A Note to Subscribers

Help me help others Get CONCACAFed

Yes, I’m back in your inbox after yesterday’s piece on long-time Curacao defender Cuco Martina and before tomorrow’s look at Olympic qualification. I wanted to take a minute as we begin the second year of Getting Concacafed to thank you for subscribing.

There has been a lot of looking back to one year ago this week, and I’ve found none of it particularly fun to look back on. I certainly had something different in mind when I left my staff job at Goal and started this newsletter March 16 of last year.

I’ve been able to achieve a lot of what I wanted with this project. I’m telling exactly the kind of stories I’ve always wanted to tell, whether it be a Jamaican poet-coach in the Middle East, the worst national team in the world’s quest to get better, Mexico fans flying to Haiti to get beat 15-0 in a friendly match against the U-23s or just sharing thoughts on the CCL final. These are stories that are important to tell and that you really won’t find anywhere else.

Still, I’d love for this newsletter to arrive in your inbox more consistently. Thankfully, I was able to freelance in many places last year, but you can’t prioritize the quirky newsletter you run that pays nothing over the less fun piece of marketing writing you have to turn in on time so they will pay you in USD you can use to pay the rent.

Could I start charging for Getting Concacafed? Making money from telling the Concacaf stories that make me curious or pique my interest certainly would be a dream. I want to keep putting articles out into the world and have them widely available. Maybe a weekly piece for paying members only is something people would be interested in? Maybe columns go behind the paywall and the features stay free? I’m not sure.

That’s where you come in. The nature of publishing is I send things to you and you read them. Rarely do you come to me. I want to hear from you and get to know you a bit. I want this to feel like a community, and it’s tough for that to happen when all I really see is your email address.

Leave a comment or hit reply to this email, tell me a bit about your story and why you follow soccer in the region and also let me know what you’d pay for. Maybe it’s nothing, and that’s totally fine!

I’m also asking you to share this newsletter with your team group chat, with a relative, with your social media following, anyone you think would be interested so I can gauge what might make sense. Word of mouth (and well-followed colleagues sharing pieces on Twitter) have been my strongest drivers of new subscribers.

There are always way more readers on each newsletter than I have subscribers. If you love lurking but wouldn’t mind supporting me by subscribing so I know you’re there, you can put your email here.

It’s going to be a busy year with World Cup qualification, Olympic Qualification, Concacaf Champions League, Nations League Final Four, Gold Cup, the Olympics, the new Concacaf women’s tournament and, yes, more. I want to continue telling the big-picture story but also looking for the story behind the story, the one that so often is far more intriguing than any headline can explain or more in-depth than any big media outlet will devote space for.

I appreciate you reading the newsletter, and I can’t wait to embark upon the second year.