New York Red Bulls Sporting Director Ali Curtis and Coach Jesse Marsch spoke at the year-end media availability on Thursday.
Here's what they had to say...
Jesse, immediately after the match I asked you if the season was a success and you said emotionally you were still kind of raw, it was hard to tell, is there a better picture of where it stands?
JESSE MARSCH: Well first I’d like to just apologize to everyone here and those that aren’t here, I know that we kind of have made this decision to do this at the last minute, we only gave you a day warning but just with the different things that have been going on around here we had to put this together quickly. Yes, the season was a success. I think when you go through and look at, there’s a number of accolades and accomplishments. First, getting through the Champions League for the first time was big, going 20 games unbeaten, being one of the top attacking teams and top entertaining teams for our fans, being great at home, setting the record for home wins, winning the East again, and then when you think about the seasons that guys like Brad, Sacha, and Luis had and the goals that Brad’s been able to set, the record that Luis has been able to set in terms of consecutive games. For me I would at the end of all of that, I think that’s all a result of a foundation of a certain kind of environment that’s been created here, that I think has set the tone for what this organization has become. For me, obviously the results always speak the loudest and we really wanted to win the cup this year because we felt that was the true way to honor the success and accomplishments of what’s been done and the work that’s been done on the inside, but still I think there’s enough results in our favor to say that what’s been created, what’s been built, the identity of this club, of this team, the foundation of what a real club should be about, having a true vision, I think we’re unique in that way. I think our fans have gravitated towards that and trust it and believe in it. I think the disappointment for not getting the cup is widespread throughout this community but it's important to also really take a moment to appreciate everything that’s been achieved.
ALI CURTIS: I’ll just piggyback on Jesse, I mean there’s a lot to be proud of in terms of what’s happened this year, when you look at some of our guys we brought in from our academy, you look at what’s been happening at the USL, and look at what we were able to accomplish with the first team, there’s a lot to be proud of. At the end of the day, I think we’re all disappointed we weren’t able to deliver an MLS cup to the fans and to the community, but we’ll be right back at it in terms of this team. We have a good team, we’re going to be better. We’ve got to go into the offseason and figure this thing out so at the end of the day we can deliver an MLS cup to this club.
Jesse, just to piggyback on what Ali said, how many players on the USL team are threatening jobs on the MLS roster right now? Obviously we know about Derrick Etienne Jr, Brandon Allen, Aaron Long has gotten a shot, who in your mind is threatening the MLS roster right now?
JESSE MARSCH: Well as a starting point, that’s going to be a big challenge but an exciting challenge for us to retool this team. We know that we have a really good feeder system right now, a really good USL team, and some really talented young players who are chomping at the bit to prove themselves on a bigger stage. I mean, when you go through this season, if you were to just talk about Brandon Allen, I think was one of the best attacking players in the USL, so having him back and now having him challenge himself with the first team to gain more minutes and to prove himself at a higher level, but we think that Brandon’s done really well this year. We think Derrick had a great year, and built upon his USL performances from two years ago until now and has shown he’s in many ways ready to push to see if he can push to get first team minutes. Aaron Long, being defender of the year, the best defender in that league and in many games the best player that I saw in that league. I think he’s going to now continue to push to establish himself with the first group. Ryan Meara had an incredible season, I think he was the best goalie in that league even though he wasn’t given that award, I think he proved to be the best goalie in that league and helped win a championship there. Tyler Adams, I think has shown that for as young as he is, that he’s ready for challenges and big responsibilities. Sean Davis is already starting to establish himself, and then there’s guys on the USL team. I’m just trying to think, did I forget anyone? I think Florian Valot and Vincent Bezecourt had great seasons, right, and they’ve shown that they can handle, that they’re very good attacking players in that league. They’re smart, they’re creative, they fit the way we play. Stefano Bonomo still, I thought even though he was injured a lot this year, I think he has certain qualities that fit what we do. Justin Bilyeu when he played at left back showed some real special qualities. So that’s sort of a laundry list for you, but I think the reason why I mention so many names is because we think very highly of a lot of the players down there. Now when we’re looking to retool this thing and now push it for next year, there’s obviously a lot of very established players on our team that we think are very high quality, but the challenge will be what is the balance for next year and how do we keep hunger and drive and youth and continue to invest in everything that we’ve done here, from not just a first team perspective. Is that good, that was a lot.
ALI CURTIS: It's a special group, USL is a very special group and John Wolyniec did a great job with that team. He’s got some talented players, they play a nice style of soccer to what we want to play, so it’s a good group and it’s good for the MLS team.
For both of you, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on, you’ve talked about success the team has had these last couple years, before you got here, the team made the conference finals and the conference semifinals the year before that. What does this team need, this group of players need to get over the hump finally and give this fan base what it’s looking for?
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah, I mean if you were to really dig into this last playoff series, which obviously we have, the frustration is that we, in everything we’ve done it’s been to try and prepare this team and this group to be successful, not in the regular season but in the playoffs. So to come up as short as we did is very disappointing, and yeah, that’s what we’re trying to ask ourselves. What is that that we need, and you could say listen, that’s what this organization has been asking for 21 years, but I think we know we have a lot of the pieces in place, and a philosophy and a group that has what it takes, but trying to understand. Listen if you go back through, sometimes it’s a team being hot at the right time, sometimes it’s having big players make big plays at the right time. We had two MVP candidates this year, right, so we think we have the type of players to make big plays. We won our last four games I think going into the playoffs and we were 20 unbeaten, so we thought we had momentum. To have it derailed in two games and to lose twice in the playoffs, it’s almost unfathomable and it doesn’t make sense, it’s incomprehensible. We have to now take certain lessons and figure out how to add to this in a way so that it’s more prepared than this year. It’s hard to imagine, by key indicators, how to be better going into the playoffs than we were this year and then in that sense, it’s hard to put your finger on why we came up short.
ALI CURTIS: What we’ve done over the last couple of days, we’ll continue to do it. You guys are aware of all the different mechanisms in the offseason, added layer of complexity with the Expansion Draft on the 13th of December. We’ll perform an autopsy on what worked and what didn’t, and we’ll look at the roster and we’ll make changes. They’ll be changes.
Piggybacking on the roster changes, I want to bring up Gonzalo Veron and Omer Damari, two of the three DPs that you have didn’t seem, whether it was due to injury or due to cards, didn’t seem to get into the flow of things. What was your assessment of their time at Red Bulls?
ALI CURTIS: Well Omer came late, he came towards the close of the summer transfer window. He’s a player that’s played with Leipzig and Salzburg. We knew that bringing Omer in that he had an understanding of the way in which we wanted to play. When you’re acquiring a guy midseason, that would be an opportunity for him to integrate himself really really quickly and for him to help us, and he did that. You saw what he helped us out, with the Champions League and in some of those matches he did really well. Unfortunately he got injured, and then he never really got himself going in such a way where this guy’s firing on all cylinders and really helping the club as a DP. His loan was just to the end of the year, so he’ll return back to his club. With Veron, you know Veron’s done well but struggled at times, and we’ll sit down with Gonzalo and we’ll talk to him and figure things out. I did see towards the end of the season, you saw him having some really good performances. He had a great performance against the Galaxy in LA, he probably could have drawn another PK, and then you saw towards the end of the season even though he wasn’t a regular and he wasn’t starting, every time he was getting in there he was creating chances and finding opportunities. He created the PK in the last game against Montreal, so how can we figure out a way in which he can support the team and we can support him such that it’s a win-win situation and we’re adding value on all sides of the equation. With Veron, we have to look at his performance, look at his season, and sit down with him and cut the tape up, and hopefully he’ll add value for us and really help us out next year.
JESSE MARSCH: I’ll speak to Gonzalo as well, I continue to be very optimistic on Gonzalo. I think we’ve seen improvement, and he’s still a young player. I think I’m still excited about the possibility of what next year could look like. I think different people have now been critical of my decisions on how to use him and when to use him and everything else, and that’s fine, I understand that’s part of the job. What’s important is that the players and the team understands their roles and then understand how to grow within them. I think Gonzalo’s notion of who we are and how to be successful here has grown exponentially as time has gone on. I think that it’s only a matter of time before he really starts to show everything that he’s about.
I guess for both of you, last year a lot of continuity from the previous season, Matt Miazga’s the big piece that left, do you guys envision something similar? Do you think that attributed to your success this season and do you see more of a shake-up this season as opposed to previous years?
ALI CURTIS: We do believe that continuity or consistency, however you want to call it, is correlated to success. I think having a group of people, staff and players, that have spent time with each other, been in the trenches with each other, that’s a good thing and that leads to success. At the same time we’ve got a lot of talented young players, which is really exciting. You saw that Dax went down, Sean Davis filled in and he did an excellent job. We’ve got the challenge and the opportunity, how do we stay consistent, how do we give some of our younger players who are probably ready, give them time. Then just making smart educated decisions going into the offseason. I speak to a lot of GMs and Sporting Directors around the league, and our players had good seasons. We’ve got a lot of quality players and so going into the Expansion Draft, going into the Re-entry Draft, going into free agency and the Waiver Draft, how can we be calculated and measured about every decision we make with regard to the offseason. It’s a big emphasis, we’ll have to look at it, what’s out there, what the market bears, what players are available within MLS. We’ve got some targets outside of MLS. Then we just do the best job we can to make smart decisions. The good thing is, we’ve got a good base, we have a good team, so can we make one or two key moves that will really help the team for next year.
JESSE MARSCH: For me and Ali working together, we didn’t anticipate the season to end now. It’s still filled with a lot of gut-wrenching emotion and disappointment, so we’re trying to take some time so that we really think clearly about what decisions need to be made. I think regardless, this team and this club’s positioned for success moving forward. I don’t just think for next year but I think for years to come. Our goal when we came here, I think was to try and build a foundation that was independent of Ali or myself, and to just now know that there was an identity and a way and an environment that would lead towards this club getting stronger and stronger year in and year out. I feel like in that respect, it’s been a big success, a big success the last two years.
ALI CURTIS: What Jesse said is really important, that we didn’t win MLS Cup, but what you don’t want to do is start making decisions that are based in emotion. How can we take a couple days, take a week, take a step back, figure this thing out and make some smart measured decisions because we’ve got a really good group of staff and we’ve got a really good group of players.
One question for each of you, and I’ll start with Ali first since we’re on the subject. Obviously every MLS offseason with bonuses and everything that kicks in, especially when you have a good season, and the expansion draft, you always lose a key piece or two, part of the core. Do you expect that to happen this offseason, do you expect to lose a core player or two this winter? For Jesse, just going off of Veron, kind of related, you went with a 4-2-2-2 at the start of the year and got away from that when he got hurt, do you envision maybe a formation change, I know it’s early, are you open to switching the formation and going away from what’s worked the past few years?
ALI CURTIS: So I think we probably, and most folks would agree, we have the deepest team in the league. From a talent, roster, and depth perspective. The expansion draft only allows you to protect 11 players, except those homegrown players or those on the supplemental roster, they’re automatically protected, so I anticipate we’ll likely lose a player. That’s something that, while unfortunate, it’s part of the universe that we live in. Even still, we’ve got a quality group of guys, we’ll be okay, that’s something that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit, especially in the back half of the year. Again, I just want to take a step back and be measured about who we’re protecting, who we’re not protecting, and all those different types of decisions that have a domino effect. To Jesse’s point, I didn’t anticipate that we would be out of the playoffs at this point.
JESSE MARSCH: Yeah I think one of the goals has been, always as a manager you’re trying to build on everything that has been established and make it better and stronger and more. Tactically is part of that, so even with the attempt to think about going to two strikers, we knew that having flexibility in the way we play would keep teams off balance. We didn’t probably use it as much as I would have thought at the beginning of this year, but we did use it at times and we benefitted from playing two strikers at times. When we are building, whenever we’re building this team we have a vision as to how we want to play, and then we’re trying to add pieces into it that we think are going to fit that and strengthen what we have. I think that additions that we make will be about complementing our style and our roster the right way, and also have flexibility with how we use guys. That can also be said for three or five in the back, and at times this year that didn’t go as well as we would have liked, but we’re constantly trying to build more tactics into what we do along with the mentality and everything else that we do. Saying that for next year, I think Gonzalo has developed an understanding of how to play with two, but also how to play as the lone striker and how to play wide in the three, which is a benefit to him and us. It’s just about trying to figure out how to help him continue to establish himself at bigger levels.
ALI CURTIS: There’s the disappointment and the agony of defeat with the playoffs, but there’s a lot to be excited about for next year. We have a good team, we’re going to play good soccer next year, we’re going to have a good team. We’re excited about, we mentioned the Expansion Draft, the Re-entry Draft, and free agency, for us those are challenges but they’re opportunities. They’re opportunities to strengthen the team, they’re opportunities to reflect on our season. We have a lot of excitement about this team for next year. It’s tough because of the loss but we’re still very excited.
Next year will be the earliest this club’s going to start in its history because of the CONCACAF Champions League Quarterfinals, you’re taking on the Vancouver Whitecaps. What will you guys do besides the preseason tournament in Tucson, Arizona, will you guys be setting up other matches, maybe going to Central America, South America, Mexico, what will you be doing to prepare for the Quarterfinals and hopefully go deep into the Knockout Stage?
JESSE MARSCH: First of all, we have a very difficult offseason program for our players that I think prepares them to be fit the moment that they step into training. We’re going to Tucson twice, and there will be a lot of MLS competition down there and we’re playing games almost right away anticipating that our team will be fit enough to jump right into that, and now accelerate our readiness for the season to start. That presents a lot of big challenges, but that’s been on our minds since the moment that we qualified for the quarterfinals. The only variable there was trying to wait to see who our opponent was going to be. The fact that it’s an MLS opponent, I think is a benefit to us, and I think Vancouver would say the same thing, because we’ll be on the same preparation schedule which I think gives us the best chance to have an even playing field from a sharpness and fitness perspective for 90 minutes. That tournament will be another big challenge, we step out of failing in a knockout stage for playoffs and stepping right into another one. The key will be to take all the lessons from this year and certainly from these last two games and show that we can apply it to what that tournament is. If we can learn from that and put good performances on, then we give ourselves right from the beginning of the year to be in some really big games which is exciting.
For both of you two, last season speaking with Tyler Adams and Sean Davis, both of them went to Red Bull Salzburg and Red Bull Leipzig to do some training, do you think that benefitted them? Is that something you will try to utilize this year to try and get some more players up to speed and maybe utilize Red Bull Global more as you’ve done this season?
ALI CURTIS: Yeah it’s certainly in the conversation, we even talked about this morning. I communicated with some of the folks over in Leipzig and Salzburg actually about an hour or two ago about potentially some of our players going over there and getting training opportunities. We just have to make sure to work with those teams and those guys to figure out when’s the best time. I certainly believe that going over in the offseason and getting some training opportunities in a different environment with some international competition benefits you not just from a playing perspective but from a confidence perspective. It’s something that we’re exploring we just have to figure out who and when.
