Familia

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Photography by Lorena Barros.

Empty. For the first time I could remember, Bogotá and Los Angeles looked the same. No cars, no street vendors, no loud chatter from the usually busy streets. The COVID-19 pandemic took away much of the typical charm that makes returning to Bogotá such a special occasion. 

The protests that had erupted across the continent in the last year had also quieted down, almost as if the region was holding its breath for just a moment. Although there was forced silence and tranquility during my stay in Colombia, I couldn’t help but feel restless. I missed buying plantain chips with a Kola Roman from the corner shop, I missed meeting with friends and family for empanadas. Most of all, though, I missed being around soccer. 

It had been almost a year since I had covered an LA Galaxy match at Dignity Health Sports Park or an LAFC game at Banc of California Stadium. With matches in Colombia still at a halt, I had little choice but to go out and search for other sources of soccer myself. 

There was a sense of child-like amusement at being back home and looking for soccer stories to cover. Ever since I was a kid, I enjoyed the oddities and charm that lower-league teams and smaller clubs bring to the sport. Whether it’s the Cal United Strikers back in North America or leagues like the USL and NISA, I’ve always felt as if these smaller clubs and leagues are the most accessible and relatable to common people. And that’s something that will mostly hold true across countries and cultures.

With that in mind, I went out looking for a club I could cover in Colombia that might go under the radar but also hold deep ties in the community. While Millonarios FC or Independiente Santa Fe might grab all the headlines in Bogotá, I decided to go another route. 

The answer to my search was Bogotá FC, a second division team in the most populous city of Colombia. The club traces its roots back to the early 2000s, and in a city with two of the biggest sides in the country, if you follow this team, you’re clearly devoted. 

What drew me in the most to Bogotá FC, though, was its leadership and its “family business” structure.

As vice-president of the organization, Jenny Perdomo has been tasked with running much of the operations at the club since right before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Before that, she had been heading the communications and marketing department of the team for seven years, all in a city where it’s become increasingly difficult to stand out as an organization. 

With her father being the founder of the club, Jenny now bears the challenge of moving this family organization forward in this new decade. 

After traveling through the city to meet Jenny at the club’s sede deportiva, we sat down to chat about her experiences at Bogotá FC. 

Through our conversation, it became clear that many of the challenges that Jenny faces in Colombia are synonymous with many of the ones faced by USL and NISA teams in the United States. Through her time at the club, she’s done much to tackle these various challenges, and many of the lessons she’s learned could easily apply to clubs in North America. 

So can you tell me a little bit of background about how Bogotá FC came to be? Especially in this city that has so many big clubs. 

Bogotá Fútbol Club was born from an amateur team called Deportivo Sur de Bogotá, which played in the Bogotá Fútbol League and in a few tournaments around the city. My father liked soccer a lot, so he organized the team by recruiting many employees from the local textile factory in the city. After joining a few of these tournaments, my father was able to get a spot for the team in the “Primera C” division, which is the highest amateur league you can get to in Colombia. From there, the club was able to buy a spot in the second division of professional soccer, and that’s how the Bogotá FC that you know today was born. 

How did you get involved with the club?

 Well, basically, this is a family business. I started doing everything that had to do with the press, and I really enjoyed everything that had to do with the behind-the-scenes of soccer. Not only what you see when you go to watch a game, but everything that soccer itself represents. I’ve gotten to see that this game represents an opportunity for so many kids and for so many young players who are sometimes in circumstances of absolute poverty.

In Colombia, social mobility is very, very hard, and even more so for those kids who don't have access to a good education. But with soccer, there are very nice opportunities for all these kids. 

Being at the club for so long, have you seen some of these kids make that jump to the big leagues?

One prime example would be Jader Valencia. He’s a player that I admire a lot. He came to this club when he was very young, about fourteen or fifteen years old. He was here for two years, then he moved on to Millonarios, and from Millonarios, he went on to play in France. It’s great knowing that from the chances that he had at this club, he was able to transform his own life and the lives of all his family members. He bought a house for his parents, he probably helps pay for the education of his sisters, and it’s just nice to see that through this sport, many people can change their lives in incredible ways through honest work. 

Apart from getting to see many of these players go on to change their lives and do incredible things, what are some challenges that you have faced while helping run this club, especially from your communication/marketing background?

The club used to be what you saw on the pitch. It was just the players, the coaching staff, the sporting director, and the president—nothing else. But really, it was just like many other Colombian clubs. Over time, Colombian professional soccer had slowly become more formalized and professionalized over time. The challenge these last few years has been to organize the administrative aspect of the club, which is also fundamental for the company to grow. You have to work to generate a long-term strategy, a strategic plan so that the club at some point becomes what you expect it to become. We have to make a marketing plan, we have to develop a positioning strategy, and we also have to build a corporate culture so that the employees are linked to the institution from the heart and not only see it as a passing alternative. In that sense, we have worked tirelessly to achieve those goals. We have worked to build a much more organized company, and we’ve worked to build a dream. 

What exactly is that dream you’re trying to help build at this club now that you’re vice-president?

 For many people, today, Bogotá Fútbol Club is a small team without many resources or possibilities. But in the minds of the people who work within the team, we know that we are building a great project. Not only a sporting project but a social project, because ultimately, the goal of our institution is to be a means, not an end. Our ultimate goal is to be a means to contribute to society and to do give our small grain of sand to build a better country. The challenge now has been to structure the whole administrative part so that the club is an organized, professional company, which can be directed to achieve those great goals in the future.

 For those of us who are not exactly involved with running a club, what does it exactly entail? 

It has two big areas. The first one, which is the sporting part, is fundamental. First, there is the professional team, which are the players who are going to go out and play all the official matches, and the coaching staff, which is crucial. Here in Colombia, that coaching staff doesn’t only focus on planning each game, but they take a huge interest and pride in forming young players. Especially in the second division, youth development is incredibly important. That’s where players learn how to handle the media, how to be model teammates, and how to understand the game from a mental and tactical perspective. So the first big area of the club is the players and the coaching staff, which is crucial in the second division. 

The second big area of the club is the administrative part that has to do with the marketing, sales, advertising space, and seeking sponsorships. It’s all about positioning your brand in the best position because everyone here loves soccer. The challenge is making your team unique enough so that people prefer your club over the competition.

Throughout your time at Bogotá FC, what has it been like to work with your family?

It’s been very enriching. My dad is a very wise man. He is a very humble man, a very hard worker, very dedicated to his work. And it's very nice because we have organized a good work team. There is also my sister, who is the club's lawyer. She’s very smart, very intelligent and works with a lot of energy. But we’re all very passionate about it because we understand it’s a long-term project. In the end, we’re working for our kids and for our grandchildren.

Working tirelessly with your family, how have you seen the club grow and evolve as all of you became more involved?

To be fair, in the beginning, we all really didn’t understand how to run a club and how to build a sporting project with a solid economic base. Today, Bogotá Fútbol Club is a club that trains excellent players. From a sporting perspective, we have achieved important things. We have placed many of our players in teams like Boca Juniors, Sao Paulo, Vancouver FC, Club America, and many others. So our club has slowly gained recognition for how it forms its players. Through this past decade, we have been able to recognize the factors in players that will determine their potential to make it at a high competitive level. From there, we’ve worked to strengthen those factors. 

You’ve mentioned you were able to be successful from a sporting perspective. How about from a marketing perspective? Especially in a city where you really have to compete for attention. How have you done that, and how have you evolved over the years?

 We came up with a slogan called Bogotanos de Corazón [Bogotanos by Heart]. After doing a market study to understand how each club in Bogotá had positioned themselves and which guidelines they were following, we saw that the city was missing a club that was inclusive. Most people who live in Bogotá aren’t usually born here. And if they are, then their parents are from other regions of the country. So, our slogan then calls to people saying that even if you aren’t a native of this city, your heart is still here, and we’ll take you in. We want to show that we’re an inclusive team and a team forged out of hard work and humility. And it’s good because the community is already starting to catch on to those values because we’ve been diligent about using those slogans and values on social media. 

What is some of the work you’ve been doing online to build the brand of the club?

We have achieved remarkable growth in social networks compared to other institutions because we constantly monitor the metrics. We see we’re growing much faster than some of the bigger clubs because we do things organically. Those are small victories, but they mean a lot. Those small achievements are the ones that feed the spirit to work even harder to make a better project in the long term. 

 Those small victories are definitely very important. On the field, what has it been like that fight for promotion? In the US, there is that whole controversy of pro/rel, but I assume getting that promotion would be the biggest victory of all. What’s that been like for the club? 

Fighting for promotion is very difficult, to be honest. Colombian professional soccer has evolved a lot, but sometimes people do not perceive it that way because there is a lot of globalization regarding everything that has to do with soccer. Previously, our parents watched games from the domestic league, and that was it. Nowadays, kids follow European teams, so the competition is much greater in terms of media and getting that attention from people to realize that we have evolved a lot in terms of the quality in our division.

The promotion and relegation of teams that have very high resources also obviously generate much greater competition. So, it’s not easy for us to compete with teams like Cúcuta, or Cartagena, or other big-budget clubs that at one point were down. That made it very difficult for us to compete since we have the resources of a typical second-division team. We don’t have the money to retain some of our best players or to invest in ways to make things easier for the players that we do retain. The competition is very tough, fundamentally, because we don't have the resources to compete hand in hand with other institutions that do have those resources.

Off the field, you mentioned working to build a better country. What are some of the victories you have achieved on that front?

First, we have our youth academies that work to develop children on and off the field. We work a lot on children's self-esteem and the development of socio-emotional skills so that children believe in themselves, do not mistreat other people, or allow themselves to be mistreated. In addition, with much of our youth development, we try to foster cognitive competencies. If a kid is going to do some sports exercise, parallel to that, we make them do multiplications. That makes the mind be more agile overall, and it stimulates cognitive areas of the brain that will help them on and off the field. So the work we do with children is very important to achieve that primary goal of building a better country. 

There are also many kids in our youth teams that come from very violent areas here in Colombia. We’re doing our best to help as many kids from those areas, and we also work with giving economic aid to kids who want to play the sport but might not be able to afford it. A lot of times, that aid goes to kids who might not have the ability to go on to play professionally, but they want to play, and they deserve the chance to try to play this sport and learn all the life lessons that they can take from it. 

On top of that, we also do a lot of environmental work in terms of recycling campaigns, and we also partner with local animal shelters to do small volunteering events with the players and people from the team. In addition, we work closely to foster values of respect and inclusion. We do a lot of campaigns to address issues like racism and homophobia in this sport.

Lastly, we always try to foster healthy competition. We always congratulate our rivals when we play, and we work closely with our youth and our marketing department to always foster healthy competition. I don’t know if you saw it in the news, but recently someone put a bomb in an administrative office of a professional team. There’s a long way to go in this country, and we just want to help change that through small steps. In the end, those small steps and small victories add up. 

To finish off, what are some of the future goals you have for yourself and for the club?

We want to be one of the great clubs in Colombia. And we see it as absolutely viable. We are working towards that. We know that it can take many years, maybe 100 years, maybe we won't see it, but maybe our grandchildren will. I don't know. But we want to be an institution that represents not only Bogotá but Colombia as a whole. We want to push boundaries and innovate. We’ve partnered with many universities to have students help us develop from a sports psychology standpoint or physiotherapy, for example. We want to be ambitious. And like I said, we want to help build a better country. And we’re convinced we can achieve that through our club.

Photography by Lorena Barros.