Plans are cheap.
Professional football is not.
It takes money, land, judgment and people who have already discovered where the traps are buried.
That is why I am proud to announce that Mike Charlesworth is joining the Los Angeles Aztecs as a strategic advisor.
Mike has owned and financed a professional football club. He has dealt with players, managers, supporters, sponsors and governing bodies. He has also helped develop a football training ground into a wider commercial destination.
Most importantly, he loves the game.
Not football as a line on an investor deck. The real thing. The beautiful, irrational and occasionally infuriating thing.
He Stepped In When It Mattered
Mike first invested in Australia’s Central Coast Mariners in 2010, becoming a 30% shareholder.
The Mariners represented a proud football region but operated in one of the A-League’s smallest markets. They did not have the financial muscle of the league’s biggest owners. Every decision mattered. Every dollar had a job.
By early 2013, the club was in serious trouble.
Player wages had been delayed. Debts were mounting. The Australian Tax Office was owed money. Construction work at the training complex had stalled. Central Coast possessed a team capable of becoming champions, but the business behind it was running out of road.
Mike increased his stake and took majority control.
He settled urgent bills and transferred the money required to pay the players. SBS later reported that he injected A$5 million to prevent the Mariners from going under.
Less than one month later, Central Coast defeated Western Sydney Wanderers 2–0 to win the club’s first A-League Championship.
Mike did not score the goals. Owners should never pretend they did.
He made sure there was still a club there to score them.
His shareholding eventually grew beyond 80%. Over the following years, he faced the full reality of professional ownership: restricted budgets, player recruitment, academy development, commercial pressure, league politics and the expectations of supporters who rightly wanted more.
There were good seasons. There were hard ones. There was criticism.
That is football ownership.
Anyone selling a spotless story after spending a decade inside the game probably spent that decade in hospitality.
Mike arrives with something more useful than theory. He arrives with scars, judgment and lessons earned the expensive way.
Where Football Meets Property
Mike is also an experienced businessman, investor and property developer.
That matters because the LA Aztecs cannot be rebuilt as a badge attached to somebody else’s business.
We need a home.
In 2010, Mike and his fellow Mariners investors acquired land at Tuggerah for a reported A$7.5 million. The idea was not simply to lay a training pitch and build some changing rooms.
The plan was to create a Centre of Excellence and develop the surrounding land so the site could generate income throughout the year.
Football was the heartbeat. Property was the engine.
The proposed A$40 million development brought together elite training, community facilities, offices, hospitality, retail and other commercial uses. The Australian Federal Government pledged A$10 million toward the project because of its wider community value.
It was ambitious. It was difficult. It was also ahead of its time.
Today, the Tuggerah site includes professional training facilities, five-a-side pitches, offices, a café, an aquatic center and other businesses.
When Mike left the Mariners board in 2022, the club confirmed that he continued to own and operate the Centre of Excellence property.
That is not a conventional football résumé.
It is practical experience of land, planning, construction, commercial tenants, community facilities and the economics behind a year-round sporting destination.
For the LA Aztecs, that knowledge is gold.
Why Mike Fits This Project
The original LA Aztecs had stars.
Johan Cruyff played for this club. George Best played for this club. The Aztecs carried the glamour, imagination and beautiful madness of football in 1970s Los Angeles.
What they never received was permanence.
We cannot rebuild the club by staring at old photographs and hoping nostalgia pays the wages.
History gives us an identity. It does not give us a business model.
Our ambition is bigger than placing a team on a rented field and opening the gates twenty times a year. We want to create an LA Aztecs home built around football, entertainment and community—a place with life beyond matchday and several ways to earn revenue.
A club should not become a property project wearing a football scarf.
But neither should it ignore the land beneath its feet.
The two must serve each other.
Mike understands that balance because he has already worked at the point where football, infrastructure and development meet.
His perspective will help us test potential locations, challenge development assumptions, examine commercial models and avoid expensive mistakes before they are poured into concrete.
That is what a serious advisor should do.
The Matchmaker’s Job
My best work has always happened in the gaps.
I find the overlooked name, the undervalued opportunity and the person whose experience fits the problem.
Then I make the connection.
The LA Aztecs do not need passengers, vanity titles or famous names collected for a press release. We need people prepared to challenge the plan and improve it.
Mike fits the problem.
He knows that passion brings people through the gate. He also knows that planning, property and commercial discipline ensure there is still a gate to walk through.
The old Aztecs brought some of the world’s greatest players to Los Angeles.
The new Aztecs must first build something capable of lasting after the stars have gone home.
Before we chase the names, we build the foundations.
Welcome to the LA Aztecs, Mike.
Scott “Matchmaker” Michaels
Chief Supporter Officer
Los Angeles Aztecs
Follow the journey at fans.losangelesaztecs.com and learn more about the LA Aztecs investment campaign on Wefunder.