Sporting KC Manager Peter Vermes
On his excitement level with the amount of change that can come in the offseason…
Let me first say that Mike Burns, Sporting Director, is not here because he's traveling at the moment. He was going to be here to talk maybe a little bit more specifically to certain things like that. What I'll say on his behalf is that – and I'll kind of get to your question maybe in a little bit of this – this is not the norm, for us to be in this situation where we're not in the playoffs. So a lot of times what happens is that we're making a lot of decisions for the next season as we're playing games and the emotional rollercoaster of the results and things like that are a part of that sometimes. Whereas in a situation like this, because the first official CBA date that Mike has to be ready to make decisions on is November 27. There's time between now and then – I told the coaching staff, I want them to basically spend this week to decompress. We're not going to really talk about the season, players, all that kind of stuff. We'll start next week where everybody has the season behind them, the emotion of every day and all the situations that go on with the team so that decisions can be made in a meaningful way which we normally don't get because we're always in the playoffs and you're flying, you're playing, you're competing and you're dealing with results. What happens is sometimes a result can make you think one way and then two days later you think another way. So this really gives us time to decompress and get together as a staff over the next so many weeks and then really hone in on how we want to move forward with the current group and then also really determining specific positions. It's easy to say that we need players on every line, which is accurate, but also investment for us over the short and long term is going to be important as well. Then the last thing I'd say is our sport is based on windows, right? Winter window, summer window, winter window, summer window. Our winter window winds up being a primary window for us. Summer window is the secondary, which is completely the reverse of most teams and clubs and leagues around the world. So we'll be building this team over the next three windows and, probably more importantly, the next two winter windows, because that's when a lot of the changes happen because it's the end of the year contract. As you even see in our league, summertime is not the best time to add because what happens is that you use the majority of your salary cap or what have you early on and you don't have that space in the summertime. Then the other is that money wise and then time wise, you don't get a lot out of that player because of when they eventually get their P1 visa and all those other things that go with it. It's going to be over three windows. What I will say is we haven't been active in the last five years like we should have been. That is what it is, I'm not using that. That's gone. But our objective is to try to be active in all the windows moving forward. And a lot of that has to do with – I think the commitment that the owners have made gives us a really good runway to look out over a long period of time. So to maybe be a little bit more specific to your question, I think getting on to a new season, it'll be probably very healthy for all of us.
On using the term rebuild and if there needs to be a cultural reset as well…
Absolutely. I've always felt that in my time here, the culture has always been the driving force. Always. I think when you're in a situation like we're in this year, I think what happens is your culture bleeds and you have to stop that. You have to reset. Do I think we're far away? No. I say this about individual results and I say this about anything, I think sometimes when something doesn't go well, you can have that reaction of always being an extremist. “Oh, my God, the sky's falling.” It's not. We have the ability, like anybody else, to reset, reboot and get back to it again. With people that are committed, people that are hungry, they want to do it. I think that's always available to you. I think the other thing too is that – tell me any sport, any team that has always been successful, it doesn't happen. I think that's just the norm in this industry. What you have to do is find your way back to either who you were or a new version of yourself. I do think culture is a big part of it.
On using the 4-2-3-1 formation a lot in 2024 and if he plans to use it more moving forward or reverting back to 4-3-3…
It's an interesting question, but what I would say is formation is irrelevant if you do not have the competitiveness, the effort – that has to be your foundation. I believe that at times we were very poor in that area this year, thus the reason for our results. You don't give up goals like we did when your attitude, your effort, your competitiveness is at a very high level because defending doesn't take anything but a really, really good attitude. An idea in your mind to protect the goal, to make sure that you win your one v one individual duels. All those things are very important. Make no mistake about anything that I said, all of that starts with me and it starts with the staff. As much as we spent a lot of time on that this year, it's always a constant battle, I think, when you're in the coaching profession to find out why something is working or isn't working. A lot of times when something's working, you kind of let it ride and you just support it. When it's not, you're doing a lot of different things to try to get there. The challenge this year with this team, not last year, and I know you guys sometimes refer to last year. I think last year was a completely different situation, and I think it proved itself out at the end. This year, that never changed with the emphasis that was put on to defending the game well is or was a concern. But going forward, there's things that have to change, and a big part of that is mentality, and that's going to be up to myself, the rest of the staff, to make sure that happens, and then for the players that come back or are here, that they are focused on that every day.
On how and when the mentality and culture became a problem…
Some of it comes from a lack of confidence when you don't get results, just the way it goes. I think the other is that maybe the fact that when you look at last season, and again I said it's not the same, but it obviously had a lot of pressure, a lot of times where confidence was a big problem. Maybe having done that for the length of period over these two years, at the end of the day, it's still lack of confidence. Why and how – it's irrelevant at this point, but I think maybe it was hard to sustain for a lot of guys. I think that then bled into other areas where you say, okay, what happens with mentality, all those other things. When I look at the season, and you could easily say, oh, a bright spot is getting to the Open Cup Final, right? But the Open Cup Final was really just a small version of what our season was like. You have a lot of really good moments that you play really well and then towards the end you have some lack of concentration moments that lead to your loss. And that's what happened in that game. We were playing away from home. First of all, playing away from home in our sport is very difficult. But playing away from home in a final at somebody else's place is really difficult. But we played really well for a good majority of that game. But then all of a sudden, we lacked that 120 minutes of concentration and fight that you need and that attitude of defending everything. We missed those moments, but that happened in a lot of other games as well, where we were in control of those games and we tied the game or we even lost some of those games. That was the story of our season. I believe that comes down to attitude and mentality.
On if the 2024 season illuminated ways that he personally needs to adapt…
Probably. I'd say first of all, like in all of these things, I'm always reflecting first on myself, always. First and foremost. I would only say that sometimes, and it could be with staff, it could be with players, it doesn't necessarily just translate to the team. Sometimes maybe you give responsibility and maybe certain people or a team isn't capable of handling that. So what I would say is that if there's anything that maybe that I have to do going forward is just make sure that the demand is very high, maybe take some of that responsibility away and stay on top of it in a much different way that I maybe did this year. But you also got to remember, there will be new players, new faces here, and they won't know any of that. They'll come in with a clean slate so they won't have that baggage with them. The ones that do return, I can tell you this, whoever's here, I'm always going to work with them and try to make them work, but they have a big responsibility in the way that they reciprocate because solutions are always, solutions are always, in this business, with the players, always. Teams playing well, it's because you got good players and the players are in good form and that's where we’ve got to get to.
On the club’s stance on Johnny Russell, Tim Melia and other players whose contracts are expiring at the end of 2024…
As I said, I'm not going to talk about the individuals because we're not ready to make those decisions yet. There's also probably, or maybe, some rule changes that may come into play. So we're going to use all of those opportunities to make the best decisions based on the players that we have. Whether it's Johnny or you brought up Johnny and Tim, whoever it is, they have to come back with a completely different mentality moving into the next year, whoever it is. Daniel (Sperry), you asked the question in regards to culture. I think at the end it comes down to that. The majority of the guys are here from last year. The majority. There's a couple positions that we don't have and they moved on and we didn't fulfill and they hurt a little bit, for sure. That may be a position here or there, but there's a lot of things you still can do with effort and competitiveness. We lacked that at moments in games, and that hurts you, hurts your end results, and that's what happened to us.
On if he finds the challenge ahead of him invigorating…
I'm excited about a couple things. I'm excited with freshness, newness, if you will. I think the great thing about sports is every year is always different, even if you bring the exact same team back. I did that in ‘13 to ‘14. The season was different, wasn't bad, wasn’t good. It just was different, and you're with the same guys because it's a different journey. From that perspective, I'm excited about it. I'm also excited that there'll be some young guys that are going to be coming in to this team, and are they going to have this tremendous impact right away? No, but I'm excited about them and their hunger. Internally, they want to be successful. They want to become big pros in this club, and I'm excited about working with that. Then the other is that it is a long time ago, but it isn't in my mind at times – there's a lot of similarities to going into the 2010 season in really shaping a group in a certain way for a long run. It takes a different way for me to be a coach and that I'm excited about. It's a little old school. It's a little old school. And I don't know if that's exciting for maybe the players who are coming into here, but I think it definitely yields results.
On having a chance to put frustrations behind him and reset…
Where the difference is, in my tenure here, I think in ‘09 and ’10 – ’09 I kind of took over that last so many games – ‘10, first season, that was a rebuilding time. Then all these years – the best analogy I think I can make is it's like you planted the garden back then, and then along the way you were just trimming the bushes. That’s what you were able to do because you're always active, window to window, trading, whatever, you were doing that. Then we had this period of time where we didn't have a lot of that going on for whatever those reasons are – that is what it is. Now it's more back to that, like you're replanting the garden again and then you're going to be hopefully sort of trimming the bushes as you go. I would say it's more of that. It'll be interesting. I think where the difference is, at that time I was doing so many other things. We were building training facilities, stadium, so many other things. Now the focus can be here and I also think the fact that we have another person that's the Sporting Director and I'm not – I like that they can focus on those aspects of the club and I can focus on the other. I think that helps immensely.
On the difficulty of evaluating players based on their mentality…
Having had the ability to be around players for a long time at this club and then sort of year-to-year, we've come off really good years, and then the next year, a certain guy that played really well doesn't play that well, doesn't have as good a season. I think I’ve got a lot of experience for that. I think the other part of it too is that it's always interesting because sometimes you can make the demand and sometimes a team can make the demand, where there's very little from a coach you have to do because the team starts to go a certain direction and now you're just making sure that it stays that way. Where the guys that aren't sure to go that way, they don't have any other way to go. The only other way to go is out, and most guys don't want to go out. Most guys want to be a part of it. You just got to get it going in that correct direction. What I'd say is there won't be any quarter for those that think that they're going to go in a different direction of the group and where it needs to go, there just won't be. I want to be really clear, it's not threats or anything, and it's not one of those things where it's my way or the highway. It's our way. And if you don't want to be a part of our way, then I think you should be respectful enough – like, if you don't want to do this, then just say it and we'll try to find a solution for you. I think that's pretty simple, right? It's kind of like when we all have a job, you don't have to work at that place if you really don't want to. You can always say, “hey, let me step away.” And if you don't want to do that, then I think you have a responsibility then to participate in the correct manner. That's all.
On the challenge of bringing in new players while also starting the season early due to the club’s involvement in the Concacaf Champions Cup…
Honestly, it's a great question because it's something I was going to speak to, and that is we're going to take our time, right? When I say we're going to take our time, we are going to make sure that we are active, but also active in making the best decisions that we can. Not just about our current players, but any players that we bring in. That will take some time because our windows do not align with the rest of the world. So usually our primary window, again, which is the winter window, is also extended really far out. So if we don't come up with guys early on, we're not just going to sign somebody to sign them, not going to hamstring the club with a long-term contract when somebody doesn't belong. We're going to continue to look and try to add the right pieces over that time and we are going to take our time. It's not like we're going to have all these players are just going to start popping up and we're going to be making announcements every other day. The other thing is that Concacaf Champions Cup, because we're in that, we could be playing that first week of February, which is like the fourth, fifth or sixth. I would say that there'd be a really good chance that if we had a bunch of guys signed by then, there's more than likely that they won't even be able to participate because they probably won't even have their P1 visa or their immigration status to be able to play with us. So that's going to take a little bit of time as well. But like I said, we're going to try to do this the most efficient way, but also doing our best to make the right decision on each of the scenarios and situations that we have in front of us.
On the club’s ability to open up two Designated Player spots and the positions they would target…
I think one of those for sure has to be in the nature of a number 10. Has to be a creative player that can give the final pass at times, can score goals, hopefully is good on set pieces, just has a lot. Then also I would again, I would hope – again, can't find everything – but also would have leadership qualities as well. Adding more leadership qualities to our team is highly important.
On the financial outlay the club is prepared to make for a No. 10 and if it would be in the region of the club’s financial outlay to bring in Alan Pulido ahead of the 2020 season…
Yes, on all accounts. I believe the budget’s there, if that's what you're asking me. Yes, I believe the budget’s there. It's really going to come down to making a deal, availability, fits a lot of the qualities that we're looking for, those types of things, because there's very few teams in the world that play an old school number 10. So what we're searching for has, like I said, it has the things that I expressed, but also has to be able to play within our team, too. There's a defensive responsibility, they have to have all those other things that go with it. But that's a very important piece to us moving forward. That's a big position. So one of our DP spots will for sure be used in that position.
On the changing nature of player roles around the world, such as number nines and number 10s…
I was just going to say like what happens is, your pro player pathway –we have our own with our academy, our second team, our first team – everybody in the world develops goalkeepers, everybody develops defenders and midfielders and all of a sudden the 10s, the nines, the sevens, the 11s, they become more and more difficult. That's why you see, even the best clubs in the world – Man City is the best team in England, right? Currently. They won the EPL last year. If you just look at their front guys, other than Foden, I don't think there's any other player that's English, right? So all the players that come through their pro player pathway are other positions or are of English citizenship. So you have to go and search for those guys and I don't think we're any different than that. Those are areas that we're constantly going to be looking for as years go on. It’ll be great when we can because that'll be a different world for this club for sure.
On if developing attacking players has changed over the last 15 years…
I don't think so. I just think our league's gotten a lot better. Our league just keeps getting better and better and better. The other thing you got to look at was the attackers are getting a lot better and defensively, all of us have to get better as well. So that's why you’ve got to spend money in those areas of the field too. Then the other is that, look, we're 30 teams in the league next year. The pool of American players is just thinner because you have 30 teams, but then you also have a lot of guys that want to play over overseas so they're not even in our league. And by the way, you're competing with everybody else around the world for those players.
On the types of traits he would like to inject into the team for next season…
Durability, and I would say that goes with mentality. Hard guys, guys that have the idea of playing both sides of the ball, protection, will do whatever they have to do, stick their head on the end of a shot to block it with their head if they have to, to block a ball from going in the goal. That's the kind of mentality you have to have to defend for sure. And hunger, you want to be the best, as an individual. I think sometimes there can be a level of complacency and we need hunger in guys.
