worked it out,” Sakiewicz said. “We see the game the same way, we see the soccer market the same way, it’s a global marketplace…This is a canvas to paint an amazing picture of young player development.”
A main goal of Sakiewicz and Burke’s Hartford Athletic: a clear, defined pathway from the academy to the first team. Sackiewicz is no stranger to building a strong academy — The then-MLS record sale of Brenden Aaronson to RB Salzburg for a reported $13 million in 2021 was just one example of an estimated $50 million worth of academy products the Philadelphia Union produced under his leadership. Aaronson got his first opportunity with Sackiewicz’s academy at 12 years old.
Now, the pair that helped build the Philadelphia Union together will re-convene closer to home — a job Burke said he’s wanted ever since the club’s founding six years ago.
There are no promises for year one, Sakiewicz knows that “words are cheap in this business,” and rebuilds take time, but there finally seems to be real ambition. And with that, success will come.
“Will we get all of them right? Absolutely not…but we think we have some good talent that we can develop in year one, and then build on that in year two,” Sakiewicz said. “Players will do really well and we’ll sell them for a lot of money and then we’ll take that money and re-invest it into a new crop of players. That’s how you build identity, that’s how you build a winner, and the fans here deserve it. They've done their part for Hartford Athletic, but now it’s time for the players on the pitch to do their part.”