The idea of a 'manager' in most cultures of professional soccer or football is all-encompassing, really a combination of the job description of a 'head coach' and 'general manager' here in our American sports.Major League Soccer sees most of it's teams employ both a 'Head Coach' and a 'Technical Director', and L.E. Eisenmenger examines the role of the Technical Director in depth on USSoccerPlayers.com - inteviewing Brian Bliss (Columbus Crew), Peter Vermes (Kansas City Wizards), Paul Bravo (Colorado Rapids) and Mike Burns (New England Revolution).
LE: Why was the position of technical director created?
Vermes: It’s looking out for players, making those deals, overseeing the salary cap and making sure the numbers work within the team not only on a short-term basis, but on a long-term basis. Those numbers need to jibe over the course of the year and the years to come, keep guys under contract and keep them happy, and at the same time satisfy the needs staying within the cap number. I try to provide the coaches and players what they’re looking for and at the same time look down the road at some of the players that may be needed from a scouting perspective.
The other part is the youth academy side of the club, more of an overseer rather than being directly hands-on all the time, although I definitely make a connection to know what’s going on with the program and how the coaches are doing and how the players are developing.
Bravo: My responsibilities include supporting Gary Smith with all first team matters, such as being a liaison for the players and the coaching staff at the front office, scouting domestically, some amateur scouting professional scouting in the US with USL 1, USL 2, and overseeing our scouting project for international players.
I’m also in charge of overseeing our youth development programs. We have two separate youth development programs. We have our Developmental Academy (DA) program which includes our 16s and 18s and then we also have a youth club that is separate to the DA, but filters up to the DA and that includes our recreational programs, our US youth soccer affiliates, all of our Alliance partners and our Adidas Alliance partners. So staffing all that, making sure we have the right people and we’re doing some good things on that side.
Up until three or four years ago you didn’t have technical directors in this league. The league really made a push to the clubs to create positions for soccer specific people be able to come in and help manage the technical aspects of the club and the league does do work to give us guidance on what we need to be doing.
Each club is going to combine some things, leave some things out. As far as my job goes, there is an administrative side to it, but I deal with mostly the league side, so we’re waiving players or discoveries, any of the paperwork that goes into the referee side - we do referee reports every game, so there is an administrative side to my job - I just don’t deal with setting up flights and hotels and stuff like that. There’s Garth Lagerway in Salt Lake who’s a VP of Player Personnel and the General Manager. Each team has its own job description and different job titles.
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