NWSL enlargement workforce Bay FC hires Albertin Montoya as coach

Bay FC has employed Albertin Montoya as its inaugural coach, the membership introduced Wednesday.

“The Bay Space has been such a fantastic space with skilled sports activities, and the way can we not have a ladies’s workforce right here in Northern California?” Montoya advised The Athletic on Monday. “And now that the chance is there, I’m simply honored, and it’s only a privilege, that the group is trusting me (with this function).”

The 48-year-old supervisor joins the NWSL enlargement franchise after most just lately serving a short stint as interim head coach of the Washington Spirit in 2022. His time in Washington final 12 months gave him “the bug for the skilled recreation once more,” he stated, “I find it irresistible. That is what I’ve completed all my life. My spouse additionally performed professionally. So, it’s form of in our household. A possibility got here right here within the Bay Space, the place it simply made sense.”

Welcome, Albertin! 👏

📰 Learn the complete announcement of the Membership’s inaugural Head Coach at: https://t.co/3FspHQsW40#BayFC | @NWSL pic.twitter.com/RJu4jqK12h

— Bay Soccer Membership (@wearebayfc) September 27, 2023

Montoya’s roots run deep in Northern California, having moved to the world from Cuba when he was six years outdated. He grew up in Mountain View and performed professionally within the space within the Nineties. He additionally performed collegiately at Santa Clara College.

In 1999, he turned to teaching professionally when he was named co-head coach of California Storm within the Girls’s Premier Soccer League. He was there until 2006 and in 2009 served as head coach for FC Gold Pleasure within the Girls’s Skilled Soccer League. Montoya led the workforce to a championship season in 2010. In 2003, he additionally served a stint as an assistant coach with the San Jose CyberRays, which performed within the Girls’s United Soccer Affiliation.

Montoya additionally coached collegiately at Santa Clara and Stanford and based the Montoya Soccer Academy in 2002 along with his spouse, Erin, a former skilled participant who performed for Santa Clara. On the worldwide stage, Montoya coached the U.S. ladies’s U-17 workforce, main them to a CONCACAF championship in 2012.

His preliminary actions as head coach of Bay FC, which was introduced as an NWSL membership earlier this 12 months and can start play subsequent 12 months, can be to construct out the teaching employees and roster. The franchise envisions, and hopes, that Bay FC’s inaugural roster will “play a pretty type of soccer,” Montoya stated.

“We need to have the gamers specific themselves. We need to be a workforce that assaults, that performs attacking soccer, that controls the tempo, that enjoys possession,” Montoya stated. “There’s plenty of other ways to play the sport, however that’s how I’ve coached all my life.”

The hope is that Montoya’s ties to the world can be a draw for native expertise, particularly in an space with such a wealthy soccer historical past. Among the franchise’s founders embody former USWNT gamers with ties to the world – Brandi Chastain, Leslie Osborne, Danielle Slaton and Aly Wagner. Osborne and Chastain have been on the FC Gold Pleasure’s inaugural roster in 2009 when Montoya served as that membership’s inaugural coach.

“I’ve been round for fairly a while, so I do know the gamers which are across the league which have the Bay Space ties,” Montoya stated, with a smile. “And if issues come collectively the way in which we see it, we’d like to herald among the native expertise that’s enjoying in different places across the league, and perhaps do extra of a Bay Space workforce. However we’ll see.”

He added, “I do imagine that simply having these Bay Space ties would possibly put us at a bit of little bit of a bonus to figuring out the gamers that would be the proper match for our group.”

Bay FC is coming into a crowded California market in skilled ladies’s soccer. The NWSL has already seen historic attendance with Angel Metropolis FC and San Diego Wave because the golf equipment started enjoying within the NWSL in 2022.

Lucy Rushton, Bay FC’s basic supervisor, envisions the Northern California membership becoming proper in with Angel Metropolis and San Diego.

“They’ve been unbelievable golf equipment for us to take a look at and actually take classes from,” Rushton advised The Athletic. “However I feel it speaks massively to California, proper? And what we’ve right here on this market. Each of these golf equipment have unbelievable fan bases already – and it simply comes again to the eagerness that’s on this space for girls’s soccer.

“So, for us, I feel the sky’s the restrict and I stay up for these video games probably the most as a result of the derby video games are at all times the perfect ones.”

With Montoya’s appointment now official and NWSL free company open, Bay FC is looking forward to the subsequent a number of months of laying out the groundwork for the membership’s inaugural squad.

“That is the place we actually get into the nitty-gritty of participant recruitment and scouting. So, clearly, plenty of work has been happening behind the scenes to establish gamers that we predict match our model and identification, realizing all alongside what we wished that to be,” Rushton stated. “We (now) have the flexibility to truly interact with some gamers, and I’m extraordinarily assured that gamers are going to need to come and play for Bay FC after they know that Albertin is our head coach.”

She continued, “We now have 22 to 26 gamers to herald over the subsequent 4 or 5 months – and the exhausting work, however the enjoyable work, begins now.”

(Picture: United States Soccer Federation)