Weeks before the U.S. takeover of Carlisle United was officially announced, American flags started to pop up around their Brunton Park stadium.
On the terrace of the Petterill End, next to a flag reading ‘Simmo is our king’ in honour of manager and club legend Paul Simpson, was another with three words, ‘Own the North’, emblazoned across the star-spangled banner.
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Carlisle fans knew their takeover by the Piatak family and their Castle Sports Group, from Jacksonville in Florida, was happening long before their official unveiling as owners last month but it has not dampened their enthusiasm for the future under new owners.
Two whirlwind weeks in charge of the League One club have kept Tom, his wife Patty, son Tom II and his wife Alice, and daughter Jenna and her fiance Nick — who are all new members of the board — busy nearly a year on from their initial decision to invest in English football.
A message from your new owners 😍
We can’t wait to see everyone at BP on Saturday for the start of a new era!
Be part of history and get your tickets now 👇🏼 https://t.co/KBxbtCZFWo pic.twitter.com/ZGevLxk3ao
— Carlisle United FC (@officialcufc) November 22, 2023
“The fact of the football club taking up as much time as my own business, I’m learning that right now,” Tom Piatak, who runs transportation company Magellan Logistics, tells The Athletic from his office in Florida.
“There’s a lot going on. I come into the office in a morning and I’m spending quite a bit of time on Carlisle. As a family, we run our businesses in exactly the same way — we’re open and transparent. There’s not a lot of hierarchy within the business, my door is always open. We wanted to do the same thing with Carlisle. We realise that it’s not always going to be rosy. Our commitment is we want to be available and transparent with the fans as much as we can be.”
So how does a haulage logistics family from Florida come to invest in an English third-tier football club in the far north west of England, two hours’ drive north of Manchester, past the famous and picturesque Lake District National Park and less than 10 miles from the Scottish border? The simple answer is a 10-year ambition to invest in sports and many hours of research. The Piataks do not claim to have always been Carlisle fans or, for that matter, to have known where the city was located before their investment but their love for the club and the place has grown quickly.
What a sight 😍💙 #cufc pic.twitter.com/WmxKEPn7Tb
— Carlisle United FC (@officialcufc) November 25, 2023
“We wanted to be in football and we looked at all the leagues around the world — Major League Soccer, USL Championship (the North American second tier) here, South America, Europe, the whole thing,” Piatak says. “We zeroed in on Scottish and English football, so we did that first analysis; then League One and League Two made the most sense from a financial standpoint. So we put a list of clubs down and looked at all the parameters. We wanted to be a big sports brand in the area. We didn’t want to be a small club based in London or Manchester where you’re fighting a big club.
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“That quickly limits it to a handful of teams. Then there was the commercial side that we were looking for and when you put that with the fan support, we were down to five clubs. There was interest from quite a few of them but top of the list was Carlisle. The funny thing is everyone asked why them but once we’d decided on it, the next question was, ‘Where’s Carlisle?’, because we didn’t know where it was when we started the analysis.”
The process of buying the club started in late 2022, with their first contact with the former board, which had long-standing chairman and co-owner Andrew Jenkins at the helm, at Brunton Park coming in April. The Piataks were then at Wembley the following month to watch Carlisle win promotion from League Two via a dramatic penalty shootout against Stockport County.
They have been active on the ground, with all six family members heavily involved. The initial plans are to give the stadium a facelift and back Simpson to recruit new players in January.
Canopies have been installed over the outdoor fan zone, decorators are in the building and boxes of deliveries to put up new branding and improve the supporter experience are arriving every day. Plans to build classrooms, move the main west stand’s hospitality boxes across to the other side of the pitch and improve the players’ facilities and gym are on the cards as soon as a break in fixtures allows work to commence.
The investment comes with a dose of realism about where Carlisle are in the table — 22nd in 24-team League One after 19 of the 46 regular-season games and threatened with relegation straight back to the division they left six months ago.
“We have short, mid and long term plans,” Piatak says. “Short term is to survive in League One. We weren’t in (as owners) in time for the August transfer window so that put us behind, plus the fact that we went up via the play-offs — that hurt us from a recruiting standpoint. We’re going into the January transfer window looking to be pretty active by shoring up the squad where we can.
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“We want to keep Brunton Park where it is. We like the fact that it’s right in the city and everybody can walk to it, but it has been a facility that probably hasn’t had the proper investment in it over the last 10 to 15 years. There’s some modernisation needed and we’re trying to do that as much as we can, given that matches are still happening.
“Long term, we have a great catchment area but we don’t have the training facilities to maximise that. We’re trying to work through with businesses and the city council and developers to find 20 to 25 acres and develop a first-class training facility. That’s going to take more time, but it’s a huge priority.”
While geography and the catchment area of Carlisle, which covers most of Cumbria as they are the county’s biggest club, were key factors in the Piataks’ decision to invest, their research did not pick up on the hidden gem that is Simpson’s value to the club. Now in his second spell in the Brunton Park dugout, the 57-year-old has overseen three promotions while in charge of his hometown club with the most recent featuring several local players, including Owen Moxon and Taylor Charters.
Carlisle’s fortunes could have been even greater in the past 15 years, where they have played in the third or fourth tiers, if they had been able to pick up or retain the likes of Crystal Palace goalkeeper Dean Henderson, Burnley and England Under-21 No 1 James Trafford or Everton centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite, who are from the surrounding area.
Although they fell out of the Football League in 2003-04, with Simpson leading them to successive promotions immediately after, Carlisle have been as high as the top flight back in 1974-75. Simpson’s reputation for developing young players as well as his exploits while managing England Under-20s when they won that age group’s World Cup in 2017 makes him a golden asset.
#OWNTHENORTH 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/tROXejaeow
— Carlisle United FC (@officialcufc) November 25, 2023
“That was not in our analysis when we were going through all the clubs,” Piatak says. “We didn’t look through the management because we didn’t really know them, so that was a pleasant surprise. We have a strong management team, with Nigel Clibbens as chief executive and Suzanne Kidd as chief financial officer and then Paul. We have a great leadership group. Maybe the organisation has been running a little slim due to financial resources and needing to have the investment available for the squad.
“I’m a big believer that you have to invest initially. The return on the investment is not going to come until down the road and some people won’t do it until they can afford it perfectly, but I’m a little different. I believe if you build it, they will come; do it right and people will see it.”
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“I’m really optimistic about what the future of this football club can look like,” Simpson said when the takeover was announced. “I’m delighted with the enthusiasm that the Piataks have shown.
“Everyone can say, ‘Well there’s no connection to Carlisle, they’re not supporters’, but I can tell you they have so much enthusiasm for how they want to take this club forward, what their plans are and how they are trying to develop it, how they want to help me and my staff in terms of putting a group of players together. Now the challenge is about who is going to roll their sleeves up and come along with the journey, because this is the start of a new one.”
Piatak cites the home second leg of Carlisle’s play-off semi-final win over Bradford City in May, when they overturned a 1-0 deficit from Valley Parade with a 3-1 win that included scoring two goals in extra time, as the moment the family knew they had fallen in love with football, which provides “a religious experience” in comparison to the more corporate atmosphere of the NFL.
“As soon as we arrived, I loved Brunton Park. It’s beautiful, traditional, I saw so much potential. I wish it wasn’t in a flood zone, but it is, and we’ll deal with that because we’re used to that here in Florida. But that second match against Bradford at home, that experience was the point where we realised that was it and there was no turning back. It was full force ahead. Wembley was the icing on the cake but Bradford at home was the biggest turner for us.”
Among the other targets for the Piataks is engaging a younger generation of fans in Carlisle, and as the family navigate their first steps they have leant on the growing network of American club owners in the EFL for support. Conversations with the Eisners at Portsmouth, the division’s current leaders, and Cambridge United’s Paul Barry and Mark Green have proven helpful during recent League One away trips. Bill Foley, U.S. owner of Premier League side Bournemouth, has also been a good resource.
Any talk of matching Bournemouth’s exploits in twice winning promotion to the Premier League over the past decade is a long way off but the future seems bright for Carlisle in their bid to ‘Own the North’.
“We want to make sure that everybody has realistic expectations,” Piatak says. “With the ‘Own the North’ branding, I mentioned the phrase in a presentation with the Carlisle United official supporters’ club and it’s kind of taken on a life of its own. We love that and when a club come to Carlisle we want them to know it’s going to be a tough place to play. It’s going to be cold. (But) We train there, we’re ready and we’re used to it.
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“I’m a firm believer that Carlisle belongs no worse than League One. Probably the Championship would be its right spot. If we can get three to five years from now and get mid-table in the Championship, that would be a tremendous success. People realise that there are a lot of changes that would need to happen to make that possible in terms of facilities at Brunton Park but it’s a realistic goal.
“The Premier League? I would never say no, but I’m realistic. These are competitive leagues.”
(Top image: Alice, Tom II, Patty, Tom, Jenna and Nick; Mark Fuller/Carlisle United)
