The first thing I'm gonna say is NSM is not connected to our owners, Northland Media or Northland Soccer Journal. Now, with that out of the way, the announcement of this move seemingly came out of nowhere.
Northland Sports Management has taken over the management of non-profit semi-professional clubs Duluth FC and Superior City FC. That's the TL;DR, but to understand this unusual model, we spoke to NSM's Kaden Bergman.
Basically, both clubs are contracting us to fill the role of “GM”. We’ll be running their operations (scheduling, league communication, etc.), their gameday (concession, merch, setup), sponsorship acquisition, and social media/marketing.
Both clubs still retain their board or owners. Those individuals still make decisions for the club and direct the club. Both clubs remain autonomous and decide how they want their club run, we just implement it. The clubs are still independent in running their own coaching staff, rostering, registrations, volunteers, fundraisers, community partnerships, etc.
Both clubs continue to grow ambitiously from humble roots.
Duluth FC of NPSL is a perennial challenger in the North Conference, having won the Midwest Region as recently as 2024. The club was a challenge taken up by the Romanian-American Tim Sas, a local Orthodox Christian priest who arrived in Minnesota for graduate school in 2015 and entered a team in the 50-year-old Duluth Amateur Soccer League (which seems to be dormant). One season in the tiny American Premier League alongside future UPSL side Granite City FC and the long-since departed proof of concept in the Red River Valley, FC Fargo, was followed by a move with other teams from the APL to the new NPSL North - an institution now in its tenth year, somehow.
Superior City's roots are 70 miles inland from Lake Superior in the town of Hayward, Wisconsin, in 2017. Hayward United, aka the Wolfpack, played in the Duluth Amateur Soccer League in 2018, and then were a founding member of the new Wisconsin Primary Amateur Soccer League in 2019. They officially adopted the Wolfpack mascot as their name in 2021, then moved to Superior in 2022, becoming Superior City Football Club and adding UPSL Men's and Women's teams as their first teams. The Wolfpack mascot was retired from the WPASL reserve squad this past season.
The two clubs practically stare each other in the face, 5 miles across St Louis Bay, and have created the Twin Ports Cup recently. The first-ever instance of that derby finished 3-0 to the Minnesotan side with BlueGreen goals from Alexis Santamaria and João Magalhaes.
Both sides somehow shoehorned the match into the spectacularly tight Summer schedule, which they will resume in May.
Bergman concluded with something that could be a mantra for all of us at the non-league level: "Even if it’s not big time, if it’s important to someone, then I think it’s worth it."
