Helping to build the Wanderers into the A-League in 2012-13 had its challenges for outgoing CEO John Tsatsimas – for starters, his best form of communication in the club’s earliest beginnings was via a hotmail account most assumed was spam.
A decade later the club is a fixture in the community which surrounds it, with an elite facility of increasing stature giving a club everything it should need to be a success on the field. It’s fair to say, though, that progression has stalled via disappointing results, mostly the same in both the men’s and women’s camps.
Tsatsimis says the disappointment of years without success, and consequent constant critique and external pressure, is how he knows he helped to build a ‘big club’ – a club he now prepares to depart at the end of one last season.
“It’s certainly been an emotional period,” Tsatsimas said, speaking to Daniel Garb and Robbie Cornthwaite on this week’s episode of The Official A-Leagues Podcast. “After putting 10 years of hard work into an organisation and being part of it since inception, it’s a time for reflection and understanding what transpired in the intervening years.
“I’m very proud of what’s taken place here and could only have been done with a lot of good people around it.”
On February 25, the Wanderers announced Tsatsimas had handed in his resignation to the board, to step down from his role as club CEO at the end of the 2021-22 Isuzu UTE A-League season.
The decision comes as pressure mounts on the club to get the on-field product right, as the Wanderers’ men’s outfit edge towards a fifth consecutive season without finals.
The club’s Liberty A-League side, meanwhile, are in danger of ending the 2021-22 season on the foot of the table, having scored just five goals through 12 games in the campaign to date.
Tsatsimas says the timing of his decision to depart his role as club CEO was timed to give the club appropriate time to plan how to move forward.
“I think most CEO’s have three to four years in any role, and to be at Western Sydney Wanderers in this capacity for a decade, certainly the time is right,” Tsatsimas said.
“…I think to give the opportunity to the chairman, the board and the club not just to turn up one day and say I’m out the next, but give them an opportunity to plan and see what they want to do for the next year, I think it was incumbent upon me to provide them the opportunity to see what they want to do next.”
Tsatsimas continued: “I’m very proud in the sense that it’s a place where I’m born and bred, where I live.
“They’ll carry me out in a box; Western Sydney, I won’t move from here. Even when I was at Newcastle (Jets) I drove up every day.
“I love the place, I know where it’s come from, I know the challenges on a social level from when I was a kid here, and the hospitals, education and roads, all that stuff is big for us in terms of the community.
“The club has been very community focused, irrespective of the onfield successes and not-so successful periods, that still continues to be an integral part of the fabric of what we do here.
“We’ve made a significant contribution in terms of our community integration, and that’s been reflective of what we represent. It’s a good vehicle to represent Western Sydney as a region through (football), and we’ve been very proud of that.”
Tsatsimas reflects on the earliest days of the Wanderers as some of his fondest, amazed at how far the club has come since it earliest days with Western Sydney native Tony Popovic steering the ship as the club’s head coach.
Western Sydney won the A-League premiership at the first time of asking (2012-13), going on to win the 2014 AFC Asian Champions League title – the one and only time an Australian side has managed that phenomenal feat to this day.
“We used to meet with Popa, and I used to meet with (player) representatives and partners at my place, and on a hotmail account,” he said. “I remember some people actually thinking I was a spam (emailer) when I was asking questions (about) players, and refusing to even respond to me.
“One guy said: ‘You’re actually from a football club with a hotmail account?’ These were the challenges we had, and that was before moving to FFA.
“They’re good moments, they’re good memories and to see where it’s come from, where it was and where it’s ended up has been certainly a very proud moment in a relatively short period of time.”
It’s a peculiar facet of the club’s history, however, that the on-field success was at its highest in the club’s earliest years. The club has since put considerable resources into creating state-of-the-art facilities Tsatsimas believes to have given his club ‘the largest footballing footprint in this country’ – but, results have stagnated.
Tsatsimas says the criticism that has come the way of both him and the club in recent times is warranted – but shows the scale of the club in the Australian footballing conversation, and that people genuinely care about its fortunes.
“We need to understand this is the largest footballing footprint in this country, it’s done in under a decade and it’s certainly where football needs to be,” Tsatsimas said. “I hope other clubs can aspire to have what the infrastructure is here, it doesn’t have to be on the same level but have a football footprint that’s specifically for football, for men, women and youth and the community.
“That’s a very, very big piece of work and I’m very proud of that.”
Tsatsimas added: “You see the challenges of big clubs… a big club, big pressure breeds big expectations. (It’s) a big region here, we had success early on, created the expectation – but I wouldn’t change it, because then you know you’re a big club.
“A big club in terms of, right, you might not have success on the pitch all the time, but when they’re talking about the Western Sydney Wanderers (in) good times and bad, that means why care and you’re a prominent football club as a community in the footballing landscape.
“When they don’t stop talking about the Wanderers – good or bad – then that’s a good sign.”
