OSG Sports has received an e-mail from Pensacola City FC midfielder Alvaro Pichardo about what has happened over the last 36 hours...
This is his first-person account as to what he experienced in the folding of the franchise...
It is a stream-of-consciousness review and OSG Sports left punctuation alone...
It is heart-breaking, head-scratching and leaves a lot of questions still...
Well, we received an email from Bill at 9:10 Wednesday night that said we had a meeting the next day (Thursday) at 1:00 pm because he was doing an equipment check. (who does equipment checks at this level, why would you need to check our equipment if there hasn't been a problem with us wearing the wrong gear or anything? at this point we started talking as a team about what we thought would happen and some of us came up with the thoughts that the team was folding because we hadn't trained on Wednesday, 2 days before a game, and we hadn't discussed the traveling plans for Thursday afternoon to travel to Georgia for the game.
Anyway... we get there and Bill takes our equipment, when he is finished "checking" our equipment he gives us this lecture of how we are workers and just like any business if you don't do your job you can get fired, he even goes to say that he heard that some of the guys had gone out to drink the night before the Chattanooga game, which i know for a fact that no one went out, we finished the game and everyone went home because we had a game the next day at 1. then he says that we played like "shit" against CFC because we were hungover... i have 2 things to say about that, 1st we didnt play like shit, we lost 1-0 against the best team in the conference, a team that is competing in the US Open Cup and is one of the best in the NPSL year after year with almost the exact same line up from the night before in 90 degree weather with a team that has almost no organization due to the fact that we have had 0 tactical sessions all year and don't know how to defend and play as a team, this goes to tell you that we worked our asses off for Bill and we only lost 1-0... 2nd no one had any alcohol in them. we lost because they were the better team.
Bill also added that him and his business partners decided that it was not worth spending so much money when the public was not reacting and supporting us, this is normal in sports, you dont make a team and 2 years later start making money, this is normal in any business, it takes years to start making money first you invest, then you start breaking even and then you make a profit... this is what i think actually happened, Bill doesnt really have a good idea on how to run a sports team.
At first I didn't want to say anything because I had a good relationship with Bill, he had been really nice to me last year and even this year but it really bothers me that he has blamed us for terminating the team, this is not our fault, you do not expect us to win every game when the set up has been an absolute joke, from having no goals for the first few days to doing the same thing every single day at training without any intensity and not working tactically, soccer is not a sport that you just go out there and kick a ball around, you have to be organized and run a system, which we didn't do... we pretty much were just thrown out there to kick the ball around. If anything, Bill should be happy that we worked hard in the games and didn't lose by more with such a disorganized and unprofessional environment around us...
Also, I'm not too happy about how he is treating the injured players, Remy (Moulard) hurt in ankle and had to be taking the hospital about a week ago and he has yet to have an MRI, I wonder how Bill would feel if this happened to his son and the owner of the team simply didn't care about his health. I dont think he has realized how much we gave up to come play for him and how much we have lost now that he terminated the team. Remy is injured and has nowhere to go but he doesnt care about this, he is probably gonna have to sit out his next college season due to this injury and this could affect him to reach his goal of becoming a professional soccer player but evidently Bill could care less... I had other options before coming here, PDL other NPSL team and I even passed up on playing with my countries national team because i was promised a professional environment and a very organized team with MLS and USL coaches coming to watch us (which never happened)...
He also said "i have no control of where they lived, they stayed with local players. so local players are the ones who kicked out their teammates" this has really pissed me off that he would lie like this, he had control of where we lived, yes we stayed with local players but those local players live in apartments which require you to pay rent obviously, and guess who agreed to pay that rent... Mr. Bill Fetke himself, so now that we have 2 days till rent is due, what are we supposed to do? No one has enough money to afford rent because we have not been working, because of the fact that Bill promised us food and housing.
Yes he has folded the team and there is nothing we can do now but the least he can do is keep his promise to pay for our rents, at least for 1 more month to give us time to find another team and he could pay for the injured players' medical bills. Just like in any business if you get injured while working, the employer has to pay for medical bills but it seems like he forgot about this or maybe he is just a cold person that doesn't care about the well being of others.
More reaction will be posted as we receive it and OSG Sports also has another question into NPSL Commissioner Michael Hitchcock about how the folding of the franchise relates to the rest of the schedule going forward...
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