Transcript: Strikers Introductory Press Conference With Ronaldo
The following is a transcript of the press conference to introduce Fort Lauderdale Strikers part-owenr Ronaldo held on Wednesday, January 14, 2014 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Benjamin Markus (Strikers Public Relations Director): Thank you everyone so much for coming. I appreciate you being here on this very excited day. My name is Benjamin Markus and I’m the PR Director for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers Soccer team. Our season begins very shortly, it begins April 4, so we are ready to go here. On Saturday we’re going to have a Ronaldo Fan Fast. We invite you all to come and be a part of that. That will be at 7pm. We hope to see all of your faces out there. I’m going to introduce you to our emcee for this evening. His name is Fernando Vila; he prefers to be called Nando. He is the host of Soccer Gods on the Fusion Network. You can follow him on twitter @Nandorvila, that’s his handle and I’m going to introduce you to Fernando right now. One last thing, we are going to have a more formal Q&A session after our speakers on the dais here, speak. So, without further ado, let me present to you Fernando Vila.
Fernando Vila (Emcee): Thank you Ben. How cool is this? It’s Ronaldo! He’s coming to south Florida! Oh my god. I’m so excited. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is Fernando Vila. I’m host of Soccer Gods on the Fusion Channel. Just launched recently. Show airs Monday nights at 10pm and its about soccer, and what better event to come to than this. I want to thank all the press that’s here. I want to thank all the Striker-Likers that are here. Looks like there are some Striker-Likers in the crowd. I want to thank the people watching at home on the street. I also want to thank the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino for hosting us. Maybe after if you want to go and throw some money around at the blackjack table, have some cocktails, who knows, anything can happen.
Without further ado, I want to introduce the people on stage here with me. The Strikers Majority Owner Paulo Cesso, over there, hello. The Strikers Chairman of the Board Rafael Bertani. Co-Managing Partner Ricardo Geromel. At the end, we have Carlos "the wizard" Martins. And we have Strikers President Tim Robbie. Commissioner of the NASL, Bill Peterson. Mayor of this fine city of Fort Lauderdale, Jack Seiler, and the mayor of sunrise, and fellow Striker-Liker, wearing the tie, Mike Ryan.
I won’t, you know, dilly dally any more, I know who you guys came here for you didn’t come here for any of us. You came here for the great man himself, a true legend one of the best players to ever grace the soccer field. Ladies and gentleman: Ronaldo.
So I want to welcome to the podium, our first speaker today. He’s been a great supporter of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. If you go to a game, you might catch him in the stands. He’s a true, true fan. Mayor Jack Seiler.
Jack Seiler (Mayor of Fort Lauderdale): Well, thank you Nando. Welcome to Fort Lauderdale. It is a true honor and privilege to welcome you to our great city. I know the man who was announced, everybody knew who you were and what you did, and what impact you are going to have here in Fort Lauderdale. We could not be more delighted as a community to have you be involved in soccer in south Florida and what we are trying to do with the Fort Lauderdale strikers. On behalf of Mayor Mike Ryan, City of Sunrise, a sincere Striker-Liker folks, he dresses like that for court. He dresses like that when he goes to City Hall. He loves the Strikers,
First of all, I’d like to thank the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. We have had a long term partnership with them and the city of Fort Lauderdale. They’ve been active with our Winterfest boat parade, they’re a tremendous partner and a great asset to the community and I think for them to step up today and host it, and we really appreciate the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino for doing this. And I was sitting there thinking, four months ago, we were down in Fort Lauderdale on the water and we announced new ownership team for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. And the level of excitement and the energy and enthusiasm you brought that day was awesome. But I remember talking to Ricardo, and he kept saying that we have bigger and better things. We got bigger and better things; we’re gonna head in a new direction, we’re going to take the franchise in a new direction. Now I remember sitting down that day and I just realized, that I called several people in the community after that press conference that these new owners are going to be something special. They’ve got their act together, they know what to do, they have the resources to do it, and all you guys say is Ronaldo. And they delivered. They made commitments, they made promises and they have gone above and beyond what they promised to do.
You know what, last season they went all the way to the NASL Finals. They lost a little game in San Antonio, the Championship Game, and I think if you would have come out of retirement and maybe played the second half of that game, we might have pulled that off Ronaldo. I say that know. But, in all seriousness, we could not be more delighted. We thank the Strikers ownership, thank the whole Strikers team, the organization. And a special thanks to Tim Robbie for doing sports here in South Florida for so many years and the NASL, I know you guys Bill and you guys are really talking about taking it to the next level with this league and I think with owners such as we have with Strikers, Ronaldo’s ownership team, you guys are going to take the Strikers to the next level. And there’ll be a press conference in a few months celebrating their first NASL championship and we’ll make sure to invite you all back to that Championship next fall. And with that, I’m going to turn it back over. But I just want to once again welcome you. You’re going to have a tremendous impact in south Florida. We have such a large Brazilian population here in the Greater Fort Lauderdale area and they are starved for great soccer and if there’s something you bring, it’s great soccer. So God bless you and thank you.
Fernando Vila: Thank you so much for being here. Just want to make a quick apology, I forgot to introduce HotShot the mascot. Probably the most important person here. The next speaker is the commissioner of NASL, you might have noticed that the NASL has been in the news a lot lately, and most of it is probably his fault. Ladies and gentleman Bill Peterson.
Bill Peterson (Commissioner of NASL): Thank you very much. Mayor Seiler, I think you might have mentioned it, we need to keep meeting like this. So 4 months ago, we were here in Fort Lauderdale to introduce the new ownership group and Paulo, Rafael, and Ricardo stood in front of the people in Fort Lauderdale and made a commitment to this community, made a commitment to the competition on the field, you made a commitment to the Strikers fans that you would go out and build a first class organization. And you’ve done it. You’ve been very active in the community, been very active in building a first class organization. When you called to announce this one, I wasn’t expecting it; it was a little bit off the charts. Congratulations to you, having the vision and passion and the courage to go out and really create something special out here in Fort Lauderdale. Ronaldo, on behalf of all of our owners, all of our fans, all of our great players in our league, we all want to welcome you to the ownership group. It’s a very exciting time for us. It’s an honor to have someone with your accomplishments and your success involved in our journey. And we welcome you with open arms and look forward to working with you.
Let me just speak briefly about the league. I think everyone in this room will be aware of the Strikers great history, the great history of the NASL. Think we have a league that may have the greatest history in soccer in North America. Teams like the Strikers, the Rowdies, Cosmos. Players like Pele, Best, Beckenbauer, Cruyff. The history of the NASL was fantastic, absolutely great. And now the group we have, involved in this sport today, involved in this league today, obviously, respect that history, honor that history, but now we’re focused on building the next great league in this country. We feel we have a great opportunity ahead of us, teams like the Strikers, players like Raul, Miguel Ibarra, the stories and the people who are coming to the top of this league just continue to amaze and continue to add to our growth and we are just getting started. We just completed our 4th season. We have 11 teams playing in the league. Our goal is to have 20 teams by 2018. Our goal is to win US Open Cup. Our goal is to line up against any club in the world, toe to toe by 2018 and give them a run for their money. We feel we’re very far down the road from accomplishing those goals. It’s an exciting time for soccer, exciting time for the NASL. And this announcement, it actually continues that momentum and again we are very proud and look forward to working with you in the future. Thank You
Fernando Vila: Ladies and gentleman Ricardo Geromel
Ricardo Geromel (Fort Lauderdale Strikers Managing Partner): Hi, I’m the co-managing partner of the Fort Lauderdale strikers, together with Madison Stanford. We are honored to have the privilege to call ourselves the owners of the Strikers. Together with Paulo Cesso, who owns a number of education institutions in Brazil and South America. Rafa Bertani, who is also involved with education and a number of other fun ventures. Myself. Some other partners like Andre Chaves, we’ll be working with him, and here. Some other partners. Ronaldo, Marcos Blice. And you’re going to get to meet a lot about us. But I’m here mainly to introduce our project that consists of a new stadium that we’ve been actively working on it, and you can count on that. Second is involved with innovation. We have tremendous partners that will help us to bring some of the best technology that is being developed from other areas of the world to the center of our institution. We also have the project of academies, soccer academies and that we bring that to the table Carlos "the Wizard" Martinez. We will be one of the most successful, field the most successful franchises in the history of this planet. So we have the right team, we have the right vision, we have the right support, we are in the right league. Soccer is already a reality in the U.S. and It has reached a tipping point that there is no way back. And the future of soccer in the U.S., the real growth will be in the NASL and we are going to be apart of it. So I introduce to Rafael, who is going to elaborate on our plans regarding education. Thank you
Rafael Bertani (Fort Lauderdale Strikers Chairman of the Board): First of all, I would like to thank Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino for having us here and bringing this structure together. I cannot say in words how excited I am to be with you today and announcing that Ronaldo is our owner.
Ronaldo is known as a phenomenal player but he’s a phenomenal businessman and he is going to make a difference here in Fort Lauderdale, the city of Fort Lauderdale and with the Fort Lauderdale Strikers. I’m excited to have him here and I’m sure he’s going to be the difference in all the matters, all the aspects of the fort Lauderdale strikers from the stadium from our attendance that we will build to go up and I will make sure later that our new partner and his project Carlos martins and other aspects of the business that we truly believe will make the Strikers a worldwide brand and a household for soccer in the U.S. I’m glad to be here and I’d like to invite Carlos to say a few words about our academy project and then Ronaldo will have a few words.
Carlos Wizard Martins (Fort Lauderdale Strikers Partner):
Ladies and gentleman, it’s a great pleasure to be with you here and especially to be in this moment where soccer in this country is taking a new face. We have seen in recent months that the audience of TV has been greater in people watching soccer games than any other American sport. So this is indication of the potential that we have to develop a franchise and system of academies, for helping kids and teenagers develop their sports abilities in the soccer field. We are very glad to have Ronaldo with us here and you have come here to listen to him.
Fernando Vila: Well you guys have heard from here. But, everyone wants to hear from the main man himself. One of the greatest players I’ve ever seen, Barca, Inter Milan, Real Madrid. Brazilian National Team World Cup Winner. You know who he is. Ladies and gentleman Ronaldo.
Ronaldo (Fort Lauderdale Strikers Part-Owner): Hi. Good afternoon everyone. My English is still bad. I promise I will fix it. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s an honor to be a part of this team. My partners: thank you very much, for your trust in me. I’m sure we will continue the history of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, and for sure we will make this team a big thing. We will work hard on it and I will thank you all for the support, for the league, for you all. Thank you very much. And also I’m proud to announce our first sponsor is: Nike.
Nike also was my first sponsor when I was 16 years old, a very long time ago, I’m 38 now. And that is just the beginning. I wish good luck to us. And let’s work. Go strikers. Thank you very much.
