John Neace’s journey from obliviousness to ownership with LouCity

Despite being the chairman and CEO of arguably the most successful club in the USL Championship, Louisville City FC, John Neace willingly admits he wasn’t always into soccer.

Neace said he and his friends probably didn’t even know about soccer growing up until Pele came along. When he became a father, though, Neace started to learn a lot more about the game as his children played, and he even became an assistant coach of sorts.

“Hey, where’s Max’s dad?” the head coach of a team one of his sons was playing on asked at halftime, Neace told The Striker. “Quit yelling at him to come back down the field, he’s supposed to stay up there in the front.”

Neace’s children grew and so did his business, so he seized the opportunity to join the ownership group of LouCity, led by Wayne Estopinal, at its inception in 2014. Neace started with a small share of the club, wanting to help play a small part in improving the Louisville community and continue to enjoy soccer with his children.

However, Estopinal also had an ownership stake in Orlando City SC, which was making the jump to MLS in 2015 and had transferred its USL Championship rights to LouCity at Estopinal’s suggestion. Choosing to focus on Orlando, he became less involved with LouCity, while the opposite happened to Neace.

“A lot of things happened in that first season,” Neace said. “You buy a little more and you buy a little more and you wake up one day and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I own this thing.’”

Another thing that hooked Neace and got him to take a bigger role in the club was getting to know the players and coaches better and being infected by their passion for the game. Just like he shares soccer with his family, he also gets to know the families of those players and coaches.

As much as Neace would love to have a team full of young players, he acknowledges a mix of young and old is needed. It takes experienced players like Paolo DelPiccolo and Sean Totsch, who have also been at LouCity for most of its existence, to teach younger players what it means to be a professional and what the club culture is.

That sense of professionalism can be instilled from above as well. After five years of playing at Louisville Slugger Field, the soccer-specific Lynn Family Stadium opened in July 2020, and an all-new training center opened a year later. Both facilities are now used by LouCity and Racing Louisville FC, the NWSL team that is under the same ownership umbrella of Soccer Holdings LLC.

“These are professional athletes, so you have to treat them like professional athletes,” Neace said. “If you’re going to do it, do it right and do it right the first time. I love the quote, ‘Whatever your lot in life, build something on it.’”

Neace said he’s had other clubs ask for his advice on best practices over the years and some even came to Louisville to tour the facilities. He considers controlling your own stadium and training ground to be some of the most important things for a club’s success.

Of course, LouCity was having success even before those new facilities were constructed. It has never missed an Eastern Conference Final through eight seasons, reached the league’s championship match four times and won twice so far. Ultimately, Neace says the team plays to win trophies, and he hopes both LouCity and Racing Louisville will necessitate bigger trophy cabinets as the years go by.

Neace hopes that future success can be fueled by academy players to the greatest extent possible. Young players have been working their way into the LouCity team and making contributions as time has gone on, such as 19-year-old Elijah Wynder poking home the lone goal in extra time of this year’s Eastern Conference Final on Nov. 5.

With key players like Cameron Lancaster and Brian Ownby battling injuries this season, Neace said the young players have stepped up.

“What I want for us is that when people look back at us in time, they say two things: not only did they win, but they developed and built talent from within,” Neace said.

Even for players who don’t find a place in the first team, Neace said he hopes they still support the club and appreciate the opportunities it presented them and others to grow as players and people.

Right now, though, Neace and LouCity are focused on finishing 2022 on a high note on the field. After losing the championship match in 2019 and missing out entirely in 2020 and 2021, he hopes the team can finish the job and add another star above its crest Sunday night when it faces San Antonio FC in the USL Championship Final.

“It feels good to make it after one final that we lost and then two straight losses to Tampa [Bay Rowdies] in the conference final, so it’s nice to get a little revenge,” Neace said.

No matter how Sunday turns out for Neace and his club, he brought his family down to San Antonio and once again gets to watch a game with them, one of the main reasons he bought into LouCity in the first place.