VANCOUVER, BC - Whitecaps FC sporting director Axel Schuster and head coach Marc Dos Santos addressed the media on Wednesday via video conference, providing the latest updates on the club's plans and inner workings.
- FULL VIDEO:Schuster, Dos Santos media roundtable
MICROCYCLE & HOME SETUP
Schuster said the club is working every day to make sure that everything is organized and well put for their players.
“To be honest with you, I really think as a club and I've had a lot of feedback from the players, there's not much more we could do. The club has done an incredible job,” said Dos Santos.
Dos Santos said that the club has implemented an online microcycle for players and staff. Using the current week as an example, he outlined a schedule that includes training sessions on five of the seven days. Thursday is dedicated to film session, with a different theme tackled every week. Sunday is kept vacant as an off day and for planning for the next week.
To keep players as close to match fitness as possible, each player has been given a fitness bike and a home gym set including weights and exercise bands customized to each player's needs. Pictured on the right is Lucas Cavallini's home office, which has now been converted into a personal gym.
Players have also been given nutrition programs to follow, with each player getting weekly deliveries for easy and healthy meal prep.
COACHING THE COACHES
The break from league play has brought some benefits for the club's brain trust, allowing for focus to be given to other important fields besides match results and transfer windows.
"One is the development department. Development means methodology and development of players and employees," said Schuster. "My opinion is that the best chance in this system of parity, the best chance to get an advantage is to do things in a different way and to be more creative. Because if everybody does the same thing everybody, at the end, nobody can can make the big step forward."
"If Red Star Belgrade and Dynamo Zagreb can be two of the 10 best academies and development clubs in the world, why shouldn't it be our target to be one of these 10 in the future?" posited Schuster.
And how does a club do that?
"Build an environment that is good to develop players. The easiest way to develop players is first coach the coaches, coach the athletic coaches, coach the performance coaches, coach the academic coaches and so on. So we are investing a lot of time in in building models," explained Schuster. "For example, in these times, we connect all our academy centre coaches all over Canada with our first team staff, and Phil Dos Santos will start with teaching principles and methods to make them better."
RECRUITMENT & REVISITING THE MODEL
Schuster also shed some light on how the club is approaching their recruitment during this time.
"We are speaking about the recruitment process and who should be the right person and profile for our Director of Recruitment and how do we want to do this process," said Schuster. "If we do it in the same way than everybody else, we will not get an advantage. So we are thinking about alternative models to scout and recruit in North America, but also all over the world."
As for recruiting in the present, Dos Santos says his focus is on making sure the players that were acquired over the offseason get incorporated onto their model of play.
"My concern is the players we have. It's more a question mark about how is it going to all look when we get back. I revisit the model because when we start again, we're going to have everybody available," said Dos Santos. "The moves are Janio Bikel, who joined at the end. (Leonard) Owusu, Erik Godoy, Ranko (Veselinovic). These are all guys that haven't been with the team in a full capacity yet so it's exciting to revisit the big lines of how we want to play. The majority of it has been clear since preseason, but also are we going to develop that further with everybody involved now."
While Schuster and Dos Santos continue to use this time to find ways to improve the club and have the team ready, what's of utmost importance today is not lost on them.
“We should do what we have to do, to take our social responsibility, to help the community, to do the right things to help flatten the curve and if we can manage that, then we will find a solution for everything else,” said Schuster. “There are bigger problems that have to be solved right now. And I think if the time is right, we will find solutions to go on with our competition and we will prepare for every single scenario.”
Max Fossey contributed to this report.
