"The best journalists are the ones that you can have tough conversations with."

The TPF Q&A with soccer PR and comms expert Neil Buethe

This is Neil.

For a few years, a small part of Neil Buethe’s job was to call up and yell at me. Or perhaps, more accurately, have a frank exchange of ideas. Neil was chief communications officer at the U.S. Soccer Federation, an organization he joined in 2003. I was covering the United States men’s national team. We always had productive conversations. We can certainly agree that clickbait headlines are no one’s friend.

Last year, Neil stepped away from his full-time role at the federation—although he’s still an advisor to the president—to launch 18th and Prairie, a soccer-focused boutique communications, media, and content agency. He works with federations, teams, and companies to help navigate the fractured and confusing American soccer ecosystem.

I called up Neil to talk about the importance of relationships in comms work, why Alexi Lalas might be the best journalist in American soccer, and why America isn’t ready for this summer’s World Cup (in a good way).

But we started, as one does, in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Three Point Four Media: Your first job was at the Baraboo News Republic. How did you end up there?

Neil Buethe: I had interned at US Soccer in Chicago, and I was looking for a full-time gig. I was in Wisconsin and dropped off my resume at the Portage Daily Register up north. I guess all the small newspapers were connected somehow because the editors in Baraboo reached out, I interviewed, and I got the job. I lived in Madison and drove 30-40 minutes every day. Baraboo is the smallest city with a daily newspaper, and they needed content.

I was there for about 10 months, and I wrote two stories a day. I learned so much from everyone who worked there, many of them who still do: how to find stories, how to present ideas, how to write, how to make things relevant. I covered so many random topics. All these deer were getting sick and the venison wasn’t safe to eat, so they made huge piles of deer and burned them. That was big. I covered the highway expansion and pollution from a World War II ammunition plant. I really appreciated my time being there, and I became a much better writer.

One of my first jobs was writing eight posts a day for a New York City media blog. It was rough, but you learn a lot quickly.

I covered the county board and the sheriff, and interviewed candidates for governor when they came through Baraboo. You learn to ask good questions and build strong, meaningful relationships. Before I left, I went to tell the sheriff I took a job with US Soccer. He sat me down and made a point to tell me how much he appreciated the work I had done and that he felt I always tried to do it fairly. I’ve thought about that conversation a lot throughout my career, especially when I moved to the PR side of things.

Covering someone fairly and writing what they want to hear are not the same thing. It’s always nice to work with PR and comms people who understand that distinction.

As a comms person, you have to manage up with your bosses at times. Sometimes you have to tell them that they need to take a little bit of the bad with the good because the bad is accurate or fair. They shouldn’t want a puff piece, necessarily. They should want an authentic story. It’s my job to provide the journalist with as much context and insight as I possibly can, so when they do write the story, it’s balanced.

The best journalists are the ones that you can have tough conversations with. I’m not going to agree with everything you write, but I’m going to respect what you do. Did I agree with everything Grant Wahl wrote? No. But we could have a back and forth. To me, that’s the trademark of someone who is legit, knows what they are doing, and is professional.

A journalist should want to get the story right. And part of that is knowing what US Soccer is saying. Gather all the string and then weave it into a story. Decide what is spin and what is truth.

For sure, although I never use the word spin. I’m not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. I’m trying to provide the context you need to understand the issue or story. If I felt like you were wrong about something, I’d explain why.

Alexi Lalas loves to stir the pot. He plays a character on TV. He likes to say controversial things at times. But I will tell you this: Alexi Lalas would call me more than any other media member out there, asking me about something that was going on. We would have a debate about it. I would give him the context from the US soccer side and he would give me his two cents. Sometimes he would agree and other times he’d say he didn’t believe me. But he would always take the time to understand our side before he went on a rant. People are always surprised when I say Alexi was probably one of the most, if not the most, professional people in soccer media.

I realized pretty quickly that launching 18th and Prairie before the World Cup was going to be better than after the World Cup.

Alexi is very good at his job. There’s a reason he’s one of the most famous male soccer players in America. Switching gears a bit: this sounds more antagonistic than it’s meant to be, but did you intend to stay at US Soccer for 22 years?

If you would have told me back in 2003 that I would be there for 22 years, I would have been incredibly surprised. I had a few different opportunities to go to other places. I had really good conversations with Real Salt Lake when they first started, which was only a couple of years into my time at US Soccer. I talked to the Seattle Sounders a couple times about joining them.

Whenever those opportunities came up, I’d take a step back and compare them to the opportunity I had with US Soccer. I was so lucky. I got to do so many different things over the course of my time with them. I started doing basic comms work and launching a website, which we didn’t have in 2003. Then I moved into the youth national team role. I got connected to so many amazing coaches, like Thomas Rongen and Sigi Schmid, and players who went on to the full national team. My relationships with those players were built when they were 15, 16, 17 years old, and I still have those relationships today. I also got to start our content division from scratch. We were trying things, seeing what worked and what didn’t. Eventually, I was overseeing the whole department, which was a new challenge, and working with Jurgen Klinsmann and his pedigree.

But yeah, I never thought I would be there that long. I knew I wanted to transition at some point in the last few years. The World Cup this year was a marker for me. What US Soccer is doing is unbelievable right now: the growth of the organization, the building of the National Training Center, and the revenue that’s coming in. There’s still so much opportunity, but I also knew for myself I wanted to be challenged in a different way again.

Tell me about 18th and Prairie.

Right now, I’m still an advisor to US Soccer, helping president Cindy Parlow Cone with all her communications. But I was curious about starting my own agency. When I started thinking about it more seriously, I realized pretty quickly that doing it before the World Cup was going to be better than after the World Cup. A lot of brands, federations, and teams were looking for help in the lead up to the World Cup. They were curious about how to navigate the media landscape in the United States, specifically in the soccer space. I was able to provide helpful insight. I was doing it on my own at first, then realized I should start something more formal so I launched 18th and Prairie.

I’ve been working with EA Sports, the German DFB, and Capelli Sport, which has Cape Verde in the World Cup. There’s so much opportunity in the future: the Olympics in ‘28, the Women’s World Cup in ’31, and maybe some other big events and tournaments.

How much of a catalyst do you think this summer’s World Cup will be? I keep hearing people refer to it as a transformative moment for the sport, but I don’t know. I think the sport is already here.

I go back to 1994 being such a pivotal moment in my life. My dad and his friend took me and my friend to a game in Chicago. My dad didn’t know anything about the sport. But now those people like me who were impacted by ’94 or have been impacted by soccer over the past 30 years are dads and moms, and editors at newspapers or producers at TV stations. They understand how amazing the sport is. Their kids have grown up with it in a different way. The impact of the World Cup will be phenomenal on the kids who really care about the sport. It has an opportunity to bring all those casual fans into the tent, too. Soccer is part of the fabric of American life now, and the World Cup will bring even more excitement and awareness, and drive people who have been flirting with the sport to get more into it. I don’t think America is ready for the World Cup, and the impact it’s actually going to have. It feels quiet right now, but it’s going to get loud real quick.

I’ve always felt like what MLS needs is more time. It needs kids who go to games to grow up and become fans and bring their kids. You can’t really fast-forward that process although you can, to your point, enlarge the tent.

And it’s not just Major League Soccer, and the job they do, which is amazing, especially their in-game experience. I love NWSL and USL and how many markets they are in. I love going to Madison Forward games. I’ve been a season ticket holder since day one. They’re talking about bringing a USL team to Green Bay, and I’ve been having conversations with them. That’s so exciting. USL is in all these communities across the United States. There are kids that get to go to those games and experience a sport in a way you and I never had the opportunity. That matters too, right? Because it’s your team, your local sport experience.

I love the Packers because they were in my backyard, and I used to go to the games. I don’t have a relationship with any other sports team like I do with the Packers. We’re building soccer teams in all these communities, and that’s amazing.