New coach wants culture shift for Caps
Dos Santos has reputation as a master motivator with a strong focus on communication and unity
It was an almost perfect metaphor for the day.
Sitting in the parking spot with the prominent signage “reserved for the head coach of Whitecaps FC” was a large, white moving truck.
Considering the massive scope of the challenge ahead for Marc Dos Santos, it seemed fitting.
The Montreal native on Wednesday was named new head coach of the Vancouver Whitecaps and he’ll be the one occupying the parking spot at the team’s UBC training centre — a spot that had been empty since the team dismissed Carl Robinson on Sept. 25 — moving forward, after signing a three-year deal.
It’s been a little over a week since the Major League Soccer team’s season-ending media availability, a session that went off the rails in a spectacular blaze of interviews highlighting a divided locker-room, and included president Bob Lenarduzzi saying the team had “a culture problem.”
But Wednesday’s news conference stayed completely on track, even with Dos Santos acknowledging change was needed.
“(Culture), that’s the first thing that I want to create here, and that type of culture is in the day to day,” said the 41-year-old, who was an assistant coach under Bob Bradley at LAFC last season, helping the Black and Gold to the most points ever (57) by an expansion team.
“It’s not in a PowerPoint presentation to the players with a motivational speaker, or Harry Potter with a wand. That’s done in the day to day, every day. You need to be coherent with that.
“When it comes to players and the crest ... one thing I can guarantee is the players that are going to be in this club are players that care for this club, and players that want to fight for this club. That, I guarantee you.”
The casual soccer fan won’t be familiar with Dos Santos apart from the weeks of rumours linking him to Vancouver’s head coaching position. But he’s been a winner at every level he’s coached, including tormenting the Whitecaps at the United Soccer League (USL) level for years, something he joked about Wednesday while sitting beside Lenarduzzi — his former foe.
In his first season as head coach of the Montreal Impact in 2009, he beat the Caps 6-3 on aggregate to win the USL title. In 2015, he took the Ottawa Fury to the North American Soccer League title game, and was named NASL coach of the year, then won the USL West’s banner the following season with Sporting Kansas City’s reserve side, the Swope Park Rangers.
One of his most impressive results was taking a lame duck San Francisco Deltas team — whose financial problems limited it to a one-and-done NASL season — to the championship in 2017 and was named coach of the year for the second time.
He has a well-deserved reputation as a master motivator, one that makes communication and unity a paramount principle in his locker-room. Speaking four languages — English, French, Portuguese and Spanish — will only make that goal easier.
“The fact that he’s won … and everything that he’s done from the time he started coaching to now, it feels like to us like what he’s strived to do is make sure he’s put himself in different situations so, eventually, when the opportunity came, he’d be in the best position possible to have success,” said Lenarduzzi.
Dos Santos takes over a Whitecaps team that splintered down the stretch, missing the playoffs for the fourth time in its eight MLS seasons. He’ll have the opportunity to reshape the roster according to his own philosophy, as there are 10 players under contract for next season — and only five of those were regular starters. The team has options on 16 other players.
He said the talks about hiring his assistants would start Wednesday afternoon, though he had a pretty good idea of who’d they’d be, alluding to the team’s history and staff who already had connections to the club.
Then it would be sit-down interviews with each player, then evaluating the roster moving forward, including recruiting — another area that he will have full control over.
His teams have a reputation of being attacking, aggressive sides, and he pointed out some of the world’s most electric teams — Liverpool, Chelsea — as styles he’d like to emulate, but he’s also one who won’t stubbornly stick to a single tactic.
He wasn’t ready to start making declarations about the kind of roster the Whitecaps will field next season, but did say he would continue to favour a high-pressing, ball-possessing team that attacked directly and with speed.
“My model of play as a coach has evolved throughout the years,” he said. “My wish list, I see the full, collective side. And after all the recruitment process is done, we (will) have a team that’s very dynamic, very aggressive, players that close down, that are not afraid to go at the opponent, at home or on the road.
“I’ve always been someone that looks at the full package of the team. When your focus is that, even the average player looks good. So that’s what I want to do.”