CATCH YOU LATER, CARL
Whitecaps fire head coach
While the Vancouver Whitecaps fired head coach Carl Robinson on Tuesday, the Carl Robinson era actually ended in July.
It was then, eight league and two Canadian Championship games ago, that an irreparable schism developed between the coaching staff and the front office, the beginning of their relationship’s downward spiral.
The team wanted to hold off any contract extensions for assistant coaches Martyn Pert and Stewart Kerr until the end of the season, citing the team’s on-field results. (Assistant Gordon Forrest is under contract for next season, but was travelling Tuesday from Scotland and hasn’t been informed of the news.) Robinson reportedly gave the team an ultimatum — along the lines of, ‘If they go, I go’ — which resulted in pushback from both sides. The simmering resentment exploded in a heated locker-room confrontation between team executives and the coaching staff after the 5-2 loss to Toronto in August’s Canadian Championship second leg.
The front office had planned to make an official announcement once the team was mathematically eliminated from playoff contention, but back-to-back home losses to Seattle and Dallas over the past two weeks accelerated the timeline. Five games remain in the regular season — including Saturday ’s away game with the L.A. Galaxy — and the Whitecaps are in
eighth place, four points out of a playoff spot.
“We felt that this was a time that gives us the chance at … the longerterm future,” said team president Bob Lenarduzzi. “As for the reason for doing it now is… try to ensure we give ourselves the best chance possible for a playoff spot, and beyond that, we want to get a head start on next year. I think it’s beneficial over the long haul.
“(Sunday’s 2-1 loss to Dallas) may have resulted in us deciding that we do need to look ahead, and give ourselves more time than perhaps we wouldn’t have if we continued, but there are a lot of factors that went into it.”
The Whitecaps’ decision paralleled the building interest around LAFC assistant coach Marc Dos Santos, who’s long been rumoured as a replacement for Robinson. Dos Santos, who reportedly shares the same agent as Robinson, is interviewing with the San Jose Earthquakes for their vacant headcoaching position.
The team insists they don’t have a specific person in mind, and are just beginning their “global” search for a new coach.
The question now is one of philosophy. Robinson was responsible for both coaching and scouting, and to a certain extent, player negotiation. He was given a budget by senior management, but given free rein to spend it as he saw fit.
There had been much speculation over his close relationship with agent David Baldwin and the number of players who had come to the team through that pipeline. The team hasn’t yet responded to a request to identify the players ac- quired through that relationship. The optics of their arrangement led to much social speculation of backroom deals — one agent who had had dealings with the Caps in the past few years described it as “shady” — but agent-team connections are actually commonplace in MLS.
Most teams in the league don’t have a large scouting budget or staff and rely on agents to bring players to their attention.
So for a coach to trust and rely on someone who he’s had a longstanding relationship with, as Robinson did with Baldwin, doesn’t fall outside the realm of normal MLS business.
The Whitecaps are promising to invest the US$22 million brought in by Alphonso Davies’ transfer to Bayern Munich into the sporting side of the team. Lenarduzzi says the club plans on having up to three Designated Players, or highpriced players acquired through the byzantine Targeted Allocation Money process, next year. But there won’t likely be an investment at the executive level in a sporting director, the soccer version of a general manager.
The new coach will continue to have autonomy over player acquisition, under the budget set by senior management, said Lenarduzzi.
“I honestly think it will always be the coach who will make that final decision. If we can add personnel to the recruitment side, that will provide additional support that we haven’t had up to now,” he said.
“We’ve been a club that has relied on the network of agents that we have out there. And that is something that will continue.”
The team has had success with this model — Yordy Reyna and Kendall Waston have evolved into some of the best players in MLS — but there have been some misses.
Efrain Juarez hasn’t panned out, and neither Anthony Blondell nor Bernie Ibini offered much in production, but Lenarduzzi was quick to point out that record of spotty player acquisition isn’t a localized phenomenon.
The same could be said of any team in any league around the world.