Tanner makes clear his veer from Stewart’s vision
CHESTER >> Somewhere between apologizing for the length of a detailed 10-minute opening statement and concisely answering a volley of questions, Ernst Tanner didn’t cut the figure of a marauding executive bent on overturning the conventions of the club that has hired him.
With his focused and soft-spoken demeanor, however, the German soccer executive made clear that his tenure as sporting director of the Philadelphia Union will be different than that of his predecessor, Earnie Stewart.
“We need to make it a little bit more inconvenient to play us,” Tanner was saying Monday at his end-of-season press conference. “And in addition, I find that we are a little too easy to reckon, especially when everyone knows ahead of us that we’re playing in a 4-2-3-1. They know how we play and they know how to defend against us.”
That statement among a
40-minute conversation was the most enlightening about the direction in which Tanner will take the Union. It marked the most pronounced departure from Stewart’s path.
Exit the Stewart Doctrine. Enter the Tanner Tenets.
Under Stewart, the Union were rigid adherents to the 4-23-1 formation, which the club played occasionally under former manager John Hackworth and unfailingly under Jim Curtin. When Curtin assumed control in the middle of 2014, he found it the best fit for the team’s resources. He continued with that formation even when the Union’s front office didn’t bring in the requisite talent to execute it, then Stewart set it in stone, inscribing it into the club’s DNA to be taught at every level of the Academy.
No longer were the Union a team that merely played a 4-23-1 formation; instead, the Union churned out players who lived and breathed it, selecting and training players from the youth levels on up based on their fitness for the formation and instilling the positional technique to make it happen.
Tanner has shown to be more formationally agnostic, and he’ll quickly point out that formation is the realm of the coach. Take this answer, on the specific question of using a back three – which the Union deployed briefly in season-ending losses to New York City FC and which the center back triumvirate of Jack Elliott, Auston Trusty and Mark McKenzie would seem well-disposed to carry out – was posed.
“Everything which helps you to win games and make an impact that helps winning games is welcome,” Tanner said. “We’re not focusing on one and the same thing just for the sake of philosophy and then cannot make any changes. I’m pretty sure that we need this in the future as well.”
Tanner’s main focus is on how the Union play rather than how they line up. Consider this snippet as Tanner’s central thesis Monday.
“We have been doing very well in our possession game; that’s for sure something that we will also focus on,” Tanner said. “But in a way, it is time to change some other things in order to take the next step. That has also something to do with a little bit more tactical flexibility. I want to see a little more dynamics in our game, playing a little bit more aggressive and with more compactness and make use out of transitions and vertical play.”
The formational conversation is just a jargony proxy for the real thrust of Tanner’s approach. He won’t indiscriminately sweep away everything with Stewart’s fingerprints on it out the door. (Exhibit A: Curtin’s contract extension).
But Tanner also won’t blindly assent to being Stewart 2.0.
In that regard, Tanner echoes Stewart’s pragmatism, which is really a necessity from the job, since the Union’s meager budgetary strength would probably crush any idealism pretty fast. One of the big differences in their application of that thought process is the level of the club they’re inheriting.
Tanner scored high marks on social media with his assessment of the 2019 ambitions. Coming off two playoff berths in three years and a record-setting 2018 season for wins and points, the Union are aiming high. But Tanner tempered it with a cold dose of reality: Twice sneaking into the sixth and final playoff berth in the East, three losses in U.S. Open Cup finals, no playoff wins in club history … it’s not enough.
“If you continue like we did, that last playoff spot will be probably the choice we face, so we want to be better on the middleor long-term period,” Tanner said. “We certainly are focusing on the playoff spot and that will be one of the goals for the future. We’ll be focusing very much on what we can achieve from the Cup. In professional football, the only thing that (counts) is winning and winning titles in a way, being in international competitions that are linked to the Cup, and I think we missed it three times, and it’s time to get it next time.”
That has evolved from Stewart’s tenure, thanks in part to what Stewart accomplished. And, you could wonder, had Stewart not leapt at the chance to become the first U.S. men’s team general manager in June, would he be similarly bullish right now? Stewart didn’t lack for ambition, but he wouldn’t let his aspiration blind him to reality. Had he arrived in Oct. 2015 to the train wreck that was the Union’s hierarchy and played the “MLS Cup or bust” tune, he would’ve been laughed back to Holland.
But Tanner has the platform to shoot higher, one built by Curtin and Stewart. It still needs refining, but with the Union Academy churning out talents in their teens rather than early 20s and Bethlehem Steel polishing those players, the club has been rebuilt.
Tanner is tasked with the next step, and he knows that its blueprint must be different than a paint-by-numbers replica of what came before.
Again, the on-field plan provides an apt metaphor.
“That is one of the top items we have in mind for the future, in order to prove a plan B and even plan C if plan A, in terms of our possession game, is not working out,” Tanner said. “That’s what exactly we have seen in the games against New York FC or games against Houston, so we are obviously struggling a little bit against facing opponents who are organized very well in defense and doing better than us.
“That’s exactly what we need to change. We need to challenge these teams.”
It’s a safe bet that challenging those teams will start with Tanner challenging his.