ORLANDO, Fla. –Parting company with head coach Adrian Heath was the hardest thing Phil Rawlins has had to do as president of Orlando City SC, but it was the result of a unanimous board decision in a bid to save what is seen as a failing season.
Those hard-headed, pragmatic assertions were at the heart of Rawlins’ detailed explanation on Thursday afternoon, less than 24 hours after the departure of the hugely popular coach that had come as a shock to the fanbase, with the team just one place out of the playoff positions.
Rawlins and Heath had been seemingly inextricably linked since their early days together in Austin, Texas, in 2008, and the former Stoke and Everton striker was the only head coach Orlando City had known since the team’s debut in 2011.
But that didn’t stop the founding owner from making “a truly difficult personal decision” in agreeing with the board’s reasoning in deeming a new coach necessary 16 league games – and a US Open Cup defeat to Fort Lauderdale – into their second MLS year.
Rawlins was also quick to scotch several major local rumors about the reasons behind Wednesday’s night sudden move:
Contrary to speculation, Rawlins made it clear that the move was not a unilateral decision by majority owner Flavio Augusto da Silva. And he says it was also not in any way influenced by star player Kaká, or by his connection to Da Silva.
"This is a board decision – a very difficult board decision – taken at what we believe to be the right time to enable us to put in place a platform to continue to grow and develop as a club so we can go on to the next stage,” he insisted. “Once you have made that decision, you have to move quickly because you have to tell the person involved so they don’t hear it through social media or an agent.
“There had been several board meetings over the course of this season where we have looked at the development and growth of the club, and we just weren’t seeing progress as a whole.”
Amid a background of fan anguish and discontent on social media, Rawlins calmly laid out the rationale of the four-man board – Da Silva, Rawlins, CEO Alex Leitao, and minority owner John Bonner – in arriving at a decision that puts assistant coach Bobby Murphy in temporary charge for Friday’s game at home to the Houston Dynamo (8 ET on UniMás in USA, MLS LIVE in Canada).
“We believe that we have a better squad in place [this year], and yet our points-per-game is lower than last year,” he explained. “We are in danger of letting another season slip away from us, but we also had to think about the best decision for the club going forward, not just the short term.
“MLS is a very difficult league to work in. In Europe, you always have the option to change out five or six players, but that’s a much more difficult thing to do in a league with a salary cap. Therefore you have to look at how you get the best out of the players you have. We didn’t think we were getting the best out of them. It is a tapestry of different variables and data points which you look at as a whole, and they weren’t in our favor.”
Among the data points, the City board was faced with was a stark statistic of just four wins to date, and a 1.25 points-per-game figure compared with 1.29 in 2015 when they missed the playoffs by five points. The Lions had also chalked up just five points in seven road games. But Rawlins was insistent that last Monday’s abject 4-0 defeat at FC Dallas was not a tipping point in the overall decision-making process.
“It was purely a case of what trends were we seeing, and where were we going to be if they continued?” he added. “We couldn’t afford to wait until the 32nd game and then say, ‘Oh, we know what to do now.’
“If we get this right, we still have the opportunity to get this season right, and that’s what we feel we have done with our long-term interests in mind. We have always been a community-based club, and we will continue to be so, but we want to return to the winning ways we’ve had before and we think we can do both.”
The full Board may have been involved in Heath's dismissal, but it was Rawlins who was instrumental in bringing his fellow "Stokie" into the club. After almost nine years together, it was as much an agonizing divorce as a business separation.
“Adrian will always have a special place in my heart, and the hearts of everyone here,” Rawlins insisted. “He was obviously very disappointed, not least because he wanted to see the job through. We had a very special relationship, there’s no doubt about that. But I have to think about the long-term prospects for this club and I can tell you for certain we wouldn’t have made this move if we didn’t think it was the right one for the future.
“I sat down with him and walked him through the board’s decision, and I think he knew it was coming in his heart of hearts. This way, he gets to leave with his reputation intact and his record intact. And we will always be grateful for that record.”
