FC Naples names Matt Poland as head coach

Matt Poland has had his eyes on the FC Naples job for a while.

“When the announcement came that Naples was getting a professional team, it was a dream opportunity to be a head coach for it,” Poland said.

Now, that dream is a reality after Poland got a phone call from FC Naples CEO Roberto Moreno.

“I was actually at one of my player’s weddings,” Poland explained. “In between the ceremony and the reception. And I got the phone call in between the two. So I was walking down the street talking to Bob and just pure excitement.”

Poland is the first head coach and sporting director for FC Naples, the USL League 1 expansion club. This brings Poland back to Southwest Florida.

“Matt is the perfect person to lead this team,” Moreno said. “He’s a hard worker, he’s intelligent, he’s good at player development and he’s going to represent this community the best way possible.”

Poland calls Marco Island home. When he played in Europe, he’d spend the offseason coaching at Marco Island Academy and with Naples United FC, where he was the head coach. Before taking the FC Naples job, Poland was with Chicago House AC as an assistant coach for their first professional season before taking the lead for the club’s soccer operations.

With FC Naples, Poland wants the club to best represent the community, which he feels can be accomplished through two things.

“Number one the makeup of the players,” Poland explains. “I think Naples is a diverse city with a lot of ethnicities. And I want to make sure our club and our player pool represents that. And making sure our style of play represents the people of Naples. I want it to be action packed. I want it to be playing on the front foot exciting hard working guys.”

And that starts here locally. Poland said, “we’re going to be looking first and foremost in this back yard. We want to find local talent. We’d love to have as much local talent as possible on the roster.”