Carl Robinson gets the boot as MLS team’s head coach
Feud with management comes to head with Whitecaps four points out of playoff spot
While Vancouver Whitecaps fired head coach Carl Robinson on Tuesday, the 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 the relationship’s downward spiral.
The team wanted to hold off on any contract extensions for assistant coaches Martyn Pert, Gordon Forrest and Stewart Kerr until the end of the season, citing the team’s on-field results. 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 last two weeks accelerated the timeline. Five games remain in the regular season — including Saturday’s away game to 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 longer-term future,” said team president Bob Lenar- duzzi. “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 area 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 head-coaching position.
The team insists it doesn’t have a specific person in mind and is just beginning its “global” search for a new coach.
The question now is one of philosophy. Robinson was responsible for coaching, scouting and, to a certain extent, player negotiation. He was given a budget by senior management, but had 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 acquired through that relationship.
The optics of their arrangement led to much social speculation of backroom deals — one agent who had dealings with the Caps in the last 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 — one internal league study showed it was less than nine teams — and rely instead on agents to bring players to their attention.
So for a coach to trust and rely on someone who he has had a long-standing 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 said the club plans on having up to three designated players or high-priced 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 have 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.
But there appears to be a need for a supervisory role. For example, the coaching staff hadn’t planned on bringing Brek Shea back for this season. But by playing in a playoff game last year, it triggered an automatic player-option year. The coaching staff reportedly mitigated his minutes during the season, but the decision was made somewhere in the team’s murky bureaucratic depths to play him against Seattle, activating the clause.
It meant that Shea, the second-highest-paid player on the team at $745,000, spent most of 2018 on the bench, getting 11 starts among 24 appearances (1,211 minutes) while putting up three goals and two assists. He wasn’t part of the off-season overhaul that saw 23 players depart from a team that faded down the regular-season stretch, finishing third in the conference before falling in the semifinals to Seattle. The Caps did win their first playoff game last season, however, beating San Jose 5-0 in the knockout round.
The total number of players under contract for next season is unclear. The team’s transaction list shows Jake Nerwinski, Russell Teibert, Blondell and Juarez signed through 2019 with the bulk of the remaining players on team options.
After the demoralizing loss to TFC, Teibert was asked about the team’s hazy future with so much uncertainty surrounding the coaching staff. He said they were playing for their jobs at that point.
“We are. We still are. Even though the manager’s gone and we have a new coach, we’re still all playing for our jobs because everything is still uncertain,” said the longest-tenured Whitecap, who has played for all four coaches the team has had in MLS.
“(It’s) mixed emotions. Kind of shocked, but it’s the nature of the business. We know what we’re getting into when we take up this profession. He’s been in this game a long time and knows it’s a business, too.
“It’s … raw today. You’re going to get the guys’ true emotions. No one’s really had a chance to process it. But you have to rebound, you have to bounce back. And I know Robo will do that; he’s been a player, he’s a manager and he knows what this business is about. He’ll get back on his feet somewhere else.”
Robinson, the fourth-longest-tenured manager in MLS, leaves with a 64-59-42 record as head coach and made the playoffs in three of his five seasons in charge. In 2014, he lost to Dallas in the knockout round before losing to eventual MLS-champion Portland in the 2015 conference semifinals and the Sounders in last year’s semis.
He remains well-respected around the league and in his former locker-room, where the loyalty he inspired in his players is evident in the way they talk about him. When Teibert scored his first MLS goal in 2012, he pointed to his mom in the stands — then ran straight to Robinson, then an assistant coach on the sidelines to celebrate.
“Robo’s been here a long time. Maybe this year hasn’t gone our way — or his way — but over the course of the time he’s been here, he did great things for the club,” said Teibert. “And I hope everyone can look at his time here and say he took the club to a better place than when he first got here.”