Soccer Club Ownership Is Now A Reality For US Fans Thanks To FC Pinzgau

If someone said to you that for a relatively small buy-in, you could own part of a European soccer club with aspirations of the Champions League, you’d be all ears, right?

Well, US soccer fans need wait no longer, for that is now a reality thanks to Austrian third tier side, FC Pinzgau Saalfelden, a club based in the shadow of the Alps and managed by former German international and Bayern Munich, AC Milan, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and Middlesbrough star, Christian Ziege.

FC Pinzgau was founded on 23 May, 2007 by Christian Herzog, Siegi Kainz and Herbert Bründlinger, and so is still in its infancy.

More recently, the Austrian trio have been joined by three Americans; Marc Ciociola, who had a vision and an ambitious plan to own a European soccer club that was borne out of the frustration of not getting any tangible benefits as a supporter and season ticket holder of his local team, Real Salt Lake; Trey Fitz-Gerald, a 27 year media and marketing veteran in professional sports, and who has credibility within U.S. soccer circles for his involvement in five organisational launches including Real Salt Lake, and Steve Paris, a businessman of 25 years, and with experience in both big corporate and startup settings.

It’s been since the two groups of three owners have joined forces that the vehicle ‘Fan Owned Club (FOC)’ has come into being. This isn’t a token offering or marketing spiel either, where you might be mailed a certificate to show your friends but not much else in the way of actual ownership.

For your spend as a ‘Fan Owner’ at FCPS you will get unprecedented access to, participation in and influence of key club operational and strategic decisions. Whichever way you look at it, that’s pretty cool.

FCPS came about because of the merger between Saalfeldner SK (est. 20 May, 1947; Blue/Yellow colors) and ESV Saalfelden (est. 1952; White/Green colors). The former was the club of business people, the latter for the workers, and so there were a number of hurdles to overcome before FC Pinzgau Saalfelden came into being.

A sporting crash, for want of a better term, ensured that, for the good of the area and the locals, both club owners needed to bury their differences in order to find a workable solution.

Weeks of talks followed before it was decided that the club would be called SG Saalfelden, with the youth teams playing at the old SK Saalfenden pitches in the center of the city and the first team at ESV’s stadium, the current Saalfelden Arena.

Inserting the name of the region, Pinzgau, into the official club name would come a little later, and there would be push back on that from other sides in the area as the newly-formed team quickly asserted their authority. Jealousy, as always, was a terrible affliction, and it would follow the club everywhere.

It perhaps didn’t help that the first coach of the FCPS senior side was Wolfgang Feiersinger, a well-known footballer from Saalfeden who had won the Champions League with Dortmund.

Despite the criticism, the Austrian owners wouldn’t be deflected from the changes they wished to make, and the club was eventually christened FC Pinzgau Saalfelden, or FCPS for short.

Staying as an amateur side suited all three owners at that point, and becoming a professional outfit, though talked about, was never really on the table. Consistently being the best in the area meant that conversations would always take place as to how the club could be taken to the next level, but with none of the owners sure as to how they could get to that point, discussions often led to nothing.

Over the course of the next few years, FCPS would eventually win its first ever promotion from the Salzburger Liga, Austria’s fourth tier, into the Austrian Regionalliga West, one of four regional leagues in the third tier.

Their title winning campaign of 2010/11 was incredible even by their own successful standards, with twenty-four wins, three draws and just three losses, and a goal difference of +50.

A see-saw existence for a few seasons saw Markus Fürstaller eventually installed as the coach at the beginning of the 2014/15 season and he would stay for four years, finishing 12th, 8th, 12th and 15th.

The team weren’t playing badly, and the club were doing ok off of the pitch too, but relative mediocrity hadn’t been envisaged by the Austrian owners. It’s perhaps serendipitous then, that around that time, Ciociola had heard of the existence of FCPS and decided to pitch the idea of having the club become ‘fan owned’ to the Austrian owners, in order to help take them to that next level.

Suffice to say that all three were a little reticent, but gracious enough to hear what Ciociola had to say. It was probably his enthusiasm for the project that eventually won Messrs. Herzog, Kainz and Bründlinger over, and then another moment occurred which would end up shaping the future destiny of the club.

Alessandro Ziege joined the club, in itself a signing to not raise any eyebrows until it was understood that his father was the former German international, Christian. After the club cancelled coach Fürstaller’s contract during the season, Ziege Snr. offered to help train the team, whilst at the same time Mark, along with Trey and Steve, were finalising their negotiations to make ‘Fan Owned Club’ a reality.

As they did so, back in 2019, Trey managed to convince Christian Ziege to sign a long-term contract to manage the club, and in so doing, FCPS quickly made the headlines once more.

The premise for the new venture, with all six co-owners playing a significant part, was simple.

Today, Austrian Regionalliga West. Tomorrow, the Champions League.

With the new owners also able to broker deals with US teams, FCPS has seen an influx of American players, as well as others from across Europe, and prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the club were preparing to contest the Austrian Eliteliga West playoffs for the first time ever.

A magnificent campaign under Ziege had seen promotion to the second tier quickly become a very real prospect, but at the time of writing, it appears that this will, unfortunately, be denied.

There can be no doubt, however, that FCPS is a club going places and one who will achieve all that it has set out to do.

If you hadn’t already heard about FC Pinzgau Saalfelden/Fan Owned Club, then you soon will, and maybe you’d like to join them for the ride.

Own a piece of the club right here:

Fan Owned Club on WefunderInvest in Fan Owned Club: Giving all soccer fans the opportunity to own part of a European club on @wefunder