Chattanooga Pro Soccer team owner Bob Martino, left, stands alongside coach Tim Hankinson during a news conference to introduce Hankinson on Tuesday at Finley Stadium. At right is president and general manager Sean McDaniel.Considering that Tim Hankinson has experience building a professional soccer team from the bottom, doing so for the new Chattanooga Pro Soccer team shouldn’t be that hard of a job.
It doesn’t make it any easier, either.
In a 10-minute conversation with the Times Free Press on Tuesday morning, Hankinson outlined some of the things that have to happen – and quickly.
First and foremost, the roster must exist.
“The priority is to contact every relationship I’ve ever developed in the game,” he said. “These are agents, these are other coaches, these are former players to start putting feelers out to let them know things are happening in Chattanooga. Then what happens is the information starts to come to me as far as available players in the future. Obviously the (professional) season is still going on, so all I can do is talk to agents about who is expected to be free as a free agent, but they won’t know that for sure until the players know their final status: whether they’re retained by the club, whether there’s an option, whether they’re completely free and ready to move on.”