Bautista and Neglia have turned things around at the USL club thanks to a friendship formed while with MLB's Toronto Blue Jays
Gianleonardo Neglia sunk into the couch of his Venice apartment. The TV was on and NFL Red Zone was ready to be fired up. Then the assistant sporting director at Venezia FC, his team had just returned from a tricky road trip at Bari. Time to relax.
Then, a text came in.
“What do you think of the Las Vegas Lights?”
The message immediately caught Neglia's attention. The text came from his good friend, and soon-to-be Las Vegas owner, former Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista. This wasn’t a simple check in. This was something bigger.
Their relationship goes way back. Neglia was once a bat-boy with the Blue Jays, and spent nearly every day with the legendary Dominican outfielder for 10 summers in a row. The two became close friends, and, united in their love of soccer, eventually reconvened as colleagues. Neglia would eventually join Bautista’s USL team the Las Vegas Lights as their sporting director. It was the culmination of an unlikely journey from America’s pastime to his dream sport.
That was November 2023, and Neglia was looking for a more senior role. He was the No. 2 in Venezia's front office at the time, a job that saw him involved in the daily affairs of a soon-to-be Serie A club. But he knew he might have to wait for a promotion, especially in the competitive European soccer job market.
“At my age, realistically, in Italy, I was probably still three, four, five years away from getting an opportunity to be a sporting director. That's just the reality of it,” Neglia told GOAL. “So the opportunity to be the head guy and work under an owner who I have this relationship with, I mean, it was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn't pass up.”
Las Vegas LightsBonding in Toronto
But Neglia took a different path to get to the Lights. For a long time, his career seemed certain to be in baseball. Born near Toronto to Italian immigrants, Neglia’s first love remained soccer. But a lack of deep interest in the sport in his country led him to pursue other paths.
“MLS was not in Toronto yet. It came to be in 2007 and football in general in Canada was just very beginner, to say the least. So an avenue for an opportunity to get into football at that time was next to none,” Neglia said.
And then an opportunity came, albeit in an unexpected manner. A family friend offered Neglia the chance to get involved with the Blue Jays organization. The American League East team needed a bat boy to get through the summer. So, Neglia, then in college, finished his final exams, and took the job with the pretense that it might be a good way to help pay tuition to round out his university degree.
In the summer of 2008, the Blue Jays acquired Bautista, adding the outfielder in a trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates for a player to be named later – a low-level baseball transaction. That the Dominican subsequently bashed 344 home runs and became a six-time MLB All-Star over the course of his 15-year MLB career is one of the great legacy stories of North American sports.
Over the following months Neglia and Bautista became friends, brought together by their love of soccer. Neglia was a devout Juventus fan, while Bautista bled Barcelona .
“We developed a bit of a relationship,” Neglia said. “Ironically enough, football was something that helped develop our relationship. I was the one that was constantly turning on Champions League matches at two, three in the afternoon. You sit down next to each other and you start bonding over who you are cheering for."
AdvertisementLas Vegas LightsSelling soccer to Bautista
Bautista left Toronto via free agency after the 2017 season, eventually splitting 2018 among the Atlanta Braves, New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies. Neglia stayed with the organization for a further five years. But the whole time, they stayed in touch. Neglia’s soccer administration career took off. He went back to school, returned to Italy, and took up a scouting job for his family’s hometown club, Pescara.
There, he floated the original idea of club ownership to Bautista. Pescara were struggling. They needed a willing owner who could take on debt and revive a club that once employed Marco Verratti, Ciro Immobile and Lorenzo Insigne. And although the MLB legend declined at the time, the idea never quite disappeared.
“Nothing came of it, but it was just kind of a conversation we had. He didn't laugh at us. He was just like, that's interesting kind of thing,” Neglia said.
But it did get Bautista, who retired from the Blue Jays in August 2023, thinking. And when the Lights opportunity came up in at the end of that year, Neglia was brought into the conversation.
“I needed to rely on people that I trusted to evaluate the situation," Bautista told GOAL. "So when the opportunity came about, his name immediately came to mind. I reached out to him, and we kind of evaluated certain parts of the deal together."
Neglia, meanwhile, didn’t need much convincing. A sporting directorial role was too good to turn down. Piecing everything together, though, was something of an issue. The Lights were a disaster when Bautista invested to become the principle owner in January of this year. An ill-fated affiliation with Los Angeles FC had seen the team fall into ruin. The MLS club, who had a partnership with Las Vegas, took the whole USL team’s roster and coaching staff when it founded its MLS Pro side in 2023 – leaving the Lights with nothing.
Gutted, and with little time to rebuild a roster, the team finished bottom of the Eastern Conference, winning just three games all year.
Las Vegas LightsRebuilding from a rocky foundation
Bautista’s purchase gave way to a frantic two months. The Lights didn’t have a single player on their roster when Neglia took over as sporting director. He met head coach Dennis Sanchez over video chat. There was no time to travel around the country to scout, so the duo began compiling a database of players – mostly using video to scout. Every possible parameter was explored: MLS free agents, USL free agents, players with American passports in Europe or South America, pre-existing relationships from Neglia’s previous jobs.
The original list was, in the end, too long.
“Over the span of two, three weeks we probably looked at over 70, 80 players,” Neglia said.
Eventually, it was whittled down to enough to form a roster. It was an interesting group, but one Neglia felt was strong enough to compete. Gennaro Nigro was the perfect archetype. A journeyman midfielder, the New Jersey native had played for four clubs in two years before Neglia made his pitch. The angle? Join in the early stages, be a part of something that could take off.
“It was kind of like getting in at the ground floor of something. It was a risk that I felt what was not only necessary but also really could be rewarding in the end. It was pretty straightforward from both sides,” Nigro said.
Still, by the day training camp started on Feb. 11, less than half of the players officially signed by the club were able to participate.
Instead, Neglia and Co. filled out the roster with trialists and training camp invitees. It got so hectic that two days before the season was to open, Neglia was on the phone with the USL asking officials to hurry federation approval for three players – or the team wouldn’t be able to field a full roster.
“It was a sprint to put a roster together, hire a coach, and just get the support staff in place and get everything done quickly before opening day. It was an interesting two months, for sure,” Bautista said.
Las Vegas LightsRegaining trust with fans
But the real problems for Bautista and Neglia came off the pitch. Before the Covid-19 pandemic changed the landscape of sports, the Lights would routinely attract an average of 9,000 fans to Cashman Field, a modified baseball venue not far from downtown Las Vegas. For the Lights’ home opener in 2024, less than 1,000 showed up.
It was of admittedly little surprise to the duo, who conceded that the club had frayed relationships with its supporters.
“Understandably, they have been jaded what what they've seen over the last several years, they weren’t going to say, ‘All right, put your money where your mouth is, and let's see’,” Neglia said.
So, Neglia and Bautista met with supporters’ groups, and listened to their concerns. They made additions to the stadium, enclosed it off to make it feel more like a traditional soccer pitch, and tried to curate a game day atmosphere. A few months into the campaign, attendance numbers have tripled.