(East Los Angeles, CA) [From The Editor’s Desk]: The change could be felt coming in our City of Angels the more the Angel City Football Club (ACFC) kept its second half of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) season, on a positive upturn and a winning momentum, that was then followed by the team making the post-season playoffs for the first time in the Club’s history.
Mark your calendars, all ACFC fans, because on November 2nd, the Club called for a full press conference that was held at the L.A. Unified School District’s, (LAUSD), 24th Street Elementary School to announce a major change that named its recent Interim Head Coach, Becki Tweed, to the position of Full-Time Head Coach of the team.
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Here is the full coverage of the event with the press announcement, the press conference quotes, along with a brief Club photo gallery, that captured the precise moment.
ANGEL CITY FOOTBALL CLUB HOLDS PRESS CONFERENCE TO WELCOME BECKI TWEED AS NEW HEAD COACH
LOS ANGELES (November 2, 2023) – Angel City Football Club (ACFC) recently hosted a press conference on this date, following the official announcement that Becki Tweed has been named head coach. Tweed, who acted as Interim Head Coach of the club for the second half of the 2023 NWSL Season, led the squad to its first-ever playoff match and an 11-game no-loss streak.
In true Angel City fashion, prior to the press conference Tweed, ACFC General Manager Angela Hucles Mangano, and Co-Founder and Team President Julie Uhrman volunteered at the Garden School Foundation’s Farmers Market in partnership with Sprouts.
The volunteer event was held at 24th Street Elementary to help distribute fruits and vegetables to families from the community. Through this partnership in 2022, ACFC donated over 15 tons of fresh produce to feed over 4,000 individuals.
[PRESS-CONFERENCE QUOTES]
[ACFC Head Coach Becki Tweed]
{Opening Statement}…“I’m so proud to represent this club, the city of Los Angeles, its community, and everything that this club stands for.”
“We have to take a second to see where women’s sports has come from and where it’s headed now. You need to feel how much passion and pride you have to represent the club.”
“It’s been an incredible journey, and it’s only just beginning. This is just a platform for us to grow from and become bigger and better next season.”
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“The environment at Angel City is a place where you enjoy being challenged and tested every day, but you walk out with a smile on your face. We always have a good time. We always challenge each other, and that is the most important thing.”
“Having a group of players that are so bought-in to the success and community of the club is something that resonates with me and makes me excited to work with the team every single day.”
“We want to win in every action that we do and that starts in what we do during the week. If we can win during the week, we’re so confident going into the weekend that we can be a championship team.”
{On how it feels to be Angel City’s new head coach}…“I am proud and excited. Yes the season ended, but it didn’t end for us. We feel as if we have so much unfinished business. When you sit in meetings or in a room, you want to move on to what’s next. It’s really important that you have that feeling that you feel unfinished and there’s so much more space to grow.”
“Having that feeling is exciting. That’s what I’m thinking about now as in what does it look like? Where do we move forward? Where can we push the needle even further?”
{On leaving a huge impression on Decision Day to make the playoffs and how she plans to continue building that identity}…“When we look back at that Portland game and when we break it down, none of those moments were a coincidence. They’re all things that we’ve seen done including the bicycle kick in training.”
“That performance was waiting to come. For me, it was the most complete performance we had. We’re still disappointed we conceded a goal and have already talked about that. It’s just growing from that performance. What was so brilliant about that game, was when you look at all five goals in the moments that we created and how we dominated in the game, that’s who we want to be. It comes from the training ground, you create your identity on the training ground and then you get to show everybody your identity on the weekend.”
“You have to do the simple things. First, you have to do the ugly stuff really well and eventually build into something that is bigger than just three points on the weekend and turn into championships. For us, it’s about growing and moving forward. We’ve shown the type of performance we can have and now we have to make that constant.”
{On what she saw change in her time as an assistant compared to Interim Head Coach}…“For me, creating an environment where people were able to grow and develop, but compete every single day was really important. I truly believe that yes, we win games on the weekend, but you actually win them Monday to Friday and it takes 26 athletes or however many big your roster is. It takes every single player to execute their role that week.”
“We talked a lot about it as a team. You don’t always enjoy your role and you don’t always agree with your role, but you must do your role to the best ability to allow the team to be successful. That’s something that we constantly talked about every week as a group and it led to a competitive environment on and off the field. It also led to accountability and standards being so high and everybody was so brought in.”
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“Ultimately you get to the hard times on the weekend and you get to the moments that define, three points or one point. You put each other through those moments because you spent Monday to Friday grinding it out with each other through the good and the bad. Those things have been really important.”
[ACFC General Manager, Angela Hucles Mangano]
{Opening Statement}…“We are so thrilled that the interim tag has officially been removed from Becki’s [Tweed] title as head coach of Angel City Football Club. She now has the opportunity to continue to lead this team with the same competitive drive, passion, energy, and success that she’s had since she took over the role on June 14, 2023.”
“She will not be starting over, but continuing next year with the incredible momentum that she and this team have created. The buy-in of Becki’s drive and leadership extended to our players, staff, community, and to the media.”
“From that win in San Diego, to leading us to our first ever playoff match, Becki defined what it means to step in and elevate. She turned training sessions into a competition every day to start creating a solid identity.”
“Becki has ensured that every player understands that they have an important role to play. Her ability to motivate, challenge, and succeed is the reason she is the best choice for the position as our Head Coach.”
{On a through hiring process and how she knew Becki Tweed was the perfect fit}…“There was a very early inkling from the early success. Ultimately, one of the commitments that I had was to conduct a thorough process. The goal was so that very much in sports, teaching players about the process versus the results, we could have that process, run it successfully and then the results would be telling for themselves.”
“With confidence, we were able to make that decision, but also allowed for the process to play out. The importance of having the players is something that as a former player I know is very important. I did not want the process to be a distraction to Becki or the players. They kept winning and we wanted to be sensitive to the timing of their inclusion at the very end.”
{On how she can bring in players to help continue building the identity the team has shown}…“It’s brick by brick, in terms of the support for Becki [Tweed], as well as how we approach strategically with transfer markets and trades ultimately. What’s fantastic about Becki being named the new head coach, is that it’s not a change. We are showing consistency amongst our staff and our player group.”
“They have proven that they can do a lot with the group that we currently have. The more that you are able to have a team play together, know and understand what their movements are like, what they are thinking, the better the performances ultimately will be. Right now, it’s more about adding depth versus really making a lot of changes to our roster.”
“It is important to show that belief in our roster and our players that we currently have, while maintaining that consistency. Then ultimately, players are coming into our environment, so what does that integration look like? We are a very special and unique club that wants to bring out the best out of every single player or person.”
[ACFC President and Co-Founder, Julie Uhrman]
{Opening Statement}…“We’ve talked from the beginning that we want to set higher expectations on and off the pitch. That not only means winning on the pitch, but also to be realistic about our goals and where we are in our development. We strive to take the necessary time and care to build the right foundation that we can grow from to become yet another legacy team based in Los Angeles.”
“I know that I can stand here and know that we not only found the right coach for today, but we found the right coach to help us build our future.”
“Becki has exhibited confidence and focus from the beginning. She walked into one of the most important games of the season for our team in an away match against our biggest rival. It could’ve been easy for Becki to make excuses, to downplay the significance of the game, or even to be satisfied with a hard fought match. We walked away from that game with a victory, and it was the beginning of the most incredible journey of our 11-game unbeaten streak”
“Becki is ready to lead Angel City FC. It is her time.”
{On what success in year three will be measured by}…“We measure success on three metrics – the impact we have in the community, the performance on the pitch, and the way that we can lead women’s sports to drive real value.
“We were fortunate to build this club two years before we ever had to take the pitch. We really focused on what our values are, who’s our community? How do we include them in how we want to give back to the community? Also, how do we drive real value for women’s sports that we knew existed that nobody was focused on? We’ve seen incredible operational success within Angel City from having the highest ticket revenue, the highest attendance, the largest sponsorship revenue to the community, and the greatest amount of impact in the community.”
“We’ve already put over $2 million of impact in the community and will have over $5 million of impact in the next couple of years. The next step was building a world class team and a world class coaching staff. Our second year was led by Becki Tweed for half of it, and getting to the playoffs was a huge goal for us.”
“I’m going to be really excited to see what Becki and Ali [Riley] put on the board next season. Then, as far as leading for women’s sports and driving value to show that fans will show up, fans will invest, fans will buy, and it makes the whole sport grow. We like leading from the front, so we’ll keep doing that.”
[ACFC Team Captain and Defender Ali Riley]
{Opening Statement}…“Our stats in the second half of the season speak for themselves in terms of Becki’s ability to lead us on the pitch, but the nights we spend at BMO Stadium is only a glimpse into what we live and experience as Angel City FC players.”
“It’s the behind the scenes work that you don’t see at training, in rehab, in the gym, in meetings, and in the film room that showed me who Becki is as a person and as a coach.”
“Becki sees the person before the player. We are in a line of work that we are publicly critiqued, judged and evaluated by what we do, which is fair. But it makes it even more important to have a leader who sees you for who you are and understands your needs as a human being before anything else.”
“Becki is passionate about every single player on the roster. She gives us the confidence and the resources to improve, to grow, and to evolve, not only as players, but as teammates, leaders, and as people.”
{On winning the Community Impact Award as an ambassador for Football For Her}…“This is obviously something that I have already experienced at Angel City. When you win for yourself, it feels good, but when you win for a community and it has a larger impact than just for yourself, it feels so much better. That’s what we do here already.”
“The club has worked so hard on this partnership as well. I am so happy for Football For Her. I know that that money is going to go such a long way. I’m so proud of our community. There were a lot of us who were nagging, we were so annoying in all our group chats, but people showed up. This is a competition for the fan vote, at least to see what community is going to rally the hardest and the loudest.”
“When you see content or think about Football For Her, you think of the soccer side of it. However, when I think of Football For Her, it’s more about community, safe spaces, diversity and representation, which we all could use more of in every space.”
“I am really proud to have been invited to be a part of it. Not just to use my platform to bug people, but to really empower them and highlight that program. The fact that we got rewarded feels so good.”
