The stadium that many Red Bulls fans thought would never be built is about three months from being complete and now that the last piece of Kentucky Bluegrass has been laid in Red Bull Arena, the club’s managing director said it’s time to focus his attention on the next construction project.
Step one is hiring a sporting director.
“That’s not just a single personnel move,” Erik Stover said Tuesday. “That’s a reorganization of the department. We see the MLS model as being a little outdated. It worked for 14 years, but we want to get a structure in place that will carry us for the next 14 years and beyond so we have sustainable success and not wild swings in year to year performance.”
Stover didn’t discuss specific candidates, though he did say he’s been in contact with “dozens” for both positions.
“We’ve got several candidates in both categories that we like very much,” he said. “The matter now is vetting those candidates, making sure we make the right decision and seeing who else might be interested.”
On the top of Stover’s list of coaching candidates is none other than Richie Williams, who guided the Red Bulls to a 3-3-2 record in his second stint as interim coach.
“I think he’s done an outstanding job,” Stover said. “It’s a pretty tough position to take over. Obviously moral was very low, we had a lot of injuries and he showed his mettle. For my money he should be a finalist and we’re going to work through that.”
The problem, at least if you’re Williams, is that it’s not solely Stover’s decision to make. He said the sporting director will be primarily responsible for hiring the coach.
So when will said sporting director be hired?
“There’s no date because we want to make sure we make the right decision and we don’t want to hurry it,” Stover said. “Obviously we’re running out of time, but we don’t really feel pressure with it yet.”
For the time being personnel decisions, including establishing a list of protected player for the expansion draft and scouting college players, will be handled by Williams and Agoos.
One person who will be clearly influential in the decision-making process is Dietmar Beiersdorfer, the former Hamburg sporting director who earlier this month was named sporting director of Red Bull’s entire sporting division. That includes the MLS team, as well as Red Bull Salzburg, Leipzig and soccer academies in Brazil and Ghana.
“He’s got excellent experience at Hamburg and he brings that understanding of the system we’re talking about and he’s going to be a tremendous resource for us,” Stover said. “That doesn’t limit our search. It just strengthens our search and I think allows us to focus on MLS candidates a little more directly.”
Stover said he understands the challenges when it comes to candidates from MLS and abroad. But most important, he said, is for the team to establish a “more unified vision of who we are, what our character is, what our culture is and where we’re going to be next year and five years from now.”
Stover said the sporting director and coach will remain a partnership, one that was dysfunctional between Jeff Agoos and Juan Carlos Osorio, when it comes to player identification. But there will be more chefs in the kitchen than ever before.
“You can look at the teams that have been successful in this league and see why they’ve been successful. They haven’t made as many mistakes with player acquisition,” Stover said. “Houston and New England are very good examples. They managed the rules and they did it well. Our expectation is that we’ll put a team together that will limit the mistakes we may have made in the past.”
Who do you think Red Bull should hire? Is it a mistake just to go after foreign coaches and sporting directors? Does Richie Williams deserve a shot? Who should be part of the new sporting team? Mark Lisi? Tony Meola? Let us know what you think.
