From carrying towels to dining with Mourinho - meet Charlie Stillitano

In the eyes of some, Charlie Stillitano is the man who wants to steal the Champions League. And he understands that characterisation.

As the Chairman of Relevent Sports – which organises and promotes the International Champions Cup every pre-season in the United States and beyond – Stillitano is well aware of the perception that he is someone who sees only dollar signs when it comes to football.

For purists in Europe, Stillitano is the businessman who is taking the continent's top clubs beyond their borders and opening their eyes to the lucrative potential in the land of opportunity. By doing so, he is widely reckoned to be hastening the demise of competitions on this side of the Atlantic.

Stillitano’s meeting with Premier League executives – from Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United – in March 2016 provoked panic. The break-up of the Premier League and the Champions League was coming; a European Super League inevitable.

Not so.

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“The way it was reported, I completely understand the fans’ concerns,” he says. "We never have an intention of starting some breakaway league. This was never our intention, nor is it our intention now.

“The question was really asked “can a closed league work?” and the answer is “yes” if you look at the NFL. Even MLS is a closed league.

"But it’s anathema to what we have here in Europe. Move on. We don’t want a closed league. We don’t want a European Super League. We want to build the ICC and we’d love to make it as authentic and competitive as possible.”

Stillitano insists that he only wishes for more coherence in the football calendar so his organisation can stage a proper pre-season tournament.

“The real problem we have is France and England start here, Italy and Spain start here, Germany starts in between, qualifiers and everything else,” he says. “So, the challenge is the calendar. Between World Cup, Euros, play-offs, everything, it’s really hard to find a format that works.

“If all the really big leagues in Europe had a consistent schedule, that would be great for us. Even if it’s only 10 days, we know it’s 10 days where nobody has to go back to a Community Shield or a Super Cup.

“The World Cup this year is a great example. It ends on July 15 and we’re hearing that a lot of leagues are starting the first week in August. If you have to give players three or four weeks off, in a technical sense, there is no pre-season. Something has to give.

“You’re asking players to play 12 months a year and they’re human beings. We think they’re unbelievable machines but, at the end of the day, they’re human beings and they can’t play 12 months a year. The guys will burn out at some point.”

Stillitano is no interloper; no Johnny-Come-Lately. He is steeped in European football culture. Born in the US to Italian parents, Stillitano’s father was one of the founding members of the Italian-American Soccer League. He arranged for teams like Santos – including Pele - and Lazio to play exhibition games in the New York/New Jersey area throughout the 1970s.

“Teams would come over in the old days and it was very, very different,” he says. “Dilapidated stadiums and you’re just playing to the ethnic crowds. It was just strictly the Italians in the area or the English in the area and they’d come and see the games. There really weren't many Americans.”

Stillitano Jr played University football for Princeton and was All-American at youth and Under-19 level. He coached alongside Bob Bradley in Princeton – the ex-USA manager’s first coaching job – while studying law at Rutgers.

There were no professional football leagues in the States at that time and Stillitano then became involved with World Cup 94. He served as a venue director for New York/New Jersey.

“I was used to taking care of managers like Arrigo Sacchi, Roy Hodgson, who was with Switzerland at the time, Jack Charlton and all these other guys that were around,” he says. He shortly after became MLS’s first employee. 

A stint as General Manager at the New York/New Jersey Metrostars ended ignominiously but Stillitano’s background in organising matches and taking care of teams stood him in good stead.

“You learn your trade. Then, it’s just a matter of trust year after year,” he says. “I think the most important thing is a little humility. If you got to carry the towels, you carry the towels.

“In the beginning, you do everything for people and I think that’s served us well. They know we’re willing to roll our sleeves up and do things.”

He launched ChampionsWorld in 2000 but that venture ended up in bankruptcy in 2005. Then, in 2007, there was the World Football Challenge, which was bought out by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross’s RSE Ventures and rebranded as the ICC in 2013. The formula is very simple.

“I remember sitting at a table with Sir Alex Ferguson, when he was retired already, and with Mr Stephen Ross,” he says. “We were sitting there and Sir Alex said: ‘Big versus Big - you’ll never go wrong.'

“I think that went away in our owner’s head and he said, 'Let’s do that; let’s not fool around.'”

And that tournament has gone from strength to strength with the investment of Ross and business partner Matt Higgins.

“Mr Ross and Matt Higgins have put millions of dollars into this,” he says. "I don’t think we could be here without them.

“We’ve done different versions of this along the years but what we’re able to do with them is buy the TV rights, buy the sponsor rights back from the team and create a platform. We can go out and sell sponsorship, we can go out and sell TV.

“We can do things much more than an orphan product where it’s one game here and there.”

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There is an understandable conservative streak running through many European football fans; a genuine fear that their game is being taken away. But the teams and the managers playing in the ICC are going there willingly. And the biggest factor in that is the relationships Stillitano has cultivated over a lifetime in the game.

“I’d love to say I’m catching lightning in a bottle, that I’m the rooster that takes credit for the sun coming up, but the reality is that they take it seriously,” he says.

“Because their season is starting in such a short period of time, they have to do it. The clubs need this pre-season. The beauty of our tournament is that it’s preparation and the managers have figured out to prepare.”

These managers like him and they trust him. On the day of this interview, he had just returned from lunch with Ferguson and was due to meet Jose Mourinho in the evening for dinner. He talks breezily about Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane.

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“If there are new people at their club, I’ll have a much deeper relationship with the manager than they will,” he says. “It’s all about trust at the end of the day. They trust me that I’m not going to do anything silly. I trust them that they’re not going to ask me to do anything silly. Within reason, we’ll do almost anything a club asks."

He makes sure the managers, their players and the clubs have nothing to complain about and that their every desire is catered to. He even went so far last summer as having a swimming pool built for Mourinho and Manchester United in order to match Real Madrid’s facilities on the same UCLA campus. “To be fair, we offered it to Zizou first,” he says.

Stillitano’s story converges with the establishment amid growth of professional football in the United States. He was there at the vanguard and he remains there now.

The ICC will be back next summer and it will feature again the crème de la crème of European football. There is still a way to go until pre-season football Stateside matches the intensity of what’s on offer in the Champions League.

For now, Stillitano believes he has forged a decent working relationship with the European Clubs Association – the body that looks after the interests of the top clubs – and which is always at the forefront of negotiations when it comes time to renew the memorandum of understanding with UEFA that covers participation in European competition.

“I don’t think it’s collaborative in a sense we’re sitting in meetings with them but I believe it’s very friendly and we’re trying to look out for each others’ interests,” he says. “The clubs go into their meetings and say 'hey we need some time here to do our preparation'.”

The current memorandum of understanding runs out in 2022 and who knows what the landscape of European football will be by then. For now, though, Stillitano is happy with his niche. But when it comes time to decide what to do next, he will be right there beside the powerbrokers.

He does see the day when Europe’s top clubs free themselves from UEFA's jurisdiction and make not only money but more compelling matches on a regular basis. Relevent Sports – based in the gentrified Hell’s Kitchen district of Manhattan – has no plans to bring about the end of European football as we know it. But Stillitano has ensured that his company is well-equipped to capitalise in the event that it does.

“If and when teams and leagues decide to do something official, we think we’re uniquely qualified to handle that,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we’ll even be considered because it’s clearly up to the teams or the confederations to make the decisions.

“But we think we do a good job with that. We’re very respectful of the game and we’d be happy to be a part of it.”