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MLS PLAYOFFS MEDIA CONFERENCE

December 5, 2016

Greg Vanney

New York, New York

THE MODERATOR: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for calling in to participate in today's conference call. As you know, we have joining us first and foremost Greg Vanney, Toronto FC's head coach, who will then be followed by Brian Schmetzer from Seattle Sounders FC. We look forward to seeing many of you up in Toronto this week. There is a media schedule that is available on the media site. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to reach out to the MLS Comms staff or of course the PR staff at the competing clubs.

We'd like to start today with some initial comments today from Greg Vanney. It was an incredible atmosphere this week in Toronto at BMO Field. What do you expect to see from the crowd headed into this MLS Cup final?

GREG VANNEY: I expect very similar. It's an exciting time for the city here. It's been a long time since we've hosted a final really of any sort, and especially on the soccer side. I know this is a soccer town, it's a soccer community, and we get a lot of coverage from the soccer press, and so it's become a big deal for sure over the course of this run, and now that the finals are upon us and we have the fortune of hosting, it's snowballing, and with the excitement of the last series, I think it's just built momentum into this championship game.

I know the last series had a little bit of a rivalry feel to it, and that definitely I think electrified some of the fans, but now that this is the final, I suspect that it's going to be very similar.

Q. Greg, on Drew Moore, you signed him as a free agent in the off-season; why was he pinpointed specifically as a guy you wanted to bring in, and what have the qualities that he has, how have they helped you get here? And on Michael Bradley, how have you seen his personality and really his intensity rub off on the rest of the group in the two and a half years you've been the coach?
GREG VANNEY: First, with Drew Moore, at the end of last season, going into the off-season, we knew we needed a center back who could lead, who would be a consistent performer through the course of the year, a guy that we could rely on, but what Drew brings us, and I played with Drew in Dallas and what I knew what he would bring to our group is he's a very good person, first and foremost. Secondly, he's a guy that has enough experience that he can play outside of himself and help the people around him and communicate and play externally while still doing his job at a very competent level on a consistent basis, and we needed that because our depth has been fairly young center backs, and then last year we had -- and at the beginning of this year we had Damien Perquis who was a veteran center back, but he was -- English wasn't his primary language so it wasn't necessarily so easy for him to communicate to the rest of the group, and he was more of an intense sort of inside defender. He didn't -- inside meaning inside of himself, and he didn't really express and communicate to everybody around him.

Well, we knew we needed that piece, and Drew, as I said, checked all the boxes for us in terms of guys who knew how to win in this league. He's been to a championship game and won. It made it simple for us that he was a target, and through free agency, it was an opportunity for us to sell ourselves as a club and what we have here and what we're doing and what we're trying to achieve, and Drew signed on and we couldn't have been happier on that day and even happier now.

As far as Michael, over the course of two years, I think the biggest thing for Michael isn't necessarily his development in one way or another. I think ultimately as we've been able to continue to build this team and build this team around him with pieces who can help support his mission to win a championship here, and by bringing more and more good pieces to this team and guys who can handle their jobs and guys who are experienced, then it's really sort of allowed Michael to flourish in his role and lead from an everyday -- Michael comes in and he's the harder working guy, so it allows him to lead from the intensity standpoint, to really drive the team in terms of their work rate and commitment on a daily basis and what they do in the matches. But now the first couple of years we had some pieces that weren't quite ready yet, and this year we've settled into group that's been very consistent, and that's allowed Michael to just really flourish in his role within the group.

Q. You've worked with Jozy Altidore for two years now, and against Montreal in the second leg he did look arguably at the peak of his powers. Did you have to do any kind of mental rehabilitation with him after that Sunderland spell because there wasn't a lot of goals there, and confidence did seem drained.
GREG VANNEY: Well, I think for Jozy, it was getting to a place where, A, he was happy, he felt wanted, he knew he was going to be a part of building something special, and you know, it took him not too long, but it took him a little while just to kind of settle in with our group and really start to take on the role that he's been taking on lately.

The second part of that is just getting him back to being fully confident about his body, and it's not going to let him down, and we've got all those -- between himself and the hard work that he's put in, relentless hard work that he's put in to get healthy and the support that we've been able to provide him, it's just getting him to a point where the only thing that he has to concern himself on the day is just to go out and give everything he has to his performance and helping the team win.

There aren't any other distractions for Jozy now, so you're seeing what he's fully capable of doing, and he's an extraordinary striker with the ability to be powerful, the ability to hold up the ball, the ability to run by people, and he's a very, very good finisher, both with his head and his feet.

So we're starting -- not starting, but we're seeing that now really flourish within Jozy because everything -- from my perspective, everything is in a nice place and a very good place for him to just focus on his game and really enjoy himself within our group.

Q. Greg, on the subject of Jozy, if I'm not mistaken, you played against him about a decade or so ago, and I was wondering if you remember what he's like as a player and his potential, and Jozy has gone against the grain and has become a legitimate star. Can you talk about what he was like then and what he has become today?
GREG VANNEY: Yeah, I think Jozy, like I think a fair amount of young strikers, he's matured on a physical basis. So I would say when I played against him many, many years ago, he was always athletic. He was fast. He was dynamic. He could run behind you. He could do all of those things.

But since his young years, he's gone off, and between even through his time when he was in Holland to when he went to Sunderland, he's developed a bigger upper body. He's a big, strong guy now, that he wasn't -- he was a big guy before, but now he's really a big, strong guy, and I think he's gone through an evolution a little bit of he's not just a guy who can run but he's a guy who now can play very physical and can really hold off people and can really bump defenders off the ball, and he becomes a force, kind of what you see if you compare him a little bit to Drogba in that you try to deal with him from a physical standpoint and you're going to lose that battle sometimes.

I think he's been learning and continuing to evolve in his growth of how to use that strength and size to his advantage in various situations, and he's not just a guy who's running between lines and looking to run behind and bouncing things off in one touch, but now he's developing a good sense of how to use the size to his advantage as a striker, as well.

Q. You and your staff have no doubt been studying the Sounders closely. Have you guys come up with any theory on what happened to turn them around since the coaching change?
GREG VANNEY: No. I mean, obviously they added some very -- a very good piece, at least one piece, which is Nicolas Lodeiro at that point. He's a guy who can -- who's one of the best guys in our league at pulling the strings and moving the game around and finding very good spots, and he's obviously a guy with not a whole lot of space needed. He can unlock runs of other guys, and he can impact a game. That's one thing. I'm sure Coach Schmetzer has added his imprint on the team and maybe settling the group in and being able to play a consistent group in the fashion that he would like them to play and the vision of how he would like to play, so I think that obviously has always had some impact on that.

Always when there's a coaching change, teams always take a mental shift, one way or the other, either they start to feel freer and really start to flow, or sometimes they can go the other way and it can fall apart, and obviously he's pulled the right strings to get that team flowing smooth and in an organized fashion, and they're making do with the opportunities that they're creating, and they've been on a fantastic run.

Q. You see Giovinco obviously on a daily basis. What are some of the subtle things that maybe the average person might not notice that you appreciate in his skill set? And a little more about Nicolas; do you see any similarities other than the small stature in their skill set, particularly with their foot skill?
GREG VANNEY: Well, first off, just about Sebastian, what he's able to do from a technical standpoint is sometimes in training we just kind of catch ourselves just kind of laughing at some of the things that he pulls off, and he pulls them off in a way that it just looks so simple, and for the guys who have been around the team for a long time and have been playing for a long time, they go, it's not quite that simple, he just makes it look so simple. Everybody kind of for sure appreciates the things he's capable of doing from a technical aspect. For me, from a guy who looks at the game from a more cerebral perspective a lot of times, I think he's just so clever about recognizing over the course of matches where the spaces are going to be, how teams are defending him, how to make adjustments, how to find various ways to impact a game. I mean, he can do a number of different things as a striker to unbalance defenses and to create chances either for himself and others.

He's not a -- he's not like a typical nine because he also can be a playmaker, and as we've seen through his stats of assists in addition to the number of goals. A lot of forwards in our league, they either score or they -- but they don't really assist that much. He's obviously a guy that's capable of doing both things.

In terms of the two guys, I mean, clearly Nicolas is a very technical player. That's why one of the things that he doesn't need a lot of space and he's very clever also in how he moves around the field, and he doesn't need a lot of space, and he obviously sees passes very early, but he doesn't need a lot of space to unlock a team to find the runners around the field, and so technically I think they're both very good players. Are their skill sets the same? Not exactly, although I do think there is some crossover between what each of them are capable of doing.

Obviously Nicolas is more of an attacking midfielder than he is a forward, and Seba is more of a forward than he is an attacking midfielder. But there's some clear sort of value that each of them bring to their respective teams.

Q. Greg, what was the toughest part about moving from the role that you had at TFC before where you were an assistant GM and then dealing with the academy to being the full-time head coach?
GREG VANNEY: The biggest challenge for me over the stretch has been trying to impact the overall culture of the club. Clearly the club had gone through a number of years that many a people have written about over the years of struggles, of not making the playoffs, falling short in a number of different ways, and losing can become as much of a habit as winning, and for me that was one of the biggest challenges because in a way I could -- even though I was here and in the academy, I could kind of feel that within the club, that we still couldn't get out of our own way and believe enough in what we were doing to start to shift the tide in the other direction and where the culture of winning could be what we were doing.

That's a long process. That doesn't happen overnight. You've got to get a good plan in place. You've got to get the right people on board. Everybody has got to be pushing in the right direction. You've got to have some successes along the way, and that always comes with some difficulties along the way that you have to grow from, and it takes some time.

Quite honestly, I think we've -- as an entire club, not me, but just me as an entire club, we've done an amazing job of being able to shift that paradigm in just a couple of years, and it's a tribute to the players that we have with Michael and Jozy and Seba and the rest of the group that we brought in, the guys like Drew and Steven Beitashour and these types of guys all the way through the front office guys with Bez and Bill and everybody else we've brought in. It's just -- we've been able to turn what has been a tough past into a very bright future, and that's probably the biggest challenge. You can't win championships if you've got a culture that isn't right, and so that's been our biggest challenge, but it's also our biggest success so far.

Q. You guys utilize a three-designated-player model. What's the toughest part about managing a roster with three DP's, and then keeping some of the lesser paid guys on-site, as well?
GREG VANNEY: Well, the most important part, I think, and this is when I took the job, the first thing that we talked about as a club, is that your three DP's have to complement each other. They have to be the core of your team, and they have to be your best players. The first step for us was getting three guys who were complementary to each other who enjoyed playing together as best as you can try to predict those kinds of things, and they have to be good people who are coming here for the right reasons. You can spend a lot of money on guys, and we've all seen it around the league, who come and they don't have the kind of impact you want for various reasons, whether it's their personality or whether it's their performance.

For us it was to find those guys who are the right team guys but also can work together as a group and complement each other as a team. Then it's building the group around and finding the right pieces to complement them in order to structure a team that works together.

As far as my handling with guys, the money is the money. It's irrelevant. It's not even talked about around here. It's really just about the honesty from one person to the next and that everybody is working hard and that you're honest with everybody and they know where they stand. There's a rational reason for why you do things and you're not just pulling things out of thin air because then you lose trust with people.

My perspective is to try to just communicate openly with everybody regardless of who they are or how much money they make or any of that kind of stuff, or what their designation is on the team. But everybody needs to know what their value is and that they have real purpose within our group, and that's to me how you can keep a team moving in the right direction.

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