The Whitecaps boss speaks with Matthew Sekeres a year before the team plays its first MLS game
MATTHEW SEKERES
VANCOUVER — Now that Winter Olympics boss John Furlong has stepped aside, the title of busiest Vancouver sports executive falls to Paul Barber.
The 42-year-old north Londoner moved here last month, leaving a front-office position with Tottenham Hotspur of the famed English Premier League, to oversee the Vancouver Whitecaps' move into Major League Soccer. The team makes its MLS debut a year from today.
In the next 12 months, Barber will oversee two stadium moves - from Swangard Stadium, the club's existing home, to a temporary facility on the old Empire Stadium site, to the renovated B.C. Place Stadium, once construction is complete some time next spring or summer.
He'll break ground on a new $31-million training facility, in a yet to be selected location somewhere in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, and build a roster and management team for the step up to North America's premier soccer league. He must also sign a shirt sponsor - a soccer team's most visible corporate partner - and plans changes to the Whitecaps' blue-and-white colour scheme, and logo.
As for pressure, Barber may not have the eyes of the world on his every move, but after smashing MLS debuts for the Seattle Sounders FC in 2009, and for Toronto FC in 2007, Barber's Whitecaps have a lot to live up to.
Earlier this week, he sat down with The Globe and Mail.
Are you here for the long haul?
I hope so. When you're moving three kids some 5,000 miles, it's not a decision you take lightly. From that point of view, yes, it's very much the long haul. We've got a huge amount to do, on and off the pitch.
Is the goal to surpass the CFL's B.C. Lions, and become the clear No. 2 choice, behind the NHL's Canucks, among B.C. sports fans?
There is room for another top-level sports franchise here. The Canucks are a great franchise. The B.C. Lions are also terrific. We have to set ourselves apart, and appeal to the same audiences, but also a different audience. If we can achieve that, we will be a very successful and high-profile franchise. Soccer is a global game. And when I walk around the city and hear different accents, see different faces, I know that the vast majority of them will have - somewhere - some soccer heritage from their homeland. We want to capture that for the Whitecaps and translate that into season-ticket sales.
How will the move from Empire Stadium to B.C. Place affect your MLS launch, and what kind of feedback are you getting from your customers
?
In an ideal world, you wouldn't do two stadium moves in 12 months. No question. Particularly not in your debut season. That adds a degree of complexity. ... What I can say is that most soccer fans that I know follow their team. And they follow that team whether they are playing at Swangard, Empire, B.C. Place, Toronto, Seattle, wherever the team goes. We are [going to need to attract casual fans] but we sold 5,000 season tickets in 48 hours. We're just about to put a second set on sale, and we expect them to sell just as quickly. ... I'm comfortable and confident that in the transitions we have to make, we'll bring the fans with us. ... We're going to two places where Whitecaps fans have a sense of history and belonging. We're not going to an alien spaceship.
Who is your biggest rival: Toronto, Seattle, or expansion cousin Portland?
I would say that the great thing about being in this corner of the world is that we have a lot of rivals. Certainly, Seattle and Portland are going to be two huge games. Toronto is going to be a massive game. Montreal is going to be a massive game. So, we're very lucky here, that unlike some of our Major League Soccer rivals, we have some big derby matches both in-country and over the border. I think our fans will love that. ... I don't think it's fair to say that one is bigger than the other, but inter-Canadian games are going to be huge.
Can you achieve the Year 1 numbers we saw in Seattle (22,000 season-ticket holders and an average attendance of 31,000 a game) with the MLS Sounders ?
That's the challenge for the Vancouver market. ... Seattle is a comparable-sized city, similar resources, but this club is bigger with a greater history and, therefore, in my opinion, we can try to match up and better that. Toronto had a great launch as well, and I'm sure the people of Vancouver look across to the East and say, 'Wow, we certainly want to be as good as that.' Those two things I see as positive because they are sort of like the gauntlet being thrown down at the city.
