NASL turn to Krishnaiyer to build buzz

By Charles Boehm, Potomac Soccer Wire Sr. Staff Writer

Public relations professionals tend to be slick, careful, corporate types. Adept at controlling conversations, rationing out information in whatever fashion serves their organization’s interests, they often stand in stark contrast to the rumpled, inquisitive journalists they interact with. One side instinctively seeks to manage and influence, while the other is taught to pry, ponder and pontificate for the public record.

Kartik Krishnaiyer is one member of the soccer press looking to hurdle that divide, having left his perch as one of the most prolific – and polarizing – bloggers on the U.S. scene to take a P.R. and communications position with the North American Soccer League, the fledgling confederation of second-division clubs which broke away from the United Soccer Leagues late last year.

“I think it’s a victory for all of us who are – me, formerly – in the independent media, the rest of the bloggers and people who are on message boards, EPL Talk, BigSoccer, whatever, going forward, because we made a real impact on the sport in this country,” said Krishnaiyer in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with Potomac Soccer Wire last week.

“The blogosphere and message boards are more mainstream in American soccer culture than they are in American football culture or American baseball culture. I think my hiring was symbolism for the success we’ve had and the impact we’ve had.”

But Krishnaiyer’s January move to NASL raised more than a few eyebrows and drew derision in some quarters¹, given how closely he had covered the renegade clubs’ messy divorce from USL – not to mention the strident pronouncements that litter his body of work. Krishnaiyer has routinely uncorked the sort of verbal volleys that might be compared to a defensive midfielder’s long-range potshots at goal: occasionally devastating, but often speculative at best.

He’s put forward conspiracy theories regarding the United States Soccer Federation and its president, Sunil Gulati, such as the idea that the sport’s U.S. governing body sought to use the NASL/USL squabble to help Major League Soccer seize leverage in collective bargaining negotiations with its players’ union.² His websites have also vocally critiqued the perceived failures of MLS, such as the absence of a team in his home state of Florida or elsewhere in the southeastern U.S.³ and the league’s slow adoption of youth development programs.

To be fair, strong opinions and controversial ideas abound in the soccer blogosphere, which has become a particularly vibrant meeting place for followers of a sport which has historically struggled for traction in the mainstream media. By hiring Krishnaiyer, NASL’s owners have made it clear that they are eager to connect with this sector of the fan base. Yet the man himself now faces the awkward task of representing the new league’s interests among the very same parties he’s spent years critiquing and even condemning.

“Yes, I’ve said some incendiary things about the federation and about their youth structure, more than anything – player development,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “But hopefully those can be seen as constructive critiques going forward. We can help as a league, help MLS, help U.S. Soccer and U.S. Youth Soccer going forward…We’re going to work with MLS. We’re going to enhance and complement the good work MLS has done for 15 years.”

Krishnaiyer declined to comment on whether the second division would welcome MLS players in the event of a labor stoppage in the nation’s top-tier league, but insisted that NASL had nothing to gain from such a situation and expressed hope that a new collective bargaining agreement is crafted soon.

“Part of us building our brand is making sure we have a healthy D1 above us,” he said, “so I don’t think many of our owners, many of the people involved in our league, want to see MLS have a long-term work stoppage. I don’t want to say it would be catastrophic for us as well, but it certainly would not be a good thing for us…You have to have that league that’s drawing coverage at the top.”

Krishnaiyer dismisses accusations that the timing of his move to NASL was ethically suspect, citing political analysts like Mary Matalin and Linda Douglass (a journalist who covered the Obama presidential campaign, then joined the president’s policy staff afterwards) as proof that such transitions are commonplace in other fields.

“This sort of thing happens a lot, where you have a journalist or writer that covers a campaign or covers a governmental entity, and then ends up coming on as the PIO or some sort of person in the organization,” said Krishnaiyer. “I think as we’re in adolescence – the U.S. soccer community – and we’re growing, this sort of thing will probably happen more often. It’s something that happens in the real world, the political world of Washington, D.C., all the time.”

For a small upstart league in a nation that’s notoriously fickle towards the sport, especially its lower divisions, the process of informing can hardly be separated from the need to promote and Krishnaiyer is approaching his new job with the persistence and ambition of an up-and-coming politician. He’s visiting every market in the league to confer with club officials, with an eye towards coordinated messaging and spurring press coverage at every level possible, especially in large markets where MLS teams cannot, or will not, locate.

“There are cities like Baltimore that are major-league towns, that have an NFL team, that have a major league baseball team, that also can support high-level soccer, D2 soccer,” said Krishnaiyer. “We think that we can move the larger markets where we have D2 teams, the Baltimores, the Minnesotas, the St. Louises, the Montreals, the Tampas, forward in a way that USL has not done.”

The USSF’s intervention in the NASL/USL fight – a move that Krishnaiyer first criticized, but now hails as a “tremendous sacrifice” by the federation – resulted in a compromise arrangement to ensure that there would be second-division pro soccer in 2010, but the NASL clubs’ departure from USL deteriorated into an intensely acrimonious affair over the winter and those emotions remain raw. The new league is already looking forward to 2011, when it will be fully autonomous and have more freedom to promote its teams with national television deals and the like. But for now, Krishnaiyer is focused on the pivotal task of capitalizing on soccer’s increased visibility during FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa.

“One of the keys for our PR outreach this season is to help our local clubs in their local markets connect with local media and independent media that have previously covered the clubs and in some cases, the clubs have not gotten enough media coverage locally,” explained Krishnaiyer. “So we want to build a national press strategy, and a lot of it is piggybacking off the possible success of the U.S. National Team this summer – World Cup fever, World Cup buzz.”
 

1) http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/blog.php?b=7474
2) http://thekartikreport.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/ussf-rejects-nasl/
3) http://www.majorleaguesoccertalk.com/us-soccer-and-mls-doing-a-disservice-to-southeastern-united-states/7706