Author’s note: Before he jetted off to the Olympics last week, Canadian Soccer Association president Victor Montagliani chatted with Canadian Soccer News on a variety of subjects. This is the first of a short series of stories, based on that chat.
After three years of waiting, the Canadian Soccer Association has finally embarked on a meaningful search for this nation’s next soccer technical director.
CSA president Victor Montagliani freely admits it’s taken a long time to get to this particular starting line. But he stresses there were good reasons for the delay.
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“When Stephen Hart left us for the big show with the men’s national team, there was an immediate board meeting that said ‘we’ve got to fill it.’” Montagliani explains. “And to give credit to the board, we took a step back and said, okay, we’ve done this before, and the truth of the matter is I’m not sure when we last had a successful technical director.
“We’ve had a lot of good people, but we’ve always seen this position as someone who can come in with holy water and fix all our problems. And that is so unrealistic, it’s not even funny. The truth of the matter is, the reason why we took time was we were in a massive process of, not only governance reform, but also – and I think this has been missed by a lot of people – there’s been a lot of reform on the operations side.”
This refers to CSA secretary general Peter Montopoli, who has been spearheading the day-to-day running of the sport, while all the larger governance changes were debated and adopted.
“Everybody’s been fixating themselves on the elimination of the provincial presidents from the CSA board, thinking that might be the silver bullet. But the truth of the matter is, we have changed the structure of the equation. And the governance committee has done work on rules and regulations, policies and procedures, and on the overall bylaws, which has gone unnoticed.”
In other words, the CSA held off the search for a TD, putting in place the people and structures the new appointee would need to actually move Canadian soccer forward.
“We feel confident now that the person in this position will have the resources that will help them in their vision,” the CSA president notes. “It probably took a year more than we would have liked, but we knew rushing right back in to hire a single person, who’d be doing the same thing over and over again, wasn’t what this was about.”
One of the major tasks facing the new TD will be filling out Wellness to World Cup, the CSA’s sweeping visions for long-term player development (LTPD). It’s been noted frequently that there is presently no curriculum to turn the outlines of the plan into a concrete teaching reality.
“First and foremost, it’s knowledge and experience, not just in the technical portions of the game, but also in terms of the realities Canadian soccer faces. Every country has realities. Even in Spain. There’s realities there too, even if you’re the world champions. In Canada and CONCACAF, you have to realize there are cultural differences in how we do business, in this country and in this region.”
Montagliani notes that Montopoli will remain in charge of operations, and the new technical director will report directly to him. And he promises that decisive things will get done.
“We’re the national body. This is our vision, and this is the way we move forward. And yes, we will build consensus, but we’re not going to have death by committee and death by royal commission. People are going to make decisions here, and we’re going to move forward.”
Montagliani declined to discuss specific possible candidates. The names Tony Fonseca and Jason de Vos were both raised on CSN recently.
“I think, to be fair to the process, I’m not going to comment on these people as technical directors. Anything I say – positively or negatively – could prematurely influence the process.
“Peter is fully aware of the journey we’ve traveled as it relates to the LTPD document. When he has this person sitting in front of him, he has the skill set to decide, in terms of the filtering process, if that’s the person that is in line with where we want to be five, ten years from now.”
Tomorrow: Montagliani on the Olympics.