Whitecaps fire coaching staff after miserable loss to underdog PFC
VANCOUVER — The Whitecaps have fired head coach Marc Dos Santos in the midst of a roller-coaster season.
The club announced the move in a press release on Friday, saying assistant coach Phil Dos Santos was also fired.
Whitecaps director of methodology Vanni Sartini will lead the team as acting head coach. Assistant coach Ricardo Clark and goalkeeper coach Youssef Dahha will remain in their posts, the team said.
The news came after the Whitecaps (5-78) suffered a 4-3 upset loss to Canadian Premier League side Pacific FC on Thursday, crashing out of the Canadian Championship for the second time under Dos Santos’ leadership.
The Whitecaps were at the bottom of Major League Soccer’s Western Conference standings early this season after losing five straight games but have rebounded of late and are riding an eight-game undefeated streak in MLS play.
Last season, the Whitecaps were three points below the playoff bar, missing the post-season for the third year in a row.
Dos Santos, 44, was in the final year of his contract with Vancouver. He took over as coach in 2018 after spending a year as an assistant with upstart Los Angeles FC.
The Montreal-born coach repeatedly said the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were difficult for the Whitecaps, who were forced to finish the 2020 campaign based out of Portland and have been playing home games in Sandy, Utah this year.
Living away from his family took a personal toll, Dos Santos said.
“It’s not easy. It’s not easy for the staff, it’s not easy for the players,” he said.
Despite the club’s poor record this year, Dos Santos said he didn’t feel as if he were under pressure. He maintained that real pressure would come from not being able to feed his family, or having cancer or a brain tumour.
“Pressure of getting fired? It’s part of every coach’s pathway, you know? It’s even important for a coach on his pathway to get fired,” he said on June 24, the day after Vancouver dropped a 2-1 decision to the L.A. Galaxy for a fifth straight loss.
“I never got fired in my life, so I think it’s an important step on your pathway as a coach to grow, so I don’t feel pressure, I feel frustration.”
Before joining MLS, Dos Santos worked with the San Francisco Deltas of the North American Soccer League, where he earned manager of the year honours in 2017. He also guided the Ottawa Fury to the NASL final in 2015.
Weeks before Dos Santos took over the ‘Caps squad, players and the team’s general manager said the group suffered from a “divided” locker-room -- an issue that grew after coach Carl Robinson and his staff were fired mid-season.
Dos Santos said he knew he was arriving at a “difficult moment” for the club, and acknowledged that creating change and forming a new identity wouldn’t be easy.
“It’s not a PowerPoint presentation to the players or a motivational speaker or Harry Potter with a wand and now we have culture,” he said when he arrived in B.C.