League for Clubs Co-Founder Sonny Dalesandro Discusses California Playoff Drama, NPSL Merger Offer, and First Year Positives

Credit The League for Clubs (X/Twitter)

The League for Clubs is entering playoff mode. The quickly growing national semi-pro soccer league has been a big success in their first year of play, but recent playoff disqualifications in California have caused controversy. Beyond the 90 had a phone call with League for Clubs co-founder and Tulsa Athletic owner Sonny Dalesandro to discuss what he knew on the disqualifications and his take on the national playoff format, an NPSL merger offer, overall first year positives, and more!

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BT90: We’re starting in California because a couple days ago (at the time of the interview), the League for Clubs made an announcement that the Bay Valley Suns would not be awarded the 8th playoff spot because of roster issues/issues registering players. The team commented under the announcement that there was no transparency from the league, that they had tried to communicate their registration issues and nothing had been done, and then that the announcement was made public before the club was told they were kicked out of the playoffs. What are your comments on that?

Sonny Dalestrano: Yeah, I mean we have a disciplinary committee. I didn't sit on the disciplinary committee. I trust that they always do their due diligence and are looking into these things. My opinion on playing illegal players, because I think they had posted pictures on their social media where you could see the player in question, he was not registered, so all I can really speak to is my opinion on illegal players and that’s a massive liability issue for the league, for their club, for other clubs. If something catastrophic were to happen, then they're exposing all of those three entities to risk, and registering players isn't a hard thing. I know sometimes it's the 11th hour, you need a player registered, you think it might be the guy that put you over the line in the game, but I give a lot of credit to Lexi at the league because we asked that players get registered 48-72 hours before a match but I've watched her register players for some clubs up to 30 minutes prior to a match sometimes. So to not be able to get that done is, you know, I don't think it's a high bar asked for from a club.

Do you mind if we ask who's on the disciplinary committee?

I don't know. I don't know who overheard this case. I know I wasn't on it. I'll pick up the phone for anyone from Northern California that has questions about something, but I wasn't on the disciplinary committee and I didn't ask who was so I don't have that information.

Ok, we asked because there were some arguments going on in the comments under the announcement, and some involved Arik Housley, owner of Napa Valley.

What I will say is to the best of my knowledge. No one from that conference sat on that disciplinary committee just because that would represent a conflict. That’s my minimal knowledge of that situation.

Under that same announcement, the team who would've been awarded the playoff spot was Rush Silicon Valley, and they also commented and said that the club had paid the league fees. The league statement said that they were not in good financial standing. What do you know about that?

Here’s what I know, we're here to work with teams, and some fees that should've been paid prior to the beginning of the season still hadn't been paid and we had gone off of some deadlines that had been continually moved back. I think in the spirit of wanting to be a good partner to the clubs within our league, we allowed them some leeway. That may be something that we regret and obviously steer away from in the future, but we took a situation at the word of the of the owner and it just kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. Again, this is from what I know of the situation, but there was like a deadline of 8:00pm or a deadline set, and that deadline was missed. My understanding is that they called and said that they could pay a portion of the amount, and then I believe they called once the match already was underway and the deadline had passed and said that they could pay the entire amount.

So, we try and be equal across the board with all of our clubs. There’s a lot of clubs that had to struggle to make all of their payments and, you know, they could see it as a disservice against them that we allowed a club to be delinquent with some money that was owed. And at the same time, like I said, we want to be a good partner to those teams, but as we're entering into the playoffs, you know you can't allow teams that haven't paid their dues to continue on. I wasn't directly involved in those conversations. I only know that a deadline was set, a deadline to make the entirety of the payment, and that deadline passed. I read the post that Silicon Valley put in there and I'd have to read it again, but it was not entirely factual. And then again, it's a team that we allowed to go that long, we took them at their word that they could make their payments. When we were involved in the league, our payment was in November or December, so it reaches a point where you know you can only take someone at their word so many times.

Yeah, I think what you touched on about a disservice to other clubs, I think that's where we saw the pushback from the move. The team that ended up getting the playoff spot, Afghan Premier, there was just a lot of discourse around that they had broken rules; the main one was not meeting locker room standards and other requirements during game day. So, what's the comment on that? What standards have multiple clubs been given some leeway for, and what standards have the clubs been held to? I ask because to someone from the outside looking in, it seems like there is certain enforcement here, but not there.

I don't know specifics on Afghan. I haven't been out to Afghan for any of the games. I heard that they were working hard to put together a good product competition wise. They were one of the clubs that was not near the top three but I heard that they were in this again. This is just what I'm hearing, I'm not on the West Coast. I'm not. I haven't been to any of these games so you know, if they were deficient in an area, if that's being brought up by other clubs, it's a conversation and you work in the direction to help them fix that. I really try not to jump in the comments when there's post like that, but the timing of teams complaining about minimum standards not being met seemed a little bit curious to me.

Moving into more general league questions now: We’re gonna go ahead and assume that the answer to this question is because of the hope to regionalize the four teams that are entering the final four (for the playoffs), but the structure that you have is the eight clubs in the Mountain and Mid-American Conferences competing for one spot, you had the clubs in California for one, you had the clubs in the Northeast, but then you combined the Texas and Gulf Coast division to play each other for a spot. That would end up with 18 total teams ending with one spot, and you compare that to eight teams playing for one spot in Northeast. So, what was the thought process by making that move?

Yeah, most of that's just geographic based decisions. I mean, listen, when we (Tulsa Athletic) were in the NPSL for our first few years, the West Coast would have 10 to 12 teams and then the South would have 30. It was always a tougher track to a national championship game and yet Chattanooga managed to do it four or five times. So, you know, it's just a product of circumstance.

In an ideal world we would grow in a way that was complete geographic parody, and everyone had to go through a similar gauntlet in order to reach a championship game, but we live in a big expansive country, you know, so that was just kind of where we landed. It’s likely to be changed and altered as we continue to grow moving forward into the future.

About the future, you've had the announcement of a partnership with the Midwest Premier League. How many teams are you looking for in the first tier? How do you want to fill that out with their promotion-relegation structure that they already have?

We want to work with them, to have a system that works for them too. We don't want to come in and dictate or anything like that, but if there are clubs that at some point they feel they graduate out or are looking for a league with a more national footprint, we'd like to be a partner who is able to facilitate that with them.

Right now, we're still just kind of designing how the theoretical systems would look. For me, I think that there's a story to be told in the United States of a league team that was organized and had all of the things together and graduated to a state league, and then from being in that state league, they graduated into a regional league, and then potentially into a national league. I think that's a really compelling story that would be motivational for people all over the country to look at and really help support and grow that interest; along that storyline is the relationship with a national league and regional league. The Midwest Premier League in our opinion is the strongest in the country and they do things in a similar way that we do. You know that they do things the right way. So yeah, you know, I don't have a concrete answer of like these two divisions champion will move up and this or that. I don't have a clear systemic structure that I can just lay out on a phone call, but it's a conversation.

This next question is very generic: What do you think has been one of the most successful things in the League’s launch this year?

You know, when we started this, our goal was 18 teams. We knew we had some East Coast teams, we had two founders on the East Coast, two on the West Coast, and myself in the middle. It was like, if we can build 3 6-team conferences, that’ll work. That was the sort of the number, so to end with 51 teams this year I think speaks volumes to how dedicated a largely volunteer-based organization is in growing something that's different and that's better. I think competitively on the field, it’s been excellent. You know, in 2023 we were (Tulsa Athletic) the national champions in the NPSL. Our first year in the League for Clubs we started off 0-2, which we've never done before. So yeah, the level is good. Todd Lisenbee, the deputy commissioner, and Michael Lane have everything on our social media looking very good. I think everything looks very clean, very professional. And, I think just the interest that's come in since our launch has been a sign of the success as well. There are other people seeing what we're doing. They identify it as a sustainable pathway for their club in their community, and I think you're gonna see our numbers probably close to double next year.

Last is a question we feel obligated to ask, as we asked the NPSL about it and got no comment. It was a report from Michael Bautista a couple months ago: Did you or did you not submit an offer for a sort of merger to the NPSL?

Yeah, we submitted something.

Did they ever respond?

No, they don't respond to anything, and that’s part of the problem. When you look at the two leagues, you have one that is out there, boots on the ground, trying to make the soccer landscape better through communication and through working with people, and then you have one that's almost completely unresponsive. You know, I saw it as a club owner. I saw when I sat on that board, how the executive committee and the staff from that league weren't getting back to them. So yeah, we're cut from a different cloth in that way.