Greg Hansen: After 'amazing journey,' coach Jon Pearlman and FC Tucson are playoff-bound

To get to the playoffs, FC Tucson had to go to Virginia, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Tennessee and a bunch of other states closer to the Atlantic than the Pacific.

It had to fire its coach, hire its former coach and, to finally get in the playoffs, beat a team coached by another ex-coach.

There is no manual on how to succeed in USL League One.

FC Tucson had to employ players from Chile, Italy, Senegal, Argentina and England, dig out of a summer sometimes spent in 11th place and endure so many COVID-19 related restrictions that it played a game originally scheduled for Toronto, Canada, in Casa Grande.

FC Tucson’s regular season began on May 1 and ended on Oct. 30, an exhausting period of change and achievement that began when Pima County allowed just 10% capacity at Kino North Stadium and ended last week with 1,566 in the stands. This successful revival prompted FC Tucson president Amanda Powers to declare “our goal is to sell out Kino; we want 3,000 people there on Saturday.”

The soccer community refers to FC Tucson as the Men in Black, but for much of the last six months they were more like the Men in Turmoil.

“It has been an amazing journey,” says FC Tucson coach Jon Pearlman, who surely leads USL One in amazing journey stories.

Jon Pearlman? If you’re a soccer fan, you must remember him. Pearlman coached the Sabino High School boys soccer team to the 2005 state championship and was one of the Big Three — with the visionary Greg Foster and Rick Schantz — to put professional soccer on the map in Tucson 11 years ago.

A native New Yorker, Pearlman is the human equivalent of a Red Bull energy drink, a man who has devoted his life to soccer (and his family) since moving to Tucson 25 years ago. In a season in which Tucson’s pro soccer franchise desperately needed someone to make a difference, Pearlman expertly played the role of difference-maker.

Somehow, beating the odds on Pearlman’s watch, FC Tucson will play host to the Richmond Kickers on Saturday night, with the victor advancing to the Final Four of the USL League One playoffs.

“I call this a passion project,” says Pearlman. “Seeing the stands filling up again is an indescribable emotion.”

The Big Three of Tucson pro soccer — Foster, Schantz and Pearlman — worked diligently for years, setting the stage for pro soccer, creating a semipro USL Premier Development League (now USL League Two) franchise, then stepping up to USL League One while turning Tucson into a regular site for Major League Soccer spring training matches.

And then it all splintered.

Foster, a Tucson attorney, moved to the East Coast and became director of career services at Cornell University. Schantz, one of the top high school soccer players in Tucson history, moved to Phoenix, where he is now head coach of USL Championship’s successful Phoenix Rising franchise.

In 2017, after coaching Tucson’s PDL franchise to a 9-2-3 record, Pearlman left to join the staff of the OKC Energy. Ownership of FC Tucson changed. Three coaches have come and gone.

In the middle of all the change, Pearlman returned as vice president of soccer operations and technical director. He didn’t plan to be a coach again.

110321-tuc-spt-hansencol-p2 — Jon Pearlman, left, speaks with FC Tucson president Amanda Powers during a press conference announcing him as the team's permanent head coach last month.
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

“I went to Oklahoma because I felt I needed an opportunity to grow professionally,” he says. “I felt I had done all I could do on the youth side here (he spent 14 years as director of the once-vast Tanque Verde Soccer Club). And the PDL was a summer gig for me.”

In Oklahoma City, Pearlman learned how to help operate a professional franchise, top to bottom. He learned the business side of pro soccer. He got to work with pro soccer players, their agents, the scouts and with much larger budgets. He learned how to put a roster together.

But when FC Tucson coach John Galas’ club got off to a 2-4-3 start, Powers and owner Brett M. Johnson decided to change course. Johnson is a powerful figure in soccer, co-owner of the Ipswich Town FC in England, the FC Helsingor franchise in Denmark and a soon-to-be USL Championship club in Rhode Island. He wasn’t willing to ride out a season of irrelevance.

Now FC Tucson is 11-10-7. Three weeks ago, Powers and Johnson removed the interim tag from Pearlman’s title and made him the full-time head coach.

What changed?

After some lengthy film study, Pearlman made three significant personnel changes in what he calls “a puzzle.”

He signed Tobenna Uzo, who is from Nigeria. “Toby gave us a bit more of a presence. He’s a culture guy,” says Pearlman. “He’s hard working and humble and he inspires those around him.”

Pearlman then signed Mohamed Kone, who had played for a championship team in Tampa, Florida. “Mo is one of those guys who can stabilize a bunch of talented young guys,” says Pearlman.

Finally, Pearlman made veteran Charlie Dennis a go-to player. “We gave him the ball,” Pearlman says. “He responded.” Dennis leads the club with nine goals.

The unspoken pressure of USL League One soccer — the equivalent of Double-A baseball — is that the window for winning championships rarely opens.

“This isn’t a place to stay long-term,” says Pearlman. “The goal of these men should be to commit to us for a year or two and be as good as they can be. This is a place you can be seen and move up, or to revive your career and move up. That’s what they’ve done since July. They’ve really turned it around.

“They want to win a championship.”