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Abbey Villa / LIA Massachusetts merger over!

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    Abbey Villa / LIA Massachusetts merger over!

    Shortest merger in history (6 months)

    Email sent to Abbey Villa parents:

    Dear Abbey Villa Soccer Club Players and Parents,

    The senior staff of AVSC is making a significant announcement that benefits our club. We have made the difficult, but necessary decision to sever our relationship with Liverpool International Academy Massachusetts (LIA).

    After nearly a year of working on this partnership the benefits committed to AVSC by LIA Massachusetts have not been met to our satisfaction. We are faced with the conclusion that this partnership is not the equitable partnership we envisioned. By continuing this relationship, we are doing a great disservice to our club players and our coaching staff. We simply cannot allow this one-sided relationship to continue to the detriment of our club.

    We entered into a relationship with Liverpool International Academy Massachusetts for very clear and specific reasons. Some of these are outlined below.

    We went into the relationship with the expectation that there would be immediate and collaborative work toward establishing a complete pathway for our players to include state and national teams.

    AVSC and LIA Massachusetts would commit to working in partnership to provide our clubs access to high level leagues (like ECNL and others), and that a common expedited pathway would be developed. The staff of AVSC has worked diligently towards meeting that expectation. In truth, we find that our club is being held back from those opportunities due to a lack of collaborative efforts by LIA Massachusetts.

    We entered into this partnership in good faith that LIA Massachusetts would provide a complete and modern curriculum for our coaches to support our efforts to develop players, values and culture. In the end, the limited curriculum and access offered provided numerous roadblocks and issues that we did not get the support to resolve. The process of creating and accessing curriculum proved to be overly complicated and did not result in the further education of the coaches. Furthermore, AVSC did not receive the direct support from LIA Massachusetts that we expected per our agreement. We did get some valuable, but limited time with two Liverpool FC coaches from England that did provide players valuable experience with Coaches John and Phil. Overall, our access to the resources and expertise in England appeared to be controlled and limited. This resulted in our staff essentially having no direct access. A prime example is LIA Massachusetts invited AVSC staff to only 3 regular conference calls in 8 months with LFC and LIA Americas.

    LIA Massachusetts were expected to assist and support our efforts to provide easy access to playing kits. We were left with little input in what we could provide as options to control player costs. Our expectations of LIA Massachusetts, much like the practices of Nike, was that uniforms were on a two-year cycle. Recently, we were informed that contrary to our agreement, players would have to purchase new LFC replica uniforms every year. Added to this was the consistent struggle faced by AVSC and parents to receive uniform orders on time and there was no mechanism to run new lots of replicas when sizes ran out. This created considerable problems for players joining mid-season or replacing worn or lost uniforms. We feel strongly that this ongoing cost burden to our families is beyond what we believe reasonable.

    A major part of the agreement between AVSC and LIA Massachusetts was that each party agreed to very specific areas where we could operate independently and common areas that we would develop and work together for our common benefit. We feel strongly that AVSC held up our end of that agreement. Recently, LIA Massachusetts broke this agreement by attempting to infringe on AVSC areas and training facilities without our prior knowledge. AVSC was left out of relationships LIA Massachusetts was developing in common areas and not allowed to expand the club's reach into new areas.

    The above points are just a few of the considerations that we faced in reaching this difficult decision. The AVSC senior staff will make themselves available over the next few weeks to address the anticipated questions. We will hold meetings and discussions in all training regions, leading up to our annual club meeting at the end of February. It is common and expected that a decision of this nature will create speculation, rumors, and misinformation. Please use the senior staff as your conduit for questions and for real, open, and honest answers.

    One guarantee we will make immediately is that this movement back to AVSC will not result in families needing to purchase new match and training uniforms. This movement back to AVSC is not really a significant change. Our coaching staff, teams, philosophy, etc. is and has always been centered around our AVSC core values. We would also like to stress that entering and leaving agreements such as these are a regular occurrence in club soccer.

    This has been a difficult process to come to this decision to sever relationships with LIA Massachusetts. Considerable debate and evaluation has gone into making sure this is the right move for our players, families, and club. Providing the highest quality of player development in a positive, responsible, and developmentally appropriate manner is absolutely paramount to us. To that end, severing ties with LIA Massachusetts immediately is the only way to ensure the continued, consistent high level of coaching, development, culture and opportunities we aim to provide.

    Thank you for your attention and understanding. We look forward to a highly successful spring season.

    Des Rice - Owner/Director of Coaching
    Vinnie Musto - Player Development Director
    David Cudmore - Director of Operations
    Theo Booras - Technical Director
    Janeen Callaghan - Club Manager and Registrar
    Pat Quinn - Boston Operations Director
    Brad Nathan - Mini's and Camp Director

    #2
    It wasn't a merger.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
      It wasn't a merger.
      Explain the difference between a merger and partnership in this case? This will be interesting...

      Comment


        #4
        Haha, this is great.

        It seems many of their complaints are really subjective.

        Didn't receive support from LFCMA? Assume they would disagree.

        Things like the uniform cycle, really this wasn't discussed? Abbey seem really naive. Did you think, once representing a global brand, that they would allow for you to have old kits?

        Are LFC and NEP really going to allow a team that is no longer affiliated with LFC play with LFC tops on for the spring season? Are Abbey going to have their returning players buy new jerseys for 2019/2020? Wouldn't that go against the two year cycle they seem to promise?

        Wonder what LFCMA have to say about this.

        Never really seemed like Abbey were all the way in on the partnership anyway. Website and social media always stayed Abbey. This just seems like another sign that Abbey are a really poorly managed club. This isn't the first time that they have been on this forum for instability.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
          Explain the difference between a merger and partnership in this case? This will be interesting...
          I'm not the OP of the "wasn't a merger" post but help me understand why think will be interesting? Do you not recognize the obvious financial, and operational differences between a merger/acquisition and a partnership?

          Comment


            #6
            Can we be serious for a moment? Is there any worse club manager than MH? Honestly, and seriously.

            Comment


              #7
              Who is MH? What club is he the manager of?

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                I'm not the OP of the "wasn't a merger" post but help me understand why think will be interesting? Do you not recognize the obvious financial, and operational differences between a merger/acquisition and a partnership?
                Worst managed merger/partnership (who actually cares about the word play) ever!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Both clubs are a waste of time and money.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Have fun playing in the NSL... I hear the Scorpions teams are in the NSL now as well. NEP finally growing some balls and holding clubs accountable?

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Neither Liverpool or Abbey Villa will be playing in the NSL. Both were NEP clubs before this and will be after.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                        Have fun playing in the NSL... I hear the Scorpions teams are in the NSL now as well. NEP finally growing some balls and holding clubs accountable?
                        What does that even mean????

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                          Neither Liverpool or Abbey Villa will be playing in the NSL. Both were NEP clubs before this and will be after.
                          Does Avsc have to reapply to enter NEP seeing as they went under Liverpool last season?

                          Comment


                            #14
                            They do not have to apply again. Liverpool (Crusaders) and Abbey Villa were always 2 separate clubs. This isn't that big a deal. A partnership is like dating. A merger is like marriage. It didn't work out so they broke up.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
                              They do not have to apply again. Liverpool (Crusaders) and Abbey Villa were always 2 separate clubs. This isn't that big a deal. A partnership is like dating. A merger is like marriage. It didn't work out so they broke up.
                              From a concerned parent, do we get a refund for the lfc uniform? We only used it for 3 months. Strange way of putting it, maybe next time you decide to start “dating” someone you don’t make everyone buy a uniforms.

                              Comment

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