Paul Dalglish happy to welcome Wayne Rooney to the world of American football as MLS move edges closer: ‘It‘s an amazing lifestyle, it‘s more low key with not as much attention‘
Beckham, Dalglish and now Rooney, three of the biggest names in British football tied up in the emerging world of American soccer.
And, should ‘s move to Washington materialise, he will surely be hoping that life is more straightforward there than it has recently proved for the other two.
For and Paul Dalglish have become united in so far as both are trying to find their way round the bewildering maze of the emerging American game, and its wider politics.
The saga of Beckham‘s attempts to establish a team for MLS is now into its fifth year, with the torturous attempts to launch a franchise in Miami still some way off bearing fruit.
Yet at least he knows that a place at the top table awaits his nascent club, once they have finally secured a venue to house a team the Americans hope will be a gateway to more global recognition.
It is slightly different for Dalglish, who finds himself in the same city, but at an outfit struggling to find so much as an appropriate league to play in.
Dalglish, Atlantic-hopping player and coach and currently in charge at Miami FC, inhabits another world to that envisaged for Beckham‘s project – and it has all come as something of a shock.
The son of Liverpool‘s finest arrived in January to succeed Alessandro Nesta, thinking that he would be coaching a team in the second-tier North American Soccer League.
Within weeks, however, the league was disbanded and, in order to keep the team functioning, the club was forced to drop into the regional branch of the obscure National Premier Soccer League, playing mostly part-time sides from Florida.
Above Dalglish‘s head are flying ongoing legal actions against the US Soccer Federation and appeals to CAS in Switzerland over the structure of domestic competition. They say living is easy in sun-drenched Miami, but not in football it seems.
‘When I took the job I was of the understanding that we would play in the NASL in August and play in the MPSL until then as a sort of elongated pre-season,‘ explains Dalglish, his accent still faithful to his Merseyside roots, despite more than ten years of nomadic life around the American soccer scene.
‘Things have changed and the NASL isn‘t going to take place. We kept trying and trying, there was an appeal about the sanctioning and when we lost that we knew it wasn‘t going to happen this calendar year.
‘It is unusual and I‘m trying to work it out. It‘s probably hard for people back in Britain to understand what happens here. That there‘s no relegation or promotion, that teams fold. You can pay money and put a team in a league and they can be gone within a year. The American sports system is different.
‘ I‘ve not known anything like this in my career or been at a club in this situation. We have basically gone from one year finishing on top of division two to going down to division four. It‘s not based on what the club did but what the league did to us.
‘ It‘s such a new sport in many ways, and we are still going through growing pains. But I have no doubt from what I have seen in my time here that it is going to become a leader in football in the not-too-distant future.‘
He sits in the club offices are on the 23rd floor of a gleaming downtown block in the financial district. Along the corridor are those belonging to owner Riccardo Silva, the wealthy Italian businessman who has Paolo Maldini as a co-investor in this displaced team.
Light floods in and there are views of boats skimming across the bay. It is not hard to see why 41 year-old Dalglish, who played more than 200 games before turning to coaching, is still pretty happy with life.
‘I‘m a big believer in that it‘s better to be thankful for what you‘ve got than be miserable about what you haven‘t got. Ideally we would like to be playing in the NASL but I‘ve just got to get on with the situation as it is. I stay out of the legal stuff and leave it to others to focus on.
‘ I‘m in Miami, coaching players, working in football and enjoying it. I live 150 yards from Miami Beach, sometimes you have to remember that this is where you live and you‘re not on holiday. We came here from Ottawa, you couldn‘t believe anywhere could be that cold. There‘s cold, and then there‘s Canada.‘
Silva is arguing through the courts that the US soccer authorities should introduce structured promotion and relegation, as happens in every other country, rather than ring fencing the top league and protecting owners‘ investments. The floundering NASL is in abeyance for now.
If you thought that might lead to resentment against the gilded Beckham project you would be wrong. Dalglish vaguely knows him – they met at the wedding of their mutual friend Dave Gardner – and played against him once. He is an admirer.
‘He‘s a good guy and he has already had a big effect on the game here. David took soccer onto the Elen De Generes show, hugely widened its appeal here. He was the catalyst for the league taking a massive step forward.
‘We can co-exist. There are two MLS teams in both New York and LA, and Miami is a massive world city. We would welcome him with open arms, it can only make us stronger because if it brings interest we will get a benefit.
‘I‘d buy a season ticket for sure. Can you imagine the interest if we drew them in the Cup competition?‘
The hype has already started about who might be attracted when the Beckham team makes its planned bow in 2020, and Rooney‘s name was mentioned long before his links to Washington emerged. Dalglish knows Rooney, so what would he tell him about the prospect?
‘It‘s an amazing lifestyle, it‘s more low key with not as much attention. You can go out for a meal. I‘ve seen it with my Dad, he‘s always enjoyed coming to see me in the US because he can come and be a Dad and not feel like he‘s putting me under added pressure or getting bothered.
‘That‘s the positive side, but any player coming would be surprised by the physical level of the game here. It can look slow but a lot of games are played in high temperatures and humidity. When I played at Houston Dynamo I found the morning training so draining that I needed to sleep every afternoon, it took that much out of me.
‘ The challenges are different and the amount of time spent travelling can be a shock. A Saturday away game can be a five hour flight by commercial airline and you won‘t get back until Sunday night.
‘ We have seen a lot of players at the end of their career but a lot of those who have done best are the younger ones because of the demands on the body. The fitness levels are top notch.
Beckham‘s priority now is finally sorting out a site for a new stadium. A plot in the Overtown area increasingly looks a non-starter, partly due to objections from local property owner Bruce Matheson. He is the same individual whose opposition to development is forcing the Miami Open tennis event to move from its home on Key Biscayne to a new site at the Miami Dolphins stadium.
However, now that Beckham has forged a key partnership with the extremely well-connected local technology magnate Jorge Mas it is widely expected here that he will finally find a site. It will probably end up being near the airport and be operational by 2021.
Meanwhile Miami FC2, as they have to be currently known, will be fighting their own battles. This year has become a holding operation, and in anticipation of lower crowds they have downsized their home ground for the season to the St. Thomas University ground, with some extra bleachers brought in.
It is not quite what you might associate the Dalglish name with but Paul, 41, sees it as a further part of his education within the game. This is the seventh American club he has worked at in coaching or management, and he has largely been able to plough his own furrow.
‘When I first came here there were a lot of people who didn‘t know who my dad was. What I noticed was that when he went back into football management with Liverpool (2010) his visibility went up hugely, and suddenly they were asking ‘Is that your Dad?‘ When he stopped coaching it went down again.
‘Overall the name has probably been a help in some ways and a hindrance in others, some people might have more of a go at you because of it but others will forgive you anything.
‘We still talk a lot, actually we argue more than chat because that‘s our personalities, we both have strong opinions. I love tapping into his experience. I‘m very on top of modern methods but I don‘t buy into this ‘football dinosaurs are out of touch‘ thing,because the game remains very similar. They‘ve forgotten more than what a lot of people know.
‘I‘d never say never about going back to the UK but I‘m happy here. Nobody knows who I am back at home and they don‘t know if I‘m any good or not. I‘ve worked hard to get to the level I‘m at in America and I‘d have to start from scratch there. For all that‘s happened I genuinely think American soccer is advancing and I‘m growing with it.‘
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