In his first public address to the national media since being elected Canadian Soccer Association president over the weekend, Victor Montagliani said on Tuesday that his organization is moving forward -- or rather, continuing to move forward -- with an emphasis on transparency and cooperation between all of the involved stakeholders.
"They're football people, I'm football people; we're going to disagree on certain issues, but that's OK," Montagliani said of the country's professional clubs, who had thrown their support behind Rob Newman in the presidential election. "But there's a lot of commonality there that I think we can move forward on."
Indeed, Montagliani had regularly been cast as "the soccer guy" during the election process (a label he isn't going to shy away from: "I'm actually proud of that moniker -- after all, this is the Canadian Soccer Association"), but was keen on reminding followers of the game that his professional resume is nothing to sneeze at.
"I've had 21 years experience in corporate Canada, owning my own business" and working with firms of varying sizes, he said. "I've done business all over the world: South America, Europe, North America. ... My background is pretty extensive on the business side of things.
"For those people that know me, that deal with me, they know that my sort of experience on the corporate and business size is as extensive, if not more so, than on the football side."
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While saying that the well-worn, generic complaints about the CSA's supposed ineptitude are growing "stale", Montagliani admitted the need for change within the governing body.
"I've only been at the CSA for six years. ... I did a couple years at the provincial level, but I didn't really spend a lot of time in your standard soccer experience in Canada -- districts and clubs -- like a lot of people," he said. "I went from being a player to a businessman right into this level, pretty much.
"One of the things I find too often with Canadian soccer, and I don't just mean the CSA, is that too many of our structures have an institutional mentality, sort of like the government. That doesn't translate well to the fast pace of international football, in terms of how decisions have to be made.
"So I think what we need to do is change the culture so that we are a much more entrepreneurial type of organization, where decisions are made not only in a consistent fashion and a transparent fashion, but in an efficient fashion.
"Part of that is ensuring that operations and governance are separated, so that our senior staff are entrusted to make decisions and are supported in those decisions by not only myself as the president, but the board. That way, they can make decisions in a much more efficient manner and not worry about being handcuffed by three million committees."
Suffice to say, Montagliani is well aware of the sort of parochial mind sets and bureaucratic meddling that have paralyzed the CSA in the past. And, he says, many key elements are already in place: After next year, there will no longer be any provincial/territorial association presidents on the CSA's board of directors, and he indicated that a new national technical director should be in place by this fall.
He also pledged that the CSA would reduce its dependence upon player fees for its funding, and indicated that his goal is to double the organization's operating budget within eight years.
"We are a results-oriented business," he said. "The quickest thing to get you revenue is results, but we can put the building blocks in place to put ourselves in a position to get results, which is key."
As Montagliani says himself, it's all in the results. While he clearly has a vision in mind for the organization, and is a passionate follower of the game on a personal level, the next few years will tell the story. Whether or not the new president can get full buy-in from the various stakeholders in the game, with the end game being progress for the national program, is yet to be seen.
For now, Montagliani's words are just words. But all stakeholders in the game should take comfort in the fact that the CSA's new president has spoken repeatedly about the need to refresh his organization for the benefit of Canadian soccer as a whole.
No one can be expected to grant Montagliani (or the leader of any entity) eternal and unwavering support. But it is incumbent upon everyone with an interest in Canadian soccer to lend Montagliani their ear as his term begins, and do their part to help move the game forward throughout this country.