2008/12/08
EAST London will have links to one of the most successful clubs in world football after Ivan Gazidis was named chief executive of top English outfit Arsenal.
Johannesburg-born Gazidis – the son of prominent East London doctor and anti-apartheid activist Costa Gazi – got the job at the club, just months after turning down a similar post at Manchester City.
Gazidis, a founding member of the USA’s Major Soccer League (MSL), is currently employed as the American league’s deputy commissioner. He is also credited with taking England and ex-Manchester United midfielder David Beckham Stateside and for taking SA legends Doctor Khumalo and Shaun Bartlett to the MSL.
His father, unable to complete his post-graduate medical studies in SA after being arrested for his anti-apartheid stance, took his young family to Edinburgh in 1968 when Gazidis was only four years old.
Gazi yesterday reminisced about those “tough times” when sadly recalling how “being in jail kept me from holding my son when he was born, as I was only released when he was about one-and-a -half”.
Gazidis graduated with a Master’s law degree in 1986 from Oxford University, where he also captained the institution’s soccer team in their annual clashes against perennial rivals Cambridge at Wembley Stadium in 1984 and 1985.
He worked as a lawyer in the City of London until 1994, when he left for America. He was then recruited by the MSL as their legal strategist as attempts to grow the game in the US gained momentum.
At the MSL, Gazidis oversaw, among other duties, the negotiation and administration of all international and domestic player contracts as well as managing the day-to-day running of the league.
The highly decorated Gazidis was in 2003 awarded the Commissioner’s Award in recognition of his contribution to soccer in America.
He also sits on Fifa’s Dispute Resolution Chamber, which decides international contract disputes.
The new Gunners’ chief currently lives in Connecticut and will, with his American-Irish wife Maureen and their two young sons – Costa and Aidan – soon be relocating to London as he is scheduled to start his tenure at Arsenal on January 1.
Gazi said his son was looking forward to moving back to England as he considered it “his home” after having grown up there.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was quoted in the US press as having given the SA- born administrator the thumbs- up, describing Gazidis as a “competent man who knows how to survive in the English league”.
Asked why he uses a shortened version of his son’s surname, Gazi blamed it on the name Gazidis not being “Xhosa-friendly on the tongue”.
“When I was teaching in Mthatha in 1994 a nurse started calling me Dr Gazi and the next day I tried it at the laundry for the first time, and to this day it has stuck.”
But, he added, “when it comes to signing cheques and the taxman, my name reverts to Gazidis, only because I could not make a formal change”.
Hopefully, the new man at the Emirates Stadium will carve his own name in Arsenal folklore. - By DOMINIC PEEL
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