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| Patrick Vieira interview: 'I’m here at New York City FC to win' | Patrick Vieira interview: 'I’m here at New York City FC to win' |
| (7 months later) | |
| About halfway through Patrick Vieira’s press conference on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium — his first as New York City FC coach – the Frenchman was asked about the great coaches he had worked with and who he would emulate. | About halfway through Patrick Vieira’s press conference on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium — his first as New York City FC coach – the Frenchman was asked about the great coaches he had worked with and who he would emulate. |
| Having rattled through a familiar litany on José Mourinho’s thorough preparations, Arsène Wenger’s encouragement of self-expression, Roberto Mancini’s drive, and Manuel Pellegrini’s cool, Vieira said that it would be a mistake to be anything but himself. | Having rattled through a familiar litany on José Mourinho’s thorough preparations, Arsène Wenger’s encouragement of self-expression, Roberto Mancini’s drive, and Manuel Pellegrini’s cool, Vieira said that it would be a mistake to be anything but himself. |
| Vieira didn’t elaborate a great deal on who he was — and as one of the iconic footballers of his generation you could argue he didn’t really need to. Yet compared to his one-time nemesis Roy Keane, whose name cropped up a couple of times during the press conference, Vieira’s entry into management has been by a much more circuitous route, and it is legitimate to wonder who exactly Patrick Vieira the manager will be. | Vieira didn’t elaborate a great deal on who he was — and as one of the iconic footballers of his generation you could argue he didn’t really need to. Yet compared to his one-time nemesis Roy Keane, whose name cropped up a couple of times during the press conference, Vieira’s entry into management has been by a much more circuitous route, and it is legitimate to wonder who exactly Patrick Vieira the manager will be. |
| So after the packed press conference has emptied out and Vieira has retreated to an ante room in the stadium for one-on-one interviews, I asked him directly, “As a coach, who are you?” | So after the packed press conference has emptied out and Vieira has retreated to an ante room in the stadium for one-on-one interviews, I asked him directly, “As a coach, who are you?” |
| Vieira laughed: “I’m passionate about the job. I’m really excited. I’m really determined. I’m on the front foot, you know what I mean? I want to go and get it, you know? I’m passionate about the job.” | Vieira laughed: “I’m passionate about the job. I’m really excited. I’m really determined. I’m on the front foot, you know what I mean? I want to go and get it, you know? I’m passionate about the job.” |
| There’s no reason to doubt it, and yet Vieira’s elliptical route into his first management job, via a two-year ambassador role with Manchester City, and a stint as the coach of their Elite Development Squad, doesn’t necessarily hint at a man driven to manage. Since Keane has come up, I ask if he wasn’t tempted to follow the Irishman’s route directly into the dugout, indeed whether the opportunities were there for him to do so. | There’s no reason to doubt it, and yet Vieira’s elliptical route into his first management job, via a two-year ambassador role with Manchester City, and a stint as the coach of their Elite Development Squad, doesn’t necessarily hint at a man driven to manage. Since Keane has come up, I ask if he wasn’t tempted to follow the Irishman’s route directly into the dugout, indeed whether the opportunities were there for him to do so. |
| “I wasn’t ready to manage straight away. You have a few players who stopped, and managed a first team straight away and were successful, and then there are the other ones who take different pathways. And I think what was important for me was to understand what I really wanted to do,” said Vieira. | “I wasn’t ready to manage straight away. You have a few players who stopped, and managed a first team straight away and were successful, and then there are the other ones who take different pathways. And I think what was important for me was to understand what I really wanted to do,” said Vieira. |
| “After I stopped I was an ambassador for the club for two years, and that gave me the opportunity to spend time in every department in a football club at Manchester City, and then I found my way to work out what I want to do. And then I spent time with the Elite Development Squad, and that helped me build up a clear idea, a philosophy of how I wanted to play. And I believe this is the right time for me to do it.” | “After I stopped I was an ambassador for the club for two years, and that gave me the opportunity to spend time in every department in a football club at Manchester City, and then I found my way to work out what I want to do. And then I spent time with the Elite Development Squad, and that helped me build up a clear idea, a philosophy of how I wanted to play. And I believe this is the right time for me to do it.” |
| It probably is the right time, though not just for opportune reasons. Vieira is at the point where his playing reputation will soon begin to have diminishing returns in terms of what it automatically contributes to his managerial stock — and the New York City challenge has come along right at a moment when any ambitions he might have had for the top job at Manchester City have been put on hold by the potential arrival of Pep Guardiola. | It probably is the right time, though not just for opportune reasons. Vieira is at the point where his playing reputation will soon begin to have diminishing returns in terms of what it automatically contributes to his managerial stock — and the New York City challenge has come along right at a moment when any ambitions he might have had for the top job at Manchester City have been put on hold by the potential arrival of Pep Guardiola. |
| So when NYCFC’s first coach Jason Kreis was deemed to have come up short in his debut season, Vieira offered in-house continuity for City Football Group, along with the type of reputation unlikely to be fazed by managing the likes of David Villa, Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo. | So when NYCFC’s first coach Jason Kreis was deemed to have come up short in his debut season, Vieira offered in-house continuity for City Football Group, along with the type of reputation unlikely to be fazed by managing the likes of David Villa, Frank Lampard and Andrea Pirlo. |
| Not that he’s exactly the company man being brought into troubleshoot. Vieira’s position regarding the City Football Group project may be unambiguously positive (“I’d never heard of something like that, I’d never seen something like that … I was really proud and really happy to be part of it. Because for me to learn, it was unbelievable.”), yet he’s reluctant to accept any stock explanation for what went wrong in the NYCFC debut season — from Kreis being out of his depth, to the roster being unbalanced — at face value. As he tells me, Vieira prides himself on his independent analysis: | Not that he’s exactly the company man being brought into troubleshoot. Vieira’s position regarding the City Football Group project may be unambiguously positive (“I’d never heard of something like that, I’d never seen something like that … I was really proud and really happy to be part of it. Because for me to learn, it was unbelievable.”), yet he’s reluctant to accept any stock explanation for what went wrong in the NYCFC debut season — from Kreis being out of his depth, to the roster being unbalanced — at face value. As he tells me, Vieira prides himself on his independent analysis: |
| “Talking with the previous coach helped me understand better what went right or went wrong last year. I’m a good listener and I take into consideration everything people tell me, but at the same time, I believe my eyes as well as the experience I had as a player. So players who underperform? There has to be a reason why … my job is for them to perform.” | “Talking with the previous coach helped me understand better what went right or went wrong last year. I’m a good listener and I take into consideration everything people tell me, but at the same time, I believe my eyes as well as the experience I had as a player. So players who underperform? There has to be a reason why … my job is for them to perform.” |
| It’s not an easy job, especially within the unique complexity of MLS. Vieira spent a day at the draft last week, looking commendably relaxed as he navigated his first edition of that particular cattle market, but he faces a steep learning curve learning all the arcane rules and mechanisms of the league: “I’ll be learning every day, I tell you,” winces Vieira. | It’s not an easy job, especially within the unique complexity of MLS. Vieira spent a day at the draft last week, looking commendably relaxed as he navigated his first edition of that particular cattle market, but he faces a steep learning curve learning all the arcane rules and mechanisms of the league: “I’ll be learning every day, I tell you,” winces Vieira. |
| But he is far from critical of the new strictures he will have to learn to deal with — and when I ask if there are any which might be productively applied in Europe, he sounds enthused by the challenge: | But he is far from critical of the new strictures he will have to learn to deal with — and when I ask if there are any which might be productively applied in Europe, he sounds enthused by the challenge: |
| “The salary cap maybe? Because the way I see it, and working with Claudio [Reyna, NYCFC’s sporting director] and David [Lee, head of player recruitment], you know what you have and you have to build a successful football club [from that]. You have this budget to build a team, and it’s not just 11 players — it’s 26, 28 players. And you can’t put all the money in on one player. And for me the collective is more important than the individual … it’s all about strategy and I really enjoy it. And I think it gives clubs stability as well, not to be in debt and to survive a bit longer, and I think that was what Platini was trying to do with financial fair play.” | “The salary cap maybe? Because the way I see it, and working with Claudio [Reyna, NYCFC’s sporting director] and David [Lee, head of player recruitment], you know what you have and you have to build a successful football club [from that]. You have this budget to build a team, and it’s not just 11 players — it’s 26, 28 players. And you can’t put all the money in on one player. And for me the collective is more important than the individual … it’s all about strategy and I really enjoy it. And I think it gives clubs stability as well, not to be in debt and to survive a bit longer, and I think that was what Platini was trying to do with financial fair play.” |
| And for anyone pointing at previous ill-starred adventures of European coaches in MLS management (Ruud Gullit’s disastrous LA Galaxy reign remains the prime example), some of Vieira’s comments suggest he has been following the league closely enough to have a fair idea of what the challenges and pitfalls are. Here he is on roster building: | And for anyone pointing at previous ill-starred adventures of European coaches in MLS management (Ruud Gullit’s disastrous LA Galaxy reign remains the prime example), some of Vieira’s comments suggest he has been following the league closely enough to have a fair idea of what the challenges and pitfalls are. Here he is on roster building: |
| “Some managers spend the majority of the money at the front and not at the back, or at the back and not at the front. And then you look at the story of MLS in the last three or four years, and I look at the teams who’ve won it and I think the majority of the teams weren’t built round DPs. | “Some managers spend the majority of the money at the front and not at the back, or at the back and not at the front. And then you look at the story of MLS in the last three or four years, and I look at the teams who’ve won it and I think the majority of the teams weren’t built round DPs. |
| “That’s why it’s really important for the manager and the people who are working around him to be clear about the philosophy and the way they want to play … but every single position is really important. Because sometimes I hear a coach say, ‘we’re going to take the left- or the right-back as a low salary,’ but I don’t understand it, because for me the right-back is as important as the No9; our goalkeeper is as important as a No9; our No10 is as important as a winger. So we need to find the right balance and the players to be successful.” | “That’s why it’s really important for the manager and the people who are working around him to be clear about the philosophy and the way they want to play … but every single position is really important. Because sometimes I hear a coach say, ‘we’re going to take the left- or the right-back as a low salary,’ but I don’t understand it, because for me the right-back is as important as the No9; our goalkeeper is as important as a No9; our No10 is as important as a winger. So we need to find the right balance and the players to be successful.” |
| For CFG, success in MLS terms means a minimum benchmark of making the play-offs, as Kreis found out to his cost in the team’s debut year. Vieira is diplomatic about the positives from that year, while acknowledging that he too will now be measured by far tougher criteria than he was in developing young players in Manchester: | For CFG, success in MLS terms means a minimum benchmark of making the play-offs, as Kreis found out to his cost in the team’s debut year. Vieira is diplomatic about the positives from that year, while acknowledging that he too will now be measured by far tougher criteria than he was in developing young players in Manchester: |
| “When you look at the first year, having 20,000 season tickets, playing against the Red Bulls in front of 50,000 people, is success. And now we want to have success on the field. When I worked with EDS I had time to build up the development of young players. And I’m in a different level now. I’m here to win. You understand what I mean? | “When you look at the first year, having 20,000 season tickets, playing against the Red Bulls in front of 50,000 people, is success. And now we want to have success on the field. When I worked with EDS I had time to build up the development of young players. And I’m in a different level now. I’m here to win. You understand what I mean? |
| “When you’re in youth development, you have to develop players — win or come in second. But the job where I am and the reality of our industry is to win to be successful, and that is what I have to do. I have to be successful and I want to be successful, so we’ll do everything we can do to win.” | “When you’re in youth development, you have to develop players — win or come in second. But the job where I am and the reality of our industry is to win to be successful, and that is what I have to do. I have to be successful and I want to be successful, so we’ll do everything we can do to win.” |
| It’s one of the paradoxes of speaking with Vieira that even his motivational words are delivered with a surprisingly gentle intonation, which combined with his perpetual air of watchfulness, can give the misleading impression of Vieira being equivocal, even hesitant. It’s sometimes only in reading the transcript that you see the certainty and determination behind his words. His managerial career begins in earnest now, and when Patrick Vieira says this is the right time for him, you’d better know he believes it. | It’s one of the paradoxes of speaking with Vieira that even his motivational words are delivered with a surprisingly gentle intonation, which combined with his perpetual air of watchfulness, can give the misleading impression of Vieira being equivocal, even hesitant. It’s sometimes only in reading the transcript that you see the certainty and determination behind his words. His managerial career begins in earnest now, and when Patrick Vieira says this is the right time for him, you’d better know he believes it. |
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