GM John Doyle is charting a course for the future of the Quakes

Earthquakes GM John Doyle has gone from leading the back line to leading the front office. Photo: John Todd, centerlinesoccer.com/isiphotos.com.

Considering the string of injuries that have befallen the Earthquakes’ corps of forwards, it’s no wonder general manager John Doyle sounds a bit frustrated.

“We brought in Peguero Jean Philippe - injured; Jovan Kirovski - injured; Gavin Glinton, injured,” he says. “Kei Kamara left for a month. There’s not many sports where a guy who’s your starter goes away for a month in the middle of your season.”

Welcome to the world of running a Major League Soccer team, where the league’s high level of parity means that a string of bad luck can send the hopes of any team spiraling downward. Add that to the challenges inherent in creating an entire team from scratch, as Doyle and coach Frank Yallop have done this season, and it’s easy to appreciate the immensity of the job that’s been put before them.

“I didn’t think it would be so much of an advantage, being a non-expansion team versus an expansion team, but it is a big advantage,” Doyle says. “Established teams have 14 to 16 quality players to start out with. It’s helpful, because then you’re only looking for two or three, or looking to move one or two. We’re bringing in a whole new team, and we’re not evaluating two or three, we’re evaluating everybody.”

If that sounds negative, it shouldn’t. The nature of a job like Doyle’s is to concentrate on the things that need improvement, not the things that are working well. No MLS GM can afford to sit on his hands very long, stopping to admire his team’s graceful play or a place at the top of the table. The job demands a year round, concentrated quest to use your available resources to improve your team. Mix in Doyle’s competitive nature, honed as a player during five years in MLS as San Jose’s captain as well as 53 caps for the U.S., including the 1990 World Cup, and it’s clear that the team’s lackluster record through 14 games eats at him.

“No one wants to win more than me,” he says. “Patience is hard, I think, for me and Frank and (assistant coach) Ian (Russell) and (owner) Lew (Wolff). But you look at all the mistakes other teams have made. ‘We’ve only won three games, how are we going to make the playoffs?’ ‘Well, let’s panic and spend a bunch of money and put ourselves behind the eight ball.’ We won’t do that. I’ll never do that. I care too much about the future of the organization to panic.

“And I’m at every game, I sit and watch and it hurts me just like it hurts Frank. When you’re not winning every game, you take it home, it’s very frustrating and painful, but I think I’d rather get hit in the mouth more times this year (if it means we can) build our team for the future. The easy thing is to grab this guy, grab that guy.”

Even though Doyle is preaching the wisdom of patience and making calculated moves, make no mistake — he and the Earthquakes’ coaching staff are working constantly to improve the team, with the same competitive drive that pushed them to the highest levels as players. But Doyle undoubtedly learned as a player that panic leads to mistakes, and he’s not going to forget it now that he’s joined the front office.

“To date, we’ve probably had 50, 60 players in, preseason and weekly,” he says. “I think we’re narrowing it down to four or five for the July window, and from those four or five, we’ll probably take three. If we can get the three, I think it will be an improvement. It won’t be the finished product, but it should help us to make a push.”

Doyle explains that the process of evaluating and eventually acquiring players is something that goes on constantly. The global nature of the sport, combined with the overlapping seasons played by leagues in Europe, South America, and Central America, means that teams everywhere have to be constantly on the lookout for players who can make a difference on the field, either immediately or as prospects for the future. So, if he estimates the Quakes have brought five dozen players into camp to train with the team, that number is dwarfed by the number of players that the team has researched.

“We’ve watched so much video from everywhere in the world,” he says. “I get four or five calls from agents every day, sending me video. Frank gets five or six calls from agents, Frank gets video, there’s national team games going on so we’re seeing Caribbean nations where they may have players that could help us. We have people watching those games that are sending us video on those guys.

“Ian Russell’s getting video. Jason Batty, because he’s from New Zealand, is getting video and different things from New Zealand and Australia. Ronnie Ekelund, with his connections in Europe, he’s getting video and talking to people, so we have five people - and I have to say even Joe Dincecco, our team administrator, he brings us some things here and there because he’s just out of East Coast college soccer. He has a lot of good ideas about players on the East Coast, young players that he’s seen play.

“We’re getting a ton of information… Every day, in our office over at the field, you walk in and there’s a TV there, a computer here, a computer here, a computer here, and it’s Ronnie, Ian, and Jason going through video of players, and that’s on top of their coaching duties. There’s a ton of work that goes into it.”

Identifying players who show well on video is just the beginning of the process, however. The team’s criteria for evaluating players includes obvious yardsticks like their past playing experience, salary, and position, but also takes into account things like a player’s motivation for wanting to come to San Jose.

“You want the guy who just wants to come play soccer here and win,” he says. “A guy like Darren Huckerby, he’s 31 and I think he wants the life experience and I think he wants to make it in the MLS, so we’ll see what happens with him.”

The easiest way to understand the team’s philosophy towards player acquisitions is to divide the topic into three categories: MLS veterans; young domestic players, which includes young Americans and young foreign players who attended U.S. colleges; and players from outside the country.

Doyle sees veteran MLS talent as potentially the most important element in the team’s long-term plan for success, but has found that acquiring these players can be an unusually difficult task.

“We’ve been close to deals in the league for some players that we think would help (our offense), and that’s been a little frustrating, just because teams don’t want to give up someone who can score,” he says. “Someone who scores 10 goals in our league — that’s a valuable asset. Teams will go out and get a couple foreign guys that they think are going to replace that MLS veteran with 10 goals, and then (the new acquisitions) start playing and they find out the guys they just spent double the money for aren’t as good as the guy who scored 10 goals. That’s happening a lot.”

With GMs around the league waking up to the value of a solid, if not spectacular, MLS veteran, it means that teams are only shopping players who have a significant downside. For the Quakes, it has sometimes meant taking risks on players who are coming off an injury.

“No MLS team is giving away their good players,” Doyle says. “They’re not offering you the guy with the perfect knee. They’re offering you the one where they think, ‘What if he goes the other way?’ Ronnie O’Brien has been terrific for us, but he could have been another Peguero.”

Doyle’s efforts in bringing in veteran MLS talent have also been hampered by the fact that the league has lost several players to second-tier European leagues, something he sees as problematic in light of the league’s aggressive plans for expansion in the coming years.

“As far as expansion goes, veteran MLS players are becoming a lot more valuable,” he says. “If Pat Noonan isn’t worth $180,000 to New England, but we can’t get any other players and we’re looking in the world market, Pat Noonan to us is worth $220,000, because we need a player and we have cap room and salary money.

“To (Houston coach) Dominic Kinnear, Joseph Ngwenya and Nate Jaqua weren’t that valuable, but to us, they’re valuable… With expansion, you can’t keep losing those guys.”

The team’s emphasis on acquiring veteran talent was also on display at this year’s SuperDraft, where the Quakes traded away the number one pick — eventually used by Kansas City to pick up UCLA defender Chance Myers — for Wizards defensive mainstay Nick Garcia, who is now San Jose’s captain.

“The going rate at the draft for a first-round pick was $125,000 to $150,000, and what do you get for that? I mean, no disrespect to Chance Myers and Kansas City, but that’s your first pick. Is he going to help us? Eventually, maybe, if we’re lucky. These deals are all kind of calculated risks, and for us Nick Garcia was a better risk.”

Doyle also points to Clarence Goodson, still on San Jose’s books despite his departure for I.K. Start in the Norwegian second division, as a potential asset for the team.

“At some point we think Clarence Goodson is going to come back to MLS, and that’s huge value for us, to have that,” he says. “(We benefit by) building up those little assets all over, and having the rights to a good American player is important, especially for expansion teams.”

If Doyle sees MLS veterans as a valuable commodity, it’s fair to say that he is also aware that the best way to acquire them, though not the fastest, is to bring them up through the team’s developmental system. This process takes more time, however, since in his eyes, very few young players are ready to step into an MLS starting lineup and contribute.

“Nothing against them as individuals, but when you have players who have never played (in MLS)… it’s a big difference. You give away goals, you make mistakes, you don’t finish chances, and that’s kind of where we are.”

He points to a player like Eddie Robinson, who only appeared in one game as a rookie in San Jose in 2001, as a classic example of a talented young player who needed time to acclimate to the speed and power of MLS. He notes others, too, who are familiar to fans in San Jose.

“Brian Ching came into the league and went out of the league before he made it. Brad Davis was dumped from two teams… You want to get a couple young ones, but the learning curve is so long, it takes a lot of time. The older one, at least you have a proven track record.

“(Former San Jose coach) Laurie Calloway used to say, and I think it’s true, if you are a good player you don’t all of a sudden become a bad player. If you have eight years of being a very good player, you don’t all of a sudden become a bad soccer player.

“Some young players that you take a risk on, they’ve never had a good year. Maybe they have one good year, and then they’ve got to figure out all the things that come with having a good year. ‘Oh, I’m in the paper, I’m a big timer, I need more money, I want this, I want that.’

“If you’re Manchester United, you just buy the best young player that you know, and you buy 100 of them. You put half of them in your academy, you put one or two in your first team, you loan them out. We don’t have that option.

“Obviously, it would be great to have a young superstar, but I think for us, we’re looking for MLS veterans and players that have played at a high level from outside — that mix I think is better for us than waiting for someone to develop. And then, you know, the Shea Salinases, letting them develop, and every year in the draft, letting them develop, the Eddie Robinson types, you let them build so you have a good base of solid American players.”

Which brings us to the wide, wild world of players who want to come to MLS from abroad. This is another challenging market, for several reasons. First of all, teams all over the world are looking for talented players, so there’s lots of competition. Bringing players to MLS is made more difficult by current economic conditions, which have seen the value of the dollar fall nearly 50 percent against the Euro since 2001.

“The reality of the league, right now, is you’re not going to get a foreign player in his prime. It’s not going to happen. You (might be able) to get them while they’re young and they come into their prime in your group, but every other league in the world is trying to find those guys… You kind of strike gold with one of those, but that’s not easy to do, so from that standpoint, people have to be a little bit patient because we’re still setting up (our development structure).”

The weakness of the dollar on international currency markets has forced MLS to focus largely on Central and South America in recent years, but Doyle notes that working to sign these players has challenges as well.

“Typically, all the top players from Brazil either play for the top team (domestically) or play in Europe. Then the next tier play in Asia, Mexico, Qatar, all these countries where they’re being paid tons of money. Then our selection is the next tier of players, and our challenge is to convince them that it’s a great lifestyle here, it’s a great league, and a great place to play.”

Once a player indicates interest, negotiations begin. Doyle has discovered that a player’s initial salary demands can be misleading, however.

“Many teams pay a player’s taxes, so what we get a lot is, ‘I want $10,000 a month, tax free.’ So you back out the taxes, that brings the total to $13,000, $14,000 per month, and the next thing is always, ‘and give me a house, and give me a car.’ So you add in $3,000 a month for a furnished house and $500 for a car, and… the player who was $120,000 a year is now $200,000, ‘cause I have to pay for all this other stuff for him. That comes into the negotiation all the time.”

Lifestyle is also an issue. While the general economic strength of many Central American countries is miniscule compared to that of the Bay Area, the stars in those leagues may actually live more luxuriously there than they can in San Jose.

“Rolando Fonseca, who was here on trial, in Guatemala he was making $25,000 per month, tax free. And that’s a 34-year-old. We had a conversation with Jared Borgetti, a good dialogue with his agent, and… I think he’s on $1.7 or $1.5 million, tax-free money, now. You don’t think he lives in a mansion in Mexico? Chivas had that problem with Ramon Ramirez. He came to Los Angeles and he goes, ‘OK, I need my nanny, my this, my that…’ It’s no big deal to him because it’s always been that way for him. The guy moves here, he goes from living like a king - and once you’re used to living like a king, well, I’ve never lived like a king, but once you’re used to living like that, it’s probably hard to go back. So someone like a Borgetti, we had a good dialogue, but I think he’s going to end up staying in Monterrey.

“It would be a splash for the fans, I understand that, and that would be fun, but I think we’re going to be able to find a splash for people who support the team that fits better and makes us better for the long run, not just the short.”

The news of David Beckham’s signing, and especially the somewhat misleading publicity about his potential income of $250 million over five years — his MLS salary is only $5.5 million annually, with the rest coming from personal endorsement deals — means that some players have an unrealistic idea about the kind of salaries that MLS teams are capable of paying.

“Patrick Vieira, the French international, his agent called,” Doyle notes. “He says, ‘We’re interested in exploring the MLS and he wants to go either to New York, San Francisco, or L.A. He’s currently on 7 million Euros per year (about $11 million) but it’s not about the money — he wants to come to America.’ ‘So, what would he want here?’ ‘Oh, probably six, seven million dollars.’ And you say, ‘Thank you, we’d love to have him, he’s a great player, what an honor it would be to have a player like this, but we can’t have that player. He doesn’t fit in our league.’”

Doyle is also mindful of the fact that in MLS, for every successful signing, there are half a dozen or more that crash and burn, usually after substantial amounts of money were spent acquiring them. If every deal is “a calculated risk,” as he mentioned earlier, some teams didn’t calculate very well, and these players provide a cautionary tale for GMs everywhere.

Take Sergio Galvan Rey, for example. A highly touted Colombian forward who joined New York in 2004 for a transfer fee that was reported to be in the range of a half million dollars, he scored just nine goals in 47 appearances.

“And that was Bob Bradley, right? I mean, Bob Bradley is smart and an excellent coach, he knows what he’s doing. And Galvan Rey comes into the league and he’s a bust.”

So, if it’s difficult to acquire good MLS veterans, it takes a long time to develop young talent, and finding foreign players who fit well in is challenging, does that mean the team is scrambling to find a way forward? Not at all. In fact, Doyle and the coaching staff have already implemented a plan and expect to see it pay off in the next few weeks, with the opening of the summer transfer window.

Since acquiring players is a calculated risk, the team has devised a strategy for minimizing those risks. Let’s go back to those sixty players who have trained with the team over the past six months. Having players in on trial is the first line of defense against blowing a bunch of money on the next Galvan Rey, since it allows San Jose’s brain trust to see how a given player performs both with and against his potential future teammates. It’s not as good as watching someone perform in actual MLS games against actual MLS competition, but it’s immensely more helpful than watching a player in, say, Guatemala, and imagining how he’ll do in MLS.

There’s another technique for managing the risks associated with player acquisition, and it involves a creative use of the team’s Designated Player slot. For a full season, a DP counts as $400,000 against the salary cap, which is rumored to be about $2.2 million per team.

Some teams, most notably the Galaxy and Red Bulls, have used their DP slot to sign an expensive superstar. New York has two DPs, Juan Pablo Angel and Claudio Reyna, and the Galaxy have three players who are paid salaries worthy of the DP slot: David Beckham, Landon Donovan, and Carlos Ruiz. This means that, in New York’s case, two players make an $800,000 impact against the cap, leaving just $1.4 million for the other 16 players on the roster. L.A.’s situation is even worse, with 15 players vying for $1 million after Beckham, Donovan, and Ruiz get their share.

Those solid, MLS veterans Doyle likes so much? Neither of those teams has many of them, because they’ve spent so much money on their DPs. And right now, New York lies just above the bottom of the table in the Eastern Conference. The Galaxy is in first place in the West but has allowed more goals than any other team in MLS.

“That’s the challenge of the league,” says Doyle. “You keep hearing about Thierry Henry. (Signing Thierry Henry) doesn’t guarantee your team is going to win. The perception is that Thierry Henry is going to score 30 goals in the league, but it’s not that easy. I mean, we had Roberto Donadoni in the league, and he was one of the best players in the world at the time. He was good, but was he scoring four goals a game?”

One player alone is not enough to turn around a team’s fortunes, and blowing a lot of money on a guy who turns out to be injured a lot, as has been the case for Angel, Reyna, and Ruiz this season, is not a good way to build a team. Plus, apart from complying with the salary cap, teams also need to be able to recoup their expenditures on these signings, whether it’s through increased attendance, shirt sales, or even simply PR value. “Somebody has to pay for it,” is how Doyle puts it.

So what’s the plan?

“We haven’t traded that DP slot away - not even for six months,” says Doyle. “It gives us a lot of room in our cap, because a DP slot for the second half of the season is only $200,000 against the cap.”

We’ll repeat that. If a team brings in a DP at mid-season, they can pay him whatever they want, but only $200,000 of his salary counts against the cap. Low risk, big reward — especially if you can structure the player’s contract so, if things don’t work out, they can be released after the end of the season.

“It’s a tryout,” Doyle says. “It’s a lot safer for me to have a guy here for six months, pay him that kind of money, and if he doesn’t work out, you go, ‘Thank you.’

“There’s two or three guys that we’re looking at who we’ll have more information on in the next week or so, that maybe we could bring in under the $200,000 half DP spot,” Doyle says. “We have enough money to give them six months to see, ‘OK, is this maybe a guy that fits in our league and is going to be good for us?’”

Until those players are signed, Doyle isn’t naming names. He is confident, though, that the team is headed in the right direction. “It takes a little bit of time to find your guys, and I’m confident that Frank and myself have an idea of what we’re looking for, as far as players go. It’s going to take some time… we’re always going to be working on it, but I think, if I were to say anything to the people who read this, there’s a lot of work going on.”

And, if the risks have been calculated properly, the results will be seen on the field, both later this season and going into the future.