‘Innovator’ Tanner named sporting director
CHESTER » Ernst Tanner has spent a quarter century in the ranks of European soccer, always with an eye on the growing market of the United States.
So when he had a conversation with Richie Graham, minority owner of the Philadelphia Union and an acquaintance from elite soccer training circles, about the Union’s opening for sporting director, something clicked.
“When I read the job description, this was exactly what I would like to do,” Tanner said Thursday. “When I got approached by Richie who I’ve known for years now, I said, ‘yeah that is exactly suited for me.’ And he told me, ‘OK, let’s work on that.’”
Tanner was announced as the Union’s new sporting director Thursday. He’ll take over the job in mid-to-late September, once his duties with Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg wrap up. He replaces Earnie Stewart, who spent two and a half years at the helm before leaving to be the first general manager of the U.S. Men’s National Team on Aug. 1.
Tanner signed a three-year contract through the end of the 2021 season.
In Tanner, Union majority owner Jay Sugarman saw many of the traits he prizes. The Union studied foreign models in recent years to shape their vision of the future, and one club they often encountered was Red Bull Salzburg, which Sugarman called, “one of the hotbeds of innovation.”
Sugarman’s ideal candidate needed to have three primary characteristics: Espousing a “collective, connected style of play,” embracing innovation, and familiarity with a model driven by development. Tanner ticked all those boxes and recognized a reciprocal match in the organization’s aspirations.
“For what we were looking for, for those criteria that we laid out, Ernst kind of stood out very quickly,” Sugarman said. “That track record in the transfer part, the developmental success he’s had with top players, the innovation we’ve seen at Salzburg and other clubs he’s been at have always been some of the guideposts here.”
“To be honest, this is one of the reasons why I’m coming here because I want to continue in that way,” Tanner said. “I think (Stewart) did a good job in structuring the club, and this is a good foundation we are finding now. But we can build on that. That’s quite easy.”
Tanner, 51, has worked for clubs in Austria and Germany with reputations for developing young talent. For the last six years, he oversaw Red Bull Salzburg’s academy, winning the UEFA Youth League title in 2016-17. The Red Bull first team has won the Austrian Bundesliga each of the last five years.
Tanner worked for German club TSG 1899 Hoffenheim from 2009-12, the last two as sporting director, navigating the club through its early era in the German Bundesliga. He spent 15 years at TSV 1860 Munich starting in 1994, first as a coach, then the Academy Director for a decade.
His track record includes helping to develop such players as Roberto Firmino, David Alaba and Sadio Mane. He’s also excelled in identifying and recruiting high-ceiling talent within the highly competitive European market.
“In a good club, the academy is like a backbone, not only for the players but for the staff to develop,” Tanner said. “That is for me mandatory to be successful.”
Tanner’s arrival signals a maturation of the club’s mindset. When Stewart was hired in the fall of 2015, the club was organizationally a shambles on the soccer side, without clear protocols or standards. Stewart changed that, codifying roles and responsibilities and making it easier to identify not just a successor but what that person would be called upon to do.
Many of the structures that Stewart bequeathed will serve as guidelines within which Tanner will operate, with ample opportunity to apply his own stamp. One department in which Tanner initially doesn’t seem as rigid with is in tactics. Where Stewart was a religious devotee of the 4-2-3-1, which is unfailingly utilized by the first team and implemented throughout the academy, Tanner seems more flexible. A hallmark of the Red Bull system is the 4-2-2-2, which stresses tactical connectivity over formational placement. More vital than formation is philosophy, in Tanner’s eyes.
“What’s important is that we follow the red line in terms of the philosophy,” he said. “That is important to me. I’m not that bound to systems. Systems usually are sometimes a measure meant to win a game and to set up in a certain environment. But the most important thing is the training philosophy, playing philosophy, how you follow this route in the age groups, what you do in certain ages to keep creativity.”
The signing of Tanner fits the Union’s economic reality. He comes from a league in Austria regarded as a feeder league to deeper-pocketed nations in Europe. As the Union produce increasingly high-profile talents from within, they’ll have to not only benefit from their growth on the field but also navigate the business challenge of selling them on. Players like Auston Trusty, Derrick Jones and Mark McKenzie have upsides that could land them in Europe, part of MLS tracking toward becoming more of a sellers’ league. Making sure the club can recoup its investment in those players’ developments in the transfer market and then reinfuse those funds into the team is something that Tanner has done excellently.
“All the clubs are selling clubs when they are on the level that they cannot hold their players,” Tanner said. “That’s easy. That’s the same question we had in Austria. … The market is globalized so you can with modern methods recruit players from all over the world and players get attracted from everywhere.”
Tanner’s transfer-market prowess includes contacts in South America, where the Union have rarely tread in recent years. Those connections, combined with investments in the facilities and the academy spine, allow Tanner to make longterm transfer splashes. It also indicates a shift from a team building a foundation to one ready to start assembling what they hope is a championship structure.
“Bringing in Ernst, his focus is more on how to make this first team sustainably successful,” Sugarman said. “We felt like we needed all those foundational pieces to be able to go into the transfer market with the highest probably of success. Nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed, but I think when you have the foundational pieces and you have the elements that Ernst talked about, the academy we’ve put in place, the investments we’ve made, I think you’re now at a point where this team should be able to attract talent and we’re going to be able to put it in the first team in a way that we get the full benefit of.”