Takeover?
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that a penniless amateur club in American Samoa would be the subject of takeover rumors.
And yet here we are.
Not long after dominating the league and winning PanSa East F.C.’s first domestic league title since 2005, rumors shot up in the press about some mysterious consortium that might be buying the club.
That’s pretty heady stuff for a club that has a whopping 65 season ticket holders.
Investment?
I’m not sure who this consortium group is, but they really must be optimistic if they think they’re going to get much money out of this project.
Oh, we’ve made money — that part is for sure. We have no expenses, after all. “Our” stadium, Pago Park Soccer Stadium, is actually a field jointly shared by all 11 teams in the league. We have to carefully schedule our friendlies and practices around what the other teams do, though, to be honest, that’s not really that hard — most of them hardly practice anyway.
The point, though, is that we have no expenses. Nobody connected with the club earns a salary. We have no stadium maintenance fees. We do nothing but make small profit off the 400 to 500 people who bother to show up to our matches.
Seriously, though — if a consortium group tried to buy this team, how much would they even pay? What are we worth? We have no training facilities, an awful youth setup, and “hire” players by convincing them that our shirt colors look cooler. What is there to buy?
And what would a new ownership group do? It would be hilarious to see some sort of sugar daddy owner come in, only to realize that our club would never attract foreign talent, and that all players in American Samoa play for free.
Impact
Chairman Nofomuli Scanlan did his part by publicly ridiculing the talk of a pending takeover.
However, he then announced that he will retire from his hands-on roles and will focus on part-time roles connected with the club going forward.
This has me really confused. Is anybody running the ship? Does the board plan to bring anybody new in? Am I technically the person with the most power at this completely amateur club?
I suppose the biggest impact this could have on us would be temporarily putting a halt to transfers. However, I completed my transfers before the window even started, arranging to bring in 30 new players to make our excellent side even better. They can pause things all they want, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got the team I want, and I feel fine.