Early hole too deep to climb out of
Q&A: Co-owner Jeff Mallett talks about what went wrong in a season that began with great expectations
WSAN JOSE, Calif. hitecaps co-owner Jeff Mallett, who lives in the Bay Area, sat down with Marc Weber for a wide-ranging interview before kickoff Sunday at Avaya Stadium. Here is the first part of that Q and A. Check out Tuesday’s paper, or provincesports.com, for Part 2.
Q: What went wrong this season?
A: Two things that scream to me are the inconsistency and discipline. We got off to a slow start and we put ourselves in a hole pretty early, and then we had moments where we started to jell but we dropped in consistency. This league, everything is so compact that if you get off to a slow start and have a little bit of a bad run, you’re always looking up at that red (playoff cutoff ) line and that’s where we found ourselves.
Carl (Robinson) has said the team will head to Europe next pre-season, so he’s obviously identified the pre-season as a reason for the slow start. But what else? Did you guys overestimate the quality on this team?
No, I think we can go down the lineup and go up against anybody. One, it goes back to consistency and discipline. And I think maybe the mindset coming in — we didn’t have the bite coming out of the gate. Coming off a third-place finish the year before, and most of the reports had us as one to watch for MLS Cup, all those sorts of things, I don’t think we got ahead of ourselves but I think we came into camp thinking we had a pretty good run last year and we were progressing, and when we didn’t deliver we got ourselves in a hole we couldn’t get out of.
So what have you learned from this year?
Every part of our business needs to be constantly looked at. We’re trying to set a culture — this is (majority owner) Greg Kerfoot and myself — where we have a high bar, high expectations, a realistic operating plan, and when things are not going to plan, we have the ability to really peel it back and be tough. So we look across our organization and every element is being looked at. How do we improve it? How did we get ourselves in this situation?
We still have two games to go (heading into Sunday) and we’re going to be professionals and put on a show for our fans but after that, we know what’s in front of us. We’ve identified the areas we need to focus on.
How does the approach change this off-season compared to last year?
There’s a number of areas but one that resonates with me is re-evaluating what a player’s commitment to the first team is for Major League Soccer. What it means to be a Whitecap, and what are those expectations coming in? From physical fitness, the mental side, lifestyle, everything.
For some players coming in we say that and they respect that because they’re professional footballers, but are they really on board? Do they say, ‘OK, these guys actually want to win. Robbo shows up every day with a training plan that makes sense. These owners, they care. The fans, massively care.’
I think sometimes it takes a few games before some people, of high quality, realize, ‘Oh, this is a proper football club, I need to be on my game every single day.’ That’s an over-arching theme we need to make sure we get right next year. Maybe we didn’t get it as right as we should have this year.
Hearing that from you, and Bobby (Lenarduzzi) has talked about a lack of leadership, and Carl has said that too many guys have under-performed. It’s you guys who brought these players in, so how much responsibility do you bear for not getting that right?
I don’t think it’s that we didn’t get the right read on them. Our job has to be to improve (in this area) so it means ‘this and this and this.’ That’s the responsibility I feel — defining those expectations, in detail. It’s not just, ‘You’re a professional footballer and go do your job.’
It’s hard to ignore that a lot of players you re-signed to multi-year deals have dipped below previous performance levels. Does that change your opinion of how you handle contracts?
I’m not disappointed with how we did those (contracts) and we’ll continue to do that. Your core players, your spine, you make that commitment. I don’t think any of those guys had a letdown on purpose but maybe mentally (the new contract) did have that effect. Our job is if we see it to jump on it.
You had a window in the summer to decide whether to try to salvage the season or ride it out to January. Do you regret not doing more?
Some things were unexpected. (Octavio) Rivero wanted to move back (to Chile) and it goes back to what I said: ‘Who is a Whitecap?’ Loved him. He was great for us, but he wanted to go back. We didn’t expect it. (Masato) Kudo went down injured. (Cristian) Techera, we expected more out of and he started to come on a bit. In that time when we had that window, we felt we had enough, and added a couple of guys to get stuck in in (David) Edgar and (Marcel) de Jong.
But once Rivero went, you chose not to fill that DP slot.
We looked at it. We went down the list and said, ‘No. We’ll go with Kudo, with Blas (Perez) coming in now and then. Kekuta (Manneh) going down changed things, obviously. Everyone has injuries so we’re not different than anyone else but that changed things.
In Part 2 tomorrow, Jeff Mallett reacts to the Province’s Whitecaps poll and criticism of management. He talks about Alphonso Davies and the residency program, about DisCo, and the big one: designated players and salary budget.