SoccerWise - Open Mic | Vanni Sartini on MLS, U.S. Soccer & His Coaching Future

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

David Gass sits down with former Vancouver Whitecaps FC head coach and current Halifax Wanderers GM and head coach Vanni Sartini for the debut episode of Open Mic. Sartini opens up about his coaching journey, the USMNT, MLS and his vision for the future of the game in North America.0:00 Welcome to Open Mic2:20 New Chapter in Halifax4:42 The Growth of Soccer in Canada11:32 His Coaching Journey14:55 Developing Better Coaches19:40 Building the USMNT Identity26:36 Fixing Italian Soccer30:56 Inside the Vancouver Years40:32 MLS Is the Best Place to Coach45:05 Promotion & Relegation in MLSFor the sharpest coverage of American soccer, we’ve got you covered:https://linktr.ee/soccerwisehq

Hey, everybody, David Goss here for a nice big moment here at Kickback Soccer Media and Soccerwise. We are launching a new show today called Open Mic. So every Friday we're going to have sort of a more free-flowing, long-form interview where we get to know some of the great personalities around North American soccer. We get to sort of dig into maybe some stories that we never got resolutions on or learned some new things. But it really is a chance for me to sit down with some of the most fascinating people in the game. and just pick their brains, which it's one of my favorite things to do. But obviously with the ice cream shop, always open from Tommy Scoops, with Jordan, always ready to break down games,

with all of the news that's always flying around the U.S. men's national team and U.S. women's national team. We don't always get time to do it on our full show. So this is going to be our fifth show of the week. So every single week, soccer-wise, has you set every single day. Monday, of course, our MLS weekend recap, Tuesday, our NWSL show, Wednesday, our new U.S. soccer show where we will dig into all the biggest news as well as some big topic conversations around U.S. soccer. Thursday, our second MLS show of the week, and then

Fridays now are going to be our open mics. We have some fantastic interviews already recorded that we are ready to roll out with people who have won World Cups, with people who have worked at FIFA, people who own teams and are building global soccer empires. But how else do you start a show like this than with the man, the myth, and the legend? Mr. Vanny, Sartini. He is arguably the most entertaining character in North American soccer history, in Major League Soccer, now with the Halifax Wanderers in the Canadian Premier League. He's also a soccer genius. So I was really excited to have this avenue to sit down and talk with someone like this, to get his stories, to hear his opinions, both on the growth of the game,

as well as on the experiences he's had, his future and the future of the sport in the region. So it's an incredible interview. We talk about everything from coaching instruction that he did under U.S. soccer to how to fix the Italian FAA in the game in Italy to some of the wilder experiences he's had and his potential future. So enjoy the interview. Enjoy the show and we'll be back every single week with your open mic episodes. Well, let's talk to someone you all know very well, someone that we are big fans of here at soccer wise. We miss in MLS circles, but we're happy still around North America in the Canadian primarily. We're talking to the general manager and head coach of the Halifax Wanderers in Vanney Sartini.

Vanny, thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me. David, it's fantastic to be here. So many people will know you as the head coach of the Vancouver Whitecaps, which you did for a long time and worked among that organization. But give people a little update on where you're at right now, the work you're doing with Halifax. Yeah, at the beginning of the season in January,

I joined the Alifax Wanderers in the Canadian Premier League, one of my objective after my experience in Vancouver was to stay in North America and to let's say keep working on this part of the world that I really like

and yeah I had this offer at the end of last year to join this project that they were at the end of three years with a previous manager they did well they wanted to restart a new project with new players

a lot of young guys to insert in the team. And so, yeah, it's seven months now. It's really, it's a different challenge because, of course, the CPL is not the MLS. And there was a little bit of, I would say, a learning curve for me also to get in this new league and also to get into, as you said before, into this new dual role. I've never been like head coach or GM or technical director. like I like to say sometimes that you're also responsible to have the final say in building up the roster. And that has been, I would say, fascinating.

And by no means I want to say that I'm already good at it. But at least I'm improving with new challenge every day. So I guess for people who maybe aren't as in tune, obviously coming out of the World Cup, there's huge conversations around what's the future of soccer in Canada. in the U.S., North America in general. The CPL is kind of similar to Major League Soccer 30 years ago, which is the need to have a domestic league for a country that was about to host a Men's World Cup.

What do you see from the league? What do you see from its potential and the experience around it? Yeah, I think you frame it very well about talking about MLS 30 or 25 years ago. Like, you know, it's a league that just started is their seventh season. and it's a league where the resource are not big, and there's a lot of challenges because Canada is an enormous country,

so every team has a lot of expense on travel and trying to find the best way to frame the competition. But there's a lot of enthusiasm. There's a lot of enthusiasm in the ownership of the club that they want to really, really build the league in the best way possible. a lot of enthusiasts, but I think there's a lot of hunger for soccer in Canada. So it's really important to have a domestic league. Of course, we have some additional challenge that other leagues, that the MLS didn't have at the beginning of their existence. I give you an example.

It's like, you know, it's like you do. It's like we had the Portuguese League without Porto, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon, because the White Cups, TFC, and and Montreal they are playing in the American League. So it's a little bit of an additional challenge. So I think that the league needs to find an identity instead of being an alternative of competing with the MLS to be a league that has been very focused on the development of the domestic talent and to be as as quality as we can

to make sure that no talent, in Canada get wasted because they don't have the possibility to play. It's wild to think that Canada, a country of 30 or so million people, the talent that was put on the World Cup roster and some of it unavailable because of injury, how much talent there actually is in the country? What have you learned over the last seven, eight years living there of how much, like, individual soccer talent is in Canada? There is a lot.

There is a lot because, you know, that's, so soccer till I don't know probably 20, 25, 30 years ago was kind of an afterthought for a lot of Canadians because of course this is hockey country you know and you know soccer was okay maybe something that we can do in summer

because during the winter it's impossible to play there's no possibility to play. I think the development of like every city, every even little city now they have like I would say an indoor facility where they can play 12 months a year that is massive. And the fact that, you know, Canada is a very

also young immigrant population with a lot of roots from European country, but also northern Africa or the Francophone part of Africa where soccer is the first sport. So they brought a lot of passion for the game. And so this kind of mix

I think helped having a base of talent that is good. I think that, you know, you were talking about the national team that, of course, is the pinnacle of the pyramid. But, you know, the effort of the Federation against. First, having the three MLS team has been massive because if you didn't have the three MLS team, I don't think you would have now a national team

good like it is now. because like most of the players were developed by an MLS Academy. And then, of course, creating the league and also a level underneath the Premier League, that is the League 1 that is played in the difference province of Canada, helped the fact to give a platform and to have the possibility to have players, you know, being discovered not only at 16 years old, my baby, you know that someone needs like a little bit more time and to go to the bigger league and to arrive to the national team. Yeah, like when Ali Ahmed comes in the door,

and you watch him, are you saying this guy's got, you know, championship primary league potential in England? Well, I knew that he had potential. So Ali Ahmed, his story is fantastic because he arrived on trial when I was coaching the second team in Vancouver. So like before 2021. because a guy that he was kind of helping us in the college scouting, this guy was a retired policeman, and another policeman in Toronto told him, hey, there's a guy here that is really good and is playing very well. I think he can be of service,

and then we ask him the age, and it was already 20, 21. So he said, okay, maybe, you know, it's too old to come and try because it should be first-team quality. His luck was that he had some family close to Vancouver, so we didn't need to pay anything for him. He could come and get on trial for two weeks and stay at his own in Surrey. And as soon as we started working with him, say, no, this guy is very good. I remember after three or four trainings, Mark DeSantis was the head coach of the first team at that time to say, Mark, you need to, you need to, this guy needs to train with you because, you know, it doesn't make any sense that he trained with me. And then so I had him in the second team that was preparing to play in the next pro.

The next pro would have started the following year. And then, of course, you need a little bit of luck in life. And that year, I became the head coach for, you know, like Mark was fired in August. So I became the head coach. And the fact that I was. already there and I knew him. It wasn't a gamble to me to put him in the first team and then it went well. So that is just, I would say, in an actual, things that can happen in this country is so big that, you know, you can have players that can, that goes out from of the eyes of the scouts and maybe you have to recover them when they are 18, 19. And before that, before the, before the CPL, before the league one, you know, there was no possibility for these guys to go

to go forward. And now at least they have a platform to at least get back into the big level, maybe in the future. I want to talk about your career because it's an interesting one. And one of the questions I've always had to ask you, which I've never gotten the chances. So you come out of playing in Italy, you work as a coach, you worked as an assistant on staffs. You came to North America as a coaching educator. Yes. Did you have the intention to coach again your own team? Well, yes.

Well, you know, I'm telling you the story. So when I was in Italy, as a player, I wasn't that good of a player. But so I was playing like a good amateur player. So there's a lot of leagues in Italy, like, you know, and I was playing in the sixth, seventh leagues of the country. At the same time, I did all my studies, certification. I did a master in sports management. So I started working for the Federation when I was still playing. I was doing a lot of research for the Federation.

I wrote papers about the fact that I knew English, I knew Spanish. So they were sending me, oh, you can study this, what happened here, what happened there. So I was working for the Federation in this sense. The Italian Federation. The Italian Federation. And then I started coaching. I stopped playing. I started coaching.

Coaching went well. I wanted a couple of leagues in the lower leagues. And I was hired by a team in Saribe, Livorno, to be part of the staff. But I always worked for the Federation, too, doing coaching education for the Italian Federation, too, because that's what a passion of mine that always did. And because I was fluent in the languages, I was responsible for all the international matters, and they knew basically everybody in Europe, and even sometimes they came. I remember once, like Asher, Mendelso that is now in Houston, and the Cloudorina,

that was the sporting director of the Federation, they came to Covertiano in the world, and we were talking about the Italian way of coaching education, and I talked with them. So I knew a lot of people, and when the U.S. soccer, created this program to, I would say, enhance a better coaching education, to create a bigger pool of and to change their way of coaching education. For me, was like, I would say a no brain, tried to apply because I always had this, each that I wanted to live abroad. My coaching career was doing, was going fantastically.

I was an assistant coach in Serebe at the time. I was in Serea in the year before. So, you know, for a guy that never played soccer at the highest level was top. But I always had this idea that I wanted to do this something abroad. And so, like, I was hired because at the time the director of coaching education was a Dutch guy, Nico Romaine, that I knew from the Netherlands, from Europe. And yes, and at the beginning of 2016, I said goodbye to Italy and I went to Chicago with the idea of, okay, they're going to give me a three years contract.

I'm going to stay three years and then get back to Italy. And then, you know, I haven't come back yet. Your family's still waiting at the airport. Yeah, yeah. For you to come back in 2019. I want to ask about the coaching education because, you know, again, in this whole, how do we win the World Cup? How do we change all this stuff?

There are very few silver bullets. It is like this. We talked with the new C.O.O. of U.S. soccer. Dan Helfrich a few weeks ago, and, you know, it's, it's public funding for youth players to come into play in school. It's the change of culture. It's the growth of MLS and NWSL. But to me, having high-level coaches touching as many players as possible is the, like, potential of, if you ask me to invest in one thing, that's where I'd put it. What do you make of, of sort of the needs that exist there and, and what the steps are to improve the amount of good coaches

that there are. So I totally agree with you. And it's one of the things that I always been passionate about of soccer to the coaching education, because I really think that it can impact a lot of, it can impact the culture of a country. Like it can impact literally the level of a country. And there's no magic formula because there's a lot of way to do it even differently, like a coaching education, extremely tight with the youth national team, everything completely separated, go all into a philosophy, try to teach all the philosophy, like we were doing in Italy before, trying to teach every philosophy, and then every coaches will create their own ideas or whatever.

We need to have a high-level, I would say, coach educators in the program at every level. That means that, you know, I think U.S. soccer is doing a fantastic job. I personally know still a lot of people that are involved in the education. in coaching education there. And, you know, because, again, the country is so big and the needs are so different from, you know, coaching in a grassroots team, a grassroots club in Colorado or in the MLS, you know,

in the other way, in the other part of the country. But you need, I would say, a systemic approach, an approach that, you know, can create a pathway for everybody to reach, like literally, I want to start coaching, okay, so I must do even the boring, you know, basic license because I must understand how it is to be a coach. And then the higher you go to teach a lot, you know, the way that the game can be played, the tactics and everything else,

and all the fact. But at the same time, in my opinion, and that is something that I always like, I am against the coach. educators, the professional coach educators, the Jack Coach Educators. I think I really like when there's some kind of union between the youth national team and the coaching education department. I really love like what they were doing in Spain, for example, they're all the youth national

team coaches where we're also coach educators at the pro A and B level for everybody, because I think that that would be the best way to create, I would say, a philosophy that this combo and also to not make this coach educators forget what it is to be a coach. That was the reason why I left US soccer at the end of 2018. I loved. I loved your soccer. Okay, now he's in Atlanta, but I loved living in Chicago. Shout out.

It's the best city in the country. Best city in North America. So, you know, that's for me. Like, you know, like, I really love being, I love the people that I was working with, but I really miss coaching a team. and I really missed, I would say, and I really thought that, okay, if I'm talking, I was doing the pro license,

so I was teaching MLS coaches, say, if I stopped coaching in two, three years, I cannot tell them what my experience of three, four, five years ago, the game's changed, games on top of you. So I think that my advice would be to every youth national team coach in the job description should be also you have to be a coach,

but also you have to be a coach educator too, because in this way, that would create, in my opinion, a bigger sense of belonging and also, I would say, a higher level and of coach education for the practical part. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating because it's the whole, you know, debate is how do we create a culture

and how do we create a philosophy and how do we create a style? And as you're talking, I'm thinking, and it's come up a lot since the world, Cup that Luis Delafonte was a coaching educator and a youth national team coach. Now, having Lamin Amal in your team and guys like that makes it a little easier to be successful. That's okay. That's, of course, to win the World Cup, to win, to win the World Cup, you need the

generational talent at least. Okay. You know, I don't know any teams that won the World Cup without, or that without, ah, yeah, they were okay players. Right. Okay. You know, to win the World Cup. So, you know, and that happens because it happens, okay?

Yeah. You know, and that happens because it happens. But to be consistently, got to be honest with you, I don't think that this World Cup has been a success for the United States. Getting to the round of 16 home with a lot of, you know, push, push, push, push, push, I don't think it's been a success, you know. I think we need to, it's very hard, Because especially now, the teams are all good, and there's five rounds of elimination.

So, you know, Germany went out again. Again, I'm against the round of 32. There should be another group for me. The elimination should start from a round of 16. That's that I have all, I have ideas on everything. Great. So that's again. Great.

Good. We love my deals. But, yeah, I think that, you know, home and everything. Do you think the style was better? I mean, as someone who has now clearly watched and worked around this team for a while. I think that, you know, the team had a clear style. The team has a clear identity in the World Cup. They didn't have it before.

For sure. So I think, okay, also, Pocetino arrived. He didn't have the entire cycle, the four years to go, so he had to do a lot of trial and error. But, you know, he tried a couple things, then he there. And then, luckily, he found a way to a certain way, to find, to trust certain players. I was really happy that on this cycle, of course, I'm biased. So I love MLS players because I worked in the MLS for so far, that a lot of MLS player had their chance to play for the national team,

that it wasn't the case before. So I think that they create a style that not necessarily, not necessarily needs to be the style for the next four years because I think that the style of play is very well designed by the player pool that you have at that moment, the best player the best players that you have. But creating an identity now, even international soccer, even Canada, for example, with Jesse arrived and, you know, with five or six very simple concept, Canada plays the same way every game, basically. And they played like a little bit like a club. They reached the round of 16 that their best. the best result ever. Then, when you arrive at that level, for me, there's the quality. In fact, when Canada face Morocco, just having an identity, it's not enough because

Morocco is better than you. And you lose. No, it's true. Yeah, 100%. So, but I think you reach the maximum that you could have reached with the team that Canada had. The US, more or less, they had the last. to face Belgium in the round of 16 because you can, it's, it's a, you could, I think the,

we, we, and so we got a route for Canada, I root for the US, and root for Italy. I think they should have gone at least to the quarterfinal. Yeah, I think, I think that's completely fair. It's a debate we've had on this show for weeks now. And there's not a clear answer. And to me, that's a failure. The fact that we couldn't come out of this World Cup and 100% say. Yeah, I'm not going to say a fail.

I'm not going to say failure, but it's not 100% success. Agreed. Totally agreed on that side of things. Let me ask you this one, because I'm sure you've thought about it. So one of the things we've gotten is it feels like the international and club game have moved further and further apart in terms of what you can build, the time you have with the players, how it works. Do you believe in having club coaches come into a national team for the first time ever with national team?

Would you, in your dream scenario, be building? up your youth national team coaches to take over the senior national team? How different do you think they are? I think there's no, I think there's no recipe and it's a lot, I would say, according to the culture of the country. Give an example, the work of De La Fuente works in Spain because Spain has a clear identity of the top team playing a certain way, the national team playing a certain way, that is 20 years that are like this. And of course, we, we, tweaks according to the development of the game, but that is the kind of the clear identity that you can really build someone from the academy and bring it to the first team. In other country

where I make you the example of Italy, that is not a very good example because we missed the last three-world cap. But in Italy, where we have a pride of not having a national style, but our national style is everybody needs to know everything because you need to be adaptable and every coach has to have their own ideas, I think it makes completely sense to try and hire a club coach to put it there. In the United States, because there's no, in my opinion at the moment, a clear, like this is the American way of playing soccer. This is the American way of playing the game. I think it makes sense to go and hire a coach that is a very good club coach, like has been Pochettino in the last few years. If you ask me in terms of course, it's top that the United States have Pochettino,

I would have loved to see a guy that maybe did fantastically in the MLS in America, going to be the head coach of the national team. Like that's like, you know, like a Wilfrid Nancy, you know, something like this. In fairness, Burrhalter was that, right? Yeah, yeah, because Greg was that. Greg was that and be there. Because I think also you need to be, I don't want to say,

it looked to me that sometimes that rightly so, because, yeah, it was called by, you know, Real Madrid, you went to, say, see Milan, whatever. It looked like the U.S. national team wasn't the first priority, rightly so and it would be like say no it needs to be that the dream job if you want to win the world cup um i want to ask you more about your career but i do have to touch here before we move on italy at the time of recording this it's maldini has already left and yeah yeah it's been a mess like i guess let me ask this because we sort of talked about this on one of our shows

is this a is there a bigger problem in players and the the health of the game in Italy, or is it just chaos in the Federation? I would say everything can be improved. So first of all, I'm telling you a joke, something like, you know, I work for the Italian Federation until 2015. We never miss a World Cup qualification since I left, you know. Yeah. It's the vanity curse.

Yeah, yeah. But in fairness, we missed the qualification for 2018 when I was working for the for you for your soccer. So that's, you know, like the U.S. didn't make the Russia game. But, no, I think you have to look at the thing like, you know, because it's easy to say, yeah, we need to renew everything, blah, blah, blah. So that's, I would say, a problem of quality, you know.

There's a problem of quality. And it's given also by the fact that our club teams are not winning the chance. The last time that in Italian club won the Champions League was 21 years ago, Milan, 2005. Yeah, the year before we won the World Cup. So, you know, and before we had a top – and we are no longer the top league because Bundesliga and the Premier League and the league are higher rated than the Seredia. That's the problem of quality. But for me, there's more a problem of, you know, what you say, management of –

the Federation and the national team per se, because if you look at the result of the youth team, Italy never had the result with the youth team that they had in the last 10 years. Winning Euro 19, winning Euro 17, final of the EU20 World Cup, semi-final of the next U-20 World Cup. So the talent is there. The talent is that. We never had that result before. Now we really miss what sees the, I would say, bringing in the world.

these guys on the national team. So the only period of success of the national team, we won the euros because, okay, we missed the three World Cup, but we won the euro in 2021. Was with Mancini that is just being rehired as a national team coach. And Mancini, what did? What did he do? He promoted what I said before.

A style, a clear style, even a completely different. No, I'm not going to say that because all the club they're playing back three, the big club back three and playing back three. No, we play in this way. We play positional football. We try to play like this. And it was successful in this way.

So I think we need to manage the national team in a way that, okay, this is the direction and to go and to have a clear direction. And it wasn't that way in the last two, three men. Because after Mancini left because he went to Saudi Arabia, we go with Spalletti, but not backing him too much. And he was changing every time. Then came Gattuzo that he was. wasn't like, you know, coming with a lot of emergency kind of things.

And so we didn't have a real plan. And it looked now that he was going to have a real plan with Maldini in charge and he was choosing the coach and blah, blah, blah, blah, to have it four years. He didn't go this way. At the end, they decided to hire Mancini again. I think the most important thing is to give a real plan. One. And the other thing is for me is to facilitate the, since we have this talent with a

19, 20 years old, to bring them in the first team. And we're starting in Italy, having the second team, playing in the third division like it happened in the other big league. Only four teams they have it at the moment. I think that need to happen for every team in Syria, because in this way we can have a lot of these talents that can grow and maybe play back in those big team in two, three years instead of losing themselves, because of course it's going to be hard to break into Juventus or Inter or Milan when you're 19.

Let's talk about Vancouver now. Because you said Chicago, best city in North America. I assume Vancouver is second on that list. Vancouver is second. Vancouver is best city in Canada. I love, I always say, if you if you say beautiful, Vancouver is more beautiful than Chicago. Vancouver is more beautiful than Chicago.

Chicago, it was like really fantastic. It was the first experience abroad and, you know, a lot of things. It's a great city. It's a great city. But of course, home is Vancouver. As I said, every time when I was doing the interview, and Vancouver is the home of the White Cups.

So Vegas, do your team by your home, whatever. Phoenix, whatever, do your team by your home. The White Cups belong only to Vancouver. Had you ever heard anything about this while you were there? Is this all more recent? It's, you know, the background is not that recent. the problem that we had with the BC place. They had with the stadium.

I give you an example. Like, you know, we didn't play playoff game home. We were supposed to play home. And we went to play in Portland against Portland because we had like, there was like a monster truck or something thing. And, you know, that tells you how badly it needs to be solved. We didn't play a Champions League game against Tigris.

There would have been like a 30, 35,000 people game. And we had to play in Victoria in a very small stadium because there was like a home and garden show. So that tells you how badly the stadium thing needs to be solved for the White Cups. But I remember the thing that the club was going to be solved. happened like in the last few months that I was there. But what I say is like it's impossible to think of the white caps away from Vancouver.

You know, the white caps are really part of the fabric of Vancouver. I was talking about Chicago before, but they can talk about New York. The white caps are more important for Vancouver than the galaxy are important from LA, that the fire are important for Chicago, that the NYCFC is important for New York because it's really part of the fabric of the city. Everybody in the city knows the White Cups. Everybody in the city loves the team.

And so the culture that you have there, it's impossible for me to move the team to another city. Would be really bad. When you were working with the caps, obviously, you know, Ryan Gould was a big addition, big signing. And they've made the Thomas Mueller ad a little bit more recently. But from the outside, it feels like they're playing with one arm tied behind their back. Did it feel that way in the club that you look at L.AFC, you look at Seattle,

look at Miami and say, you know, we believe in ourselves. Like you were successful, you went and beat Portland, but that maybe it wasn't even footing? Well, the thing is that so when I, took over. The club was not in the best shape possible, okay, for a bunch of things, especially financially, came out of two years of COVID, where we weren't allowed to play in Vancouver because we had to relocate first in Portland and then in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in the, you know, getting back the, the, the rules in Canada for COVID, even after the pandemic, were much more stringent than the rule in the

United States so there was no possibility to have a lot of people at the stadium, blah, blah, blah. So we were like in the lowest possible. And I arrived in the team when that happened, when this kind of thing happened, you know, we lost a Canadian championship game against the Pacific CPL team and so they decided to make a change. So they put me there as an interim and but I was very lucky that I arrived there that they just signed Ryan goal two weeks ago. So, yeah, you know, we did okay and we brought the club, not me, not just me, but me. And, you know, we did four years with four positive season in terms of record, three qualification at the playoff, we won three times the Canadian Championship, the Champions League,

blah, blah, blah. And that helped a lot to, you know, build up the club again, having again, like instead of 6,000, 8,000, 9,000 at the stadium, 25,000, and having the possibility to be, to be, and at the same time, we had this idea, okay, we need to build something in order to go and spend something, you know? And, you know, the fact that we, they started to do it more, more recently is a little bit of a problem, you know, because, you know, they never signed Thomas Mueller when I was there. They did not. They did not.

You did not get a World Cup winner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in fairness, I think that it was the right way to do because the club in this way built up, I would say, in a very, it was a process and he went up every year. Every year we were playing better. We were doing more points. We're getting the playoff, winning a game in the playoff, almost getting to the next round. And then, you know, things bloomed at the right moment, and it's not a case for me that it happened when I left. I left and there, because I think that after me doing that work, even the player that they needed maybe a different voice to make the last step,

but I'm really, really proud of taking the club in a really, really, you know, low moment and having brought them in a sustainable way to work. to where they were right before having a fantastic season last year. Yeah, it's been six years. It feels like a progressive growth inside of that crazy high moments, incredible performances, big signings, young players. Some of the big memories people will have, though, are things you would have said or done,

which are less involved with the specific coaching role. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you see your role as when you're a coach and whether it's something, whether it's talking about referees and being, specific to the game or talking about politics or talking about culture or things around it. Like how do you see your role? So talking about the referees, especially it was one of the biggest mistake on not understanding the culture,

even if I was here for like, I've been here for five or six years. Because that night where I made that joke that went unfortunately viral and everything, and it costed me $20,000, by the way. So that's... Like, you know, I made a joke, like could have done doing in... Like, if you do it in TV in Italy, it's... I'm going to say it's nothing, but it's almost nothing. Right.

And here it's not. And, you know, my bed. There was my bed. And, you know, I really understand that... I really think that if you come to a different cultural environment, you need to, in order to promote the good thing of your culture, you need to adapt to the culture. I think I've done perfectly in a lot of things. And I think I need to do better.

And I'm always done trying to do better. I needed to do better in the relationship with the referee. You could see a lot of European coaches that come to the MLS or Mexican coaches like, you know, if you see now the league's cap. You know, all the Mexican teams, the Mexican coaches, they seem like crazy. For sure. And they're all getting red cards. Yeah, yeah, because that's the way that you live the game and you need to improve. And that's what I did.

And I put a lot of effort, even not ashamed to say therapy and whatever, to become better there. That's the thing that the referee. The other thing, the cultural, the political stuff, I really think that if you have a platform and you really believe in something, you need to. to be, I would say, vocal for things that are important to you and not hiding yourself if someone asks you something. Because, unfortunately, we live in a world where a lot of people, they don't have the possibility to have a voice,

they don't have the possibility to say something, and getting behind the thing, no, I'm just a football coach, I'm not talking about these kind of things. For me, it's a little bit of BS. in the sense is just hiding from society. And I think that because you've been lucky that you have a platform, if you can use the platform in order to promote causes and things that for you are very important

and you think that are going to be beneficial for other people, you have to do it. Do you, and I agree and love hearing a lot of what you said, but do you think it's since you've left the caps negatively affected at all, maybe potential for other MLSA? coaching jobs? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. I think that, so since I left the caps, I had two interviews, two coaching. So my, my, my, my objective was and he's still. So, you know, you know, you have a big audience. So. MLS sporting directors, you know, if you listen. Listen up. My objective is to come back to the MLS. That's, I got to, I got to be completely honest,

unless it's like, it will never happen to me, unless it's a top, top, top, top, top in the world, there's no league better than the MLS. There's no league better than the MLS. There's no league better than, like, you know, if you have to coach a, I've got to be an average team in Italy, you know, it's better to coach in the MLS for me. That's, that's because of lifestyle. Because of lifestyle, you know, the fact that you can work with a lot of things. I did a lot of coaching education when I came back. So this is a league where you really can teach and promote your style of play and your way of working

because we have a big advantage. There's no relegation. So if you lose two games, but if you're really, like, there's a story that is perfect this year that I really love that would exemplify how MLS is. It's San Luis that are playing a fantastic football under Johan. They're winning.

If San Luis was in a league with the relegation, Johann would have probably been sacked after four or five games. And we would have lost the possibility to see this team flourish and bloom like it happening. So I think there's no better league to work as a coach that this league and to promote your idea. And also the fact that even though they're getting away from there, but all the rules, the salary cap and whatever, it makes possible if you go to coach the number 30 team to play against the number one team and try to win. things that it's impossible in any other league in the world. So that is the, that is the, so I want to, but getting back to myself, since I lost the, the job with the caps, and again, four years of doing well, four years of getting the playoff

every time, winning the domestic cup every year that I played the domestic cap with a team that you were saying was underspending. So I didn't think that, okay. I'm going to have like every team in the league calling to me. But a specific target of teams to reach out to me, yes. And in the last year and a half, I only did two interviews. And I was very close to the New England job in November, and then they chose Marco.

And I interviewed with Colorado too. So those are the two. And for me, people think that I'm just, quote unquote, funny guy or the guy who that they went crazy against the referee, or the guy who said that God doesn't exist, or the guy who said that I want to be like, I like socialist. That, by the way, he wasn't mainstream when I study the MLS. Now it's the mainstream thing.

Maybe I'm going to take a little bit of credit. Maybe, yeah, yeah, leading a movement. Yeah. So I think it went a little bit against me, but that's who I am. And at the end, I can do anything against who I am. I think, to be honest, I've got to be completely honest with you, I was disappointed that I didn't receive a call from some club for interviews in the lot because I thought it was perfect for their job. But at the end, it's not. it's not fault of anybody. You need to be liked by the Gns and hopefully it will happen in the future. We would love to have you back in Major League Soccer. We would love to cover you every single week once again. Glad you're enjoying your time, though, in Canada.

It's summer in Halifax. So it's the right time to be there. Let me close you out on this one, because you sort of brought it up in the coaching conversation. There was a comment from a player in Atlanta who talked about the lack of pressure, in Major League Soccer and how if basically his team was that bad in South America, they'd be burning cars. And there's obviously a lot of conversation around promotion relegation.

You talked about why it's great to coach here because of those things. Does it help develop the best players in teams? Or should there be pro rel in that pressure and that change? It needs to be, the pressure is there because the pro rel in the MLS is getting to the playoff. Getting the playoff is really a big thing. And, you know, it's getting into the first 50. percent of the of the of the of the of the of the of the of the league and and trying to win the I really like two things first that it's going to be next year everybody playing everybody

you know that's that's one of the things that you like so far so you know for me the shield lost its value when you didn't you started it not playing everybody else I I think the last team that won the shield is 2018, the Red Bulls, the real shield. So that's 2018 or 2018. So that's what I think. Like, you know, since you started not playing everybody, so it doesn't make any sense. So and having the playoff as a line that it needs to be some kind of pressure. Then the culture of certain country, like you were saying, like South America or even Italy, like, you know,

you know, that the fans are arriving. That's a culture that cannot be created like, you know, artificially. It needs to be there. And I think that now every club has, you know, the pressure to do well. If you look at before, I was talking about being a coach here. I remember when I arrived, there was a lot of guys staying in the same club for six, seven, eight, nine years. It's no longer the case. Maybe they're going to give you the first.

No, it's one of the highest turnover leagues now for coaches in the world. Yeah. If you're not going to give it the first year. One thing that we should change, in my opinion, is there should be much more financial incentive. I don't know how the league through if they do a new contract with television or whatever, if you do well. Yeah, because if you do well, more reward. More reward. In this way, you are, you are, the club like an average club, like, you know, like the White Cups now, but, you know, like, you know, Salt Lake, Colorado, whatever.

You know, getting five, six or seven million at the end of the year, it's a lot for us and everything. It should be there and that kind of pressure will help. I don't think, I think that the fact that. There's no relegation, so there's no pressure. It's not an argument that I like. Yeah, I think that's fair. I think it makes sense. You know, it is one where everyone says it.

And then at the same time, coming out of June, five MLS coaches get fired because their team is not on a path to make in the playoffs. It's not performing or is not, or is not doing well or whatever. But at the same time, not having the relegation gives a sporting director. If he really believes in a coach, okay, no, I'm going to give you a lee. We have at least 10 games to see if you get out of it. And then this thing, it allows us to this change, you know, Philadelphia changed the coach after winning the league last year. They won the shield.

You know, they changed the coach. They weren't doing well. And so, okay, they changed the code. And so I would say it's an argument that, you know, there is pressure and you need to, and you can really, I would say, try. in this league. It's not because there's no relegation that is a retirement league because it's not.

There's a lot of players that arrive here. Levandowski-Muller, they arrive with 35 and not. But there's a lot of young players, young American players, young Canadian players, young South American players that come that make this league really good. If you are a soccer fan and you have to watch, you know,

any average league in Europe, the MLS is better. The MLS is better than the Portuguese league, except the top three teams, then the Dutch League, then the Belgian League, then the Swedish league. It's the MLS is better. He's an expert, and he's the one who's saying it so you can all believe it. And if you're a sicko listening to Soccer-wise, then you probably agree. But it's always nice to hear it.

Vanny, appreciate you taking the time. Always happy to chat. Hopefully, we'll see you with an MLS team soon, but either way, we'll have to have you back. Fantastic. Thank you so much. I know. You're upset that I am. I ended that as much as I am. Unfortunately for all of you, I got to chat with Vanney for another 45 minutes after we finished

there. He is one of the best. I am so glad that he gave us the time to talk, really appreciative of him. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you did, send it to friends, send it to family, send it to people who you think will enjoy it. But this is not the end for us. We've got an open mic episode coming every single Friday going forward. So make sure to follow us.

make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review if you enjoyed it so that other people can find it and we'll talk to you all again very, very soon.