TUCSON – Garth Lagerwey, Jason Kreis and Jeff Cassar had done this a million times before.
The longtime colleagues spent seven years together at Real Salt Lake, transforming the Claret-and-Cobalt from an also-ran into an MLS power. Countless strategy sessions, conversations and arguments had turned their vision into a living, breathing club, one that has been among the best in the league by any measure over the last five years.
So, their meeting around the RSL table at the SuperDraft in January wasn’t unfamiliar. The fact that all three were working for different teams? That part was a bit weird.
Lagerwey, who had just left his position as RSL’s general manager for the president of soccer post with the Seattle Sounders, was at the table trying to swap picks with his old team to take University of Washington Generation adidas midfielder Cristian Roldan.
Kreis, who left Salt Lake for New York City FC’s head coaching job in December 2013, was there to talk with Lagerwey about a deal that would turn into a post-draft trade for the rights to midfielder Kwadwo Poku.
Three friends together again, working hard to get some deals done.
“I just thought in a moment of fairly great stress, the three of us put our heads together and figured out something that worked for everybody,” Lagerwey said. “That was kind of cool. I know that made me happy, that it kind of felt like the last seven years have been worth something.”
Acquiring Roldan was the first move Lagerwey made in Seattle, who poached the 42-year-old from Salt Lake after his contract expired in December. The Roldan deal wasn’t a huge acquisition, at least for the short-term – the talented midfielder isn’t expected to make a big impact with the Sounders this year – but it was significant.
For Lagerwey, it was the first chance to make an impact at his new club. For the Sounders, the move was the first moment of validation in their decision to restructure their front office to hire Lagerwey – the former Kansas City, Dallas and Miami ‘keeper whose playing career ended in 2000.
The deal, though, was nothing compared to the celebration, what Lagerwey called an “awkward white guy fist bump” at the Sounders draft table with head coach Sigi Schmid.
“All that stuff, [that fist bump] was, ‘We got this,’” Lagerwey said. “We worked together as a team and we figured this out, we got it done. So it was a spontaneous demonstration of this thing might work, this Seattle thing, we might be able to unite the tribes here and build a powerful empire.”
Not that the Sounders aren’t already a power.
Seattle are coming off their most successful year in their brief MLS history, winning the 2014 Supporters’ Shield and US Open Cup before losing in the Western Conference Championship series to fall just short of what would’ve been a historic American treble.
But for all of the Sounders’ accomplishments, they’ve never won the big one: MLS Cup. They brought in Lagerwey – who won the title with RSL in 2009 – to help them over that final hurdle, with minority owner Adrian Hanauer relinquishing the GM duties he’d held since the club joined the league.
Seattle are in a much different situation now than the one Lagerwey inherited when he started at RSL in September 2007. That team was a wreck, with he, Kreis and, to an extent, Cassar, who joined as an assistant that same year, turning over nearly their entire roster as they reformed the club’s identity.
The Sounders have a vision, on- and off-field success, and big, club-defining figures like Hanauer, Schmid and US national team captain Clint Dempsey. The room that Lagerwey had to make improvements in 2007 doesn’t exist. His job now is more on the margins, with Seattle hoping he gives the club that little extra it’s been missing each of the last six years.
“From the bottom up, I know that we can organize ourselves a little bit better,” Hanauer said. “Whether it’s around the academy structure, his focus on S2 and how that can help transition for some young pros, his attention to detail in terms of logistics and team administration and how we integrate players into the organization, his scouting network and his ability to work effectively with our staff on that part of our business, and ultimately some of the cap management issues, sort of long-term planning, sort of the big-picture, first-team issues, all of those things, there’s opportunity for a little improvement and optimization.
“I think the hope is that if he can add a little bit of value here and there, it can make us that much better.”
Though he’s taken some light-hearted ribbing in Seattle for sounding a bit too corporate, Lagerwey has repeatedly said that one of his main goals is to “vertically integrate” the Sounders organization. He wants to get the pipeline from the Sounders Academy, to S2 in USL all the way up to the Sounders first team running efficiently, effectively and consistently.
He has more tools now than he did at RSL, with a full, traveling scouting department sticking out as something much different than the one, part-time scout, part-time coach he had in Salt Lake. The increased resources mean he can be more creative in how he operates, trying new, different things to further improve Seattle’s academy – which he called their “platform” or “foundation” – while also having the freedom to add the big-time players the Sounders are known for signing.
Still, apart from the not insignificant matter of upgrading his title from vice president at RSL to president in Seattle, Lagerwey’s job duties with the Sounders aren’t much different than they were in Utah. The scale is bigger now, but the focus on internally streamlining an organization and exploiting the external market remains the same.
“I want to try and make success as close to inevitable as possible,” he said. “I’m trying to tend to as many details as I can to ensure that we achieve our purpose, to ensure that resources are used efficiently. Trying to take some of the RSL lessons, where you had to be efficient because you had no other choice, and apply that same discipline to a larger organization and then maximize your resources.”
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More complicated than the change – or lack thereof – in Lagerwey’s job description, is the human element of his move. He has yet to truly own a signing since joining Seattle and clearly still feels a connection to RSL, saying that he’ll continue to pull for the friends he worked alongside for seven years on the Wasatch Front.
“I’ve used the word heartbreaking before, and it was. It was really hard to leave; it would always be hard to leave,” he said. “I’ve been welcomed by the Seattle fans, which has been really cool, but you’ve got to go out and start over and win their trust. It’s starting the whole process over again, and it’s a lot of work.
“It’s weird. It’s all a little weird.”
While Lagerwey still has to figure out his pronouns – “we” vs. “they” vs. “us” has been a challenge – he is thrilled about the opportunity to work for one of the biggest clubs in the league, excited to challenge himself with a new coaching staff, new players, a whole lot of new resources and, if all goes well, one new trophy.
“It’s a big transition to start new, and this is something that I wouldn’t do lightly,” he said. “I hope to really make it work in Seattle and hopefully stay there and hopefully take on really big goals like trying to win Champions League and trying to make the club a global brand.
“I know some will view those as presumptuous, mock-worthy aspirations, but you’ve got to aim for big things if you want to accomplish things that are worthwhile. It’s the hard things that are worth doing, and that’s the kind of thing that’s fun.”
