The Vancouver Whitecaps introduce their new head coach, Jesper Sorensen, who’s long on experience and short on jokes or social commentary
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There were no colourful jokes about cats, sizzling quotes about getting drunk or mea culpas for sideline tirades.
The furthest Jesper Sørensen strayed into controversial or outlandish territory on Tuesday was when he called a hypothetical tactic (gasp!) “stupid.”
The Vancouver Whitecaps have officially stepped into their next era with the hiring of the former Danish international as their new head coach. The affable-seeming coach was introduced Tuesday as the man who will replace the charismatic quote machine that was Vanni Sartini, a polarizing personality who was seen by the team as having taken it as far as he could.
It was time for new energy, not new standup material.
The incoming Sørensen won’t provide the catchy headline fodder, but the 51-year-old brings a wealth of experience as both a player and a coach. His last stop was with Brøndby IF in the Danish Superliga, where over two seasons he had a 37-19-17 record. After ‘The Boys from Vestegnen’ lost the first leg of their Danish Cup quarterfinal to AGF in December, he and the club parted ways. They’re currently fifth in the 12-team league.
In Sørensen, the Caps see a coach with tactical acumen and flexibility, one with experience both as a coach (200-plus games) and player (300) in the Superliga. As the former Danish U-21 coach, he also has a proven track record of developing young players — a crucial part of success for any MLS team — and turning squads around without blowing them up and starting from scratch.
“I’m not here to make a revolution,” he said, “but to make an evolution. To try and make adjustments so we can get better from actually a very good starting point.”
Caps sporting director Axel Schuster has said there aren’t many personnel changes they want to make. They have a starting 11, they just need to solidify the depth behind it, especially in yet another season playing three difference Cups, the regular season and what needs to be a long post-season run.
There will be some imminent signings announced in the next few days, as the team heads to Marbella, Spain, for training camp, but the big changes will come on the pitch. Sørensen sees a hard-working, direct and transition-minded club with skilled players, but wants to play a more possession-based style — something the Caps have never had in their history.
“When we talk about formations, if there were superior formation, everybody will play it,” he said. “I’m actually a guy that looks into what do we have in the team. I can come here and say, ‘OK, we’ll play a 4-3-3, with wide wingers,’ but if we don’t have anybody (who can), then that will be stupid. If we have players suited for something better, that’s what we’re going to find out. We’re not going to change the entire roster because we need to find two wings or anything. We’re going to play whatever we think is the best for the team, and then we’ll find the formation that fits.
“(Possession) is important … When you have the ball, you can control the game. When you don’t have the ball, you can affect the game, but you cannot control what’s going to happen. In this league, there’s a guy called Messi. You cannot control him when he has the ball, but you can try to affect him. But if you have the ball, you can … better the outcome of what’s going to happen.
“And I think that playing too open … openness also creates randomness. That will be good if we are underdogs all the time, but if we want to be a team that should end up in the top, we have to play as a team that also is the top team. We have to be in more control of the game than our opponents.”
The Caps are in the most consistent and successful phase of their incarnation as an MLS team. Before Sartini, they had made the playoffs just four times in 10 seasons, had one single playoff-ish win (2018 play-in), and won a single Canadian Championship. Under the exuberant Italian, they made the playoffs three out of four years — just missing out in 2022 — won one of those games and took home the Voyageurs Cup three straight years.
The baseline for Sørensen’s success will be: Get this team to the playoffs, and take them past the first round.
While he’s been a coach since breaking in as an assistant with AGF (Aarhus Gymnastikforening) in 2009, Sørensen has never played or coached outside of Denmark, but it was something the team was willing to accept because of their current first-team infrastructure. He hasn’t brought in his own assistant coach — yet — so will lean heavily on the current staff of Michael D’Agostino, Youssef Dahha (goalkeeper coach) and Andrew Foster (video analysis) to ease him into the travel- and fixture-heavy world of MLS, and let Schuster and the scouting department handle the bulk of player acquisition work.
“I have to learn the players, I also have to learn the coaches. (The Caps’ staff) have a lot of experience from this league,” he said. “There’s a lot of experience I don’t have because MLS is quite different with all the travelling. It’s not the same as where I’m usually playing, where you can have the longest trip for four hours in a bus. This is quite different. You have to have experience with that. And looking forward to working with the guys already here.
“It is a big challenge, because football varies a lot over borders,” he said. “Football in Denmark is not the same as football in Germany. Football in Germany is not the same as football in Spain, and football in Spain is not the same as football in North America.
“Football is a product of the culture … that’s something I also have to learn. In Denmark, your football is a product of the Danish way of doing things, also in the society … I have to figure out also, what is the culture of football in North America.”
Sørensen is a well-respected figure among players, agents and European football executives, with few offering any disparaging comments about his abilities. His time at Brøndby, perhaps the most widely followed team in Denmark, started with him taking the club from 10th and the risk of relegation, to fifth place. The following year, they were in a position to win the title — leading Midtjylland by goal difference entering the final day — before a 3-2 home loss to AGF and Midtjylland’s 3-3 draw with Silkeborg left them in second place. It was a crushing defeat, compounded by being bounced from Europa qualifying the next month, results that gutted the team’s mentality and faith in Sørensen, leading to his resignation in December.
“The time in Brøndby in general was a good time and we were close to winning the championship,” he said. “And I think the disappointment of not getting there was also something that led to … it just was a little bit more difficult in the last part of the season. I think actually they were left a very good spot. I think they’re left better off than when I came in.”
He’s confident he can do the same in Vancouver, seeing a lot of potential and technically adept players already in the squad. The team departed Tuesday afternoon for Spain, where he’ll get his first look at the 30 players making the trip.
Time is short. There are two friendlies scheduled already, on Jan. 24 against Polish side Raków Częstochowa, and Irish club St Patrick’s Athletic on Jan. 29, before heading to Costa Rica for their first competitive game: their CONCACAF Champions Cup, first round, leg 1 match versus Deportivo Saprissa.
“I will start introducing stuff, then we have to implement it. And it takes some time. Things don’t happen overnight,” Sørensen said. “All the habits we’ve put in the back of our brains, they’re there for a long time, and you have to really work them out if you need to do something different.
“Then I just hope to see that players are really starting to figure out how to do things the way we want to do it now. It’s not criteria that we do everything perfect, because that’s just not going to happen, and might never happen. But what I want to see is we work with the right intentions.”
LIST OF WHITECAPS COACHES
• Vanni Sartini, 62-33-53; 3 years, 2 months, 29 days, 1.48 ppg
• Marc Dos Santos, 22-19-40; 2 years, 9 months, 20 days, 1.05 ppg
• Craig Dalrymple, 2-1-2; 1 month, 12 days, 1.40 ppg
• Carl Robinson, 77-49-73; 4 years, 9 months, 9 days, 1.41 ppg
• Martin Rennie, 28-22-27; 2 years, 3 days, 1.38 ppg
• Tom Soehn, 5-4-14; 4 months, 25 days, 0.83 ppg
• Teitur Thórdarson, 1-5-6; 3 years, 5 months, 19 days, 1.45 ppg