Barcelona

Domènec Guasch is constructing from scratch at Boston LegacyPhotograph: Boston Globe/Getty Pictures

How do you persuade a boyhood Barcelona fan, who grew up watching his crew within the Camp Nou together with his grandfather, performed for its well-known La Masia youth groups and was finally accountable for working its profitable girls’s crew, to up sticks and transfer to the US?

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Because it seems, a easy cellphone name was all it took to gentle the spark which introduced Domenec Guasch, former head of administration for ladies’s soccer at Barcelona, to steer a brand new period for upcoming NWSL franchise Boston Legacy FC.

“For just a few years, I’d had the will sooner or later to step out of my consolation zone in Barcelona,” says Guasch from his new workplace in Boston. “Regardless that it challenged me every single day and I used to be glad there, I knew sooner or later I needed one thing completely different, to develop, to develop up.

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“To me, staying in Europe didn’t make a lot sense, it could have been the identical problem, with plenty of give attention to the Champions League.”

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In Boston, Guasch can be answerable for all the pieces from constructing the primary crew, to analytics, soccer operations and administration. Within the US, he additionally noticed a chance that the majority European golf equipment simply couldn’t present.

“The factor concerning the NWSL for me was being a part of a girls’s-only membership whereas having the funding, infrastructure and professionalism too,” he says. “I lived within the US and in my imaginative and prescient, Boston is probably the most European metropolis within the USA, for each the folks and the tradition. I’ve a spouse and six-year-old son, and we noticed we may have a fairly good life.”

Initially branded as BOS Nation FC, Boston Legacy is co-owned by an all-female management group, whereas newer traders embody gymnast Aly Raisman and Hollywood actor Elizabeth Banks.

The prolonged conversations Guasch had with the possession group are what led him to lastly go away house for a brand new problem.

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“It was a protracted course of speaking to the possession right here, attending to know them,” he says. “They’d a transparent imaginative and prescient for the mission. They wish to do it for town, the folks, to construct a crew town is pleased with and connects with, whereas additionally making it globally interesting.”

Guasch admits he had earlier conversations with different NWSL golf equipment, with one going “fairly far”, however no one gave him the sensation Boston did. In the end, the chance to do one thing “completely different” was one he couldn’t resist.

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“[Barcelona] was the dream job for me. I grew up going to the stadium with my grandfather, he constructed the love inside me. I nonetheless have his seat to today. I at all times had the dream to play for Barcelona, and once I determined to pursue this profession, it was the dream job.

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“I grew a lot, beginning as a coach within the academy after which the function I had with top-of-the-line groups on the earth was positively one thing fulfilling. After 14 years, time goes by, households develop. The longer I waited, the more durable it could be to go away.

“I like a problem, and plenty of the time our challenges had been repeated. Once you’ve received the Champions League twice you continue to wish to win it, however you don’t face it with the identical enthusiasm. I used to be ready for the proper mission, I may have spent one other 10 years there, however this got here up and with my household we felt it was proper mission, so then it turned the proper time.”

On his hopes in Boston, he provides, “That’s what fulfils me, altering society, and what is going to make our trade sustainable, filling stadiums. We’ll have our personal stadium, used solely by us. We’re constructing a coaching facility, just for us, nothing can be shared.

“It began off as a name. At first, I used to be not that , however just a few months later it was a neater choice as a result of each single piece of the mission felt proper. As a lot as I needed the third Champions League in a row, it was a chance you don’t get so much, to start out from scratch and construct a squad from zero.”

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With a yr till Boston Legacy enters the NWSL, Guasch has to rent a head coach, teaching employees, backroom employees, help employees, in addition to an entire roster of gamers.

He has made his first key appointment, with Scotsman Ed Gallagher becoming a member of as head of recruitment from Brighton and Hove Albion, and he’s hopeful additional key strikes can be made by the summer season, with the intention to give everybody time to gel earlier than 2026.

“There’s plenty of stuff to be completed in a brief time period,” he admits, with a wry smile. “In soccer, you normally have much less time, so I take into account myself fortunate. I’ve a yr to construct and ensure each step of the best way we’re assembly our objectives.

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“The longest course of has been the coach as a result of we have now the aim of securing the coach across the summer season, so we’re within the final a part of that now. We’ve began the method for operations folks, efficiency folks, plenty of my time now’s interviewing folks, the administrators of every space, so we are able to have them in the summertime, and everybody has time to recruit inside their very own crew.

“[Gallagher] is an important a part of it, each for recruitment and for the employees members. I wish to focus so much on that, having one of the best backroom employees doable. We’re working with Ed on that facet, wanting on the short-term, the European market. One factor we are able to do is signal gamers and mortgage them out to different groups, so we’re what alternatives can be found as a result of every single day that goes by extra gamers are being signed elsewhere or signing new contracts.”

The NWSL is turning into distinctly extra European, each on the pitch and within the dugouts – as evidenced by Boston’s Spanish GM and a Scottish head of recruitment. Guasch indicated that Boston could certainly go down the European route for a lot of hires.

“The truth that girls’s soccer has grown in Europe has woken up the NWSL,” he says. “It’s been a longtime league for a few years, it was very transitional, primarily because of the gamers within the league. With how it’s now, in Spain, England. et cetera, the USA nationwide crew and NWSL groups have needed to develop and adapt. It’s opened up folks’s eyes right here to the skin world, folks asking, ‘how can we get higher?’

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“At Barcelona, it was determining the lacking piece or what may we enhance. You at all times regarded on the youth stage first and if nothing may meet the expectations then we regarded exterior. It is a fully completely different scenario, however how we method it doesn’t change.

“We all know how we wish to play, attacking soccer, dominate the ball, we have now sure participant profiles we’re in search of. It won’t be the extent of Barcelona; it’s in search of comparable profiles and maybe seeking to construct the identical type of recreation.”