On Aug. 6, 2009 Curt Onalfo found himself out of a job. Coming off a 6-0 loss to FC Dallas, the head coach of the Kansas City Wizards was sacked in favour of club technical director Peter Vermes.
Vermes was generally viewed by fans of KC as being the person responsible for putting the struggling club together. There were many in the fan base that demanded to know why he wasn’t fired too.
Kansas went winless the rest of that August and was outscored 10-0.
The team was struggling badly and was based around a young core that few fans trusted.
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None of Michael Harrington, 23 (at time); Chance Myers, 21; Matt Besler, 22; Roger Espinoza, 22; Kei Kamara, 24 or Graham Zusi, 23 inspired fans to believe that Vermes had what it took to build a championship contending team. There was active debate about who should take over the job full-time once the rest of the 2009 season was over (one name mentioned a lot at the time, interestingly enough, was Paul Mariner).
When Vermes was given the go ahead to stay on many were confused. They were especially confused when KC missed the playoffs again and Vermes stuck with a line-up that generally was younger than most (he added 20-year-old Teal Bunbury to the rotation that year as well as a veteran touch in keeper Jimmy Nielsen).
If you follow MLS you know where this is going. By adding pieces, generally younger (Seth Sinovic, 24; Charles Sapong, 22 and Aurélien Collin, 25 most notably), to that core in 2011 he was able to build the club to the point where a veteran signing like Júlio César made sense in an attempt to take team to next level.
Today, three years after taking over, and two and a half years from the loudest criticism of his vision, KC sits with 47 points, just three points back of the Supporter’s Shield.
Vermes believed in a vision – building around a young core and sticking with it through initial losing – even when many were calling for his head.
This is the strategy Paul Mariner is clearly using. It’s a continuation of what the club was trying to do under Winter. The only difference between what Winter was doing and what Mariner is trying now is the tactics being employed. Forget the damn tactics. You should play the tactics that give you the best chance at winning on the day while building consistency for the future.
Roster consistency is 100 times more important than some deluded idea of tactical purity. So forget this 4-3-3 total football nonsense. If you look at the players that play the most for TFC they have one thing in common – they’re young. If you take the DPs out of the mix TFC is by far the youngest team in the league.
There is no way of knowing if the young players TFC are using now will be good enough in a couple years to compete for a championship. However, it’s a proven strategy in this league to win. It’s also a proven losing strategy to constantly churn players out.
If TFC wants to stop the bleeding it needs to look at what’s worked in the past and stop listening to the loud and clueless voices of those that demand change without instant results.