Former Kansas City Coach Bob Gansler will be inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame on Saturday at the United States Men's National Team's friendly against Spain at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Elected on the builder ballot with 58 percent of the votes in March, Gansler coached in Kansas City from 1999-2006, compiling an 86-85-51 regular season record and leading KC to the MLS Cup championship and supporters shield in 2000. He was awarded MLS Coach of the Year following the impressive double. In 2004, he also led KC to the U.S. Open Cup crown and their second appearance in an MLS Cup, the fifth straight postseason appearance for the club.
Gansler, who also managed the United States' 1990 World Cup team, was honored with the prestigious Werner Fricker Builder Award by the US Soccer Federation in 2008. Prior to his coaching career, he played in the North American Soccer League and National Professional Soccer League, and captained the U.S. Olympic Team at the 1964 and 1968 Olympics.
To start off, can you tell fans how you have stayed involved in the game of soccer since you were last on the sidelines in MLS?
Since MLS, officially I am retired. But I’m trying to stay active to some extent, otherwise you rust away. So I’m especially trying to stay active in the coaching education end of things. I’ve worked some with the state here and I’ve worked with the National Soccer Coaches of America Association (NSCAA). I’ve done some scouting for the U.S. Soccer Development Academy teams. And I work with a local youth club run by a former player of mine. I’m a designated pinch hitter for coaches that can’t make it. One day it’s the 17’s and the next day it’s the 12’s. One day it’s boys, one day it’s girls. I always enjoyed my time on the field interacting with players, and that’s how I keep myself active and from getting bored.
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You turn 70 in a month, happy birthday a bit early. Looking back on your career in professional soccer, did you ever think you would achieve as much as you have?
I’m not that keen on looking backward. Obviously, I feel I was fortunate to get many opportunities both as a player and as a coach. It wasn’t a matter of a master plan in either situation. You just do the best that you can. Its been a nice ride, because I got to play everything that could be played when I was coming along as a teen and 20 year old into my middle 30’s. And I coached everything that there was to coach, from u8 to high school, to MLS and all of that. I can’t say that there was a plan here, but I’m glad I did it. I twice turned my hobby into my job, once as a player and once as a coach, so it seemed to work out.
You’re being inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame on Saturday – what does that honor mean to you to have been chosen out of such an impressive group of individuals?
There’s quite a few folks in there I met along the way, be they administrators, presidents of organizations, players I played with, coaches I worked with. It’s an honor. Once again, you don’t -- at least I don’t -- work at what you enjoy because you want to be honored at the end of it. Its nice that there’s some folks out there who are in the game who think that I contributed something of worth. I think everyone feels good about getting a pat on the back every now and again. I appreciate it, I’m honored. Its a nice day to be with some outstanding individuals who have contributed. There are many more who could and should be similarly in it, but for whom it hasn’t happened yet. I always talk about the evolutionary process of the game in this country, a lot of folks who have contributed bits and piece. I’m glad I could contribute something.
Turning our attention to the 1990 World Cup, some would say that Cup in Italy was one of the worst in recent history due to the low goal-scoring. As a manager known for an emphasis on defense, how do you see it?
First of all, it’s the ultimate stage of the game. It was fantastic to get there. The U.S. hadn’t been there for 40 years. What coaches do, whether in that World Cup or with the Wizards 10 years after that or other teams, be they high school or semi-pro that I coached, what you try to do was maximize the players that you have and camouflage what you don’t have. That was a young team. There was no professional league to polish their game. I think the average age was 23.
What critics say, you don’t always believe what you hear when it comes to who is making assumptions and who is making quality judgments. Sometimes people that come up with stuff really aren’t qualified. But that’s me on my soap box.
Speaking of 23-year-olds, you coached a 23-year-old Peter Vermes at the 1990 World Cup. What do you recall of Peter at that point in his career and did you ever see him becoming a coach?
I remember Peter as being an extremely work-orientatedyoung man. He had talent, but what stood out was his intentness on a daily, if not minute-by-minute basis, desire to improve. He was a student of the game then. The fact that he played center forward and 10 years later an all-league defender for us in KC in MLS just shows how intelligent his approach was in terms of the game.
For me, when I see a 23 year old, I don’t think about what he’s going to do at 33. Hopefully, he’s still playing. That he’s become a coach and is a good one is no surprise. With his intelligence and work ethic, no mater what he attempted to do he would be successful. Failure for him has never been an option. He’s always going to overcome that.
You and Peter Vermes are both of Hungarian descent. Not many MLS players or coaches for that matter come from that part of the world. Why is that?
Hell if I know. Peter’s parents are Hungarian extractions. I grew up in an all-German town in Hungary. I’m a German-Hungarian. They had the wonder team in 1954, one of the greatest teams ever but didn’t win the World Cup. And they have never been able to get back to that level.
It’s a small country. We in America don’t realize when we say Hungary, we’re talking about 8 million people. That’s it. We cramp that into the south side of Chicago. I think they have not done as well as I’m sure they wanted to, but it would be presumptuous of me to try and say the reasons for that. I’m glad I’ve met Peter along the way, although we couldn’t talk Hungarian to each other. I never spoke it. My native tongue is German.
You were at the helm of Kansas City for the club’s banner seasons in 2000 and 2004. What made those two teams so special and successful?
They were special for different reasons. I arrived there seven games into the season in 1999. We had a mediocre season after that. We realized we needed to change some things. It all starts with players. Players win for you. We coaches have to accept that at the end of the day when we lose, we’re going to be held accountable and that’s okay.
We changed about half the starting lineup. Changed it with players that Brian Bliss and Tim Mulqueen. Brian had been a teammate of Peter’s in 1990. I knew Brian and we traded for Peter. We had Meola and Henderson from before. We had matt McKeon who I knew from the time he was 12. His older brother played for me. I brought him back to KC. We tried bringing in people who we knew, people of character, and people who were hungry to win. You go up and down that lineup, that includes Preki and Mo Johnston who had been there, and this is four years into the League, and they really hadn’t won anything. They had individual success, but not any collective. They we really hungry and that was a key. We started out first 12 undefeated. That’s a sign of a team that came together quickly and then that momentum was kept.
People talk about our last game against Chicago, how we were fortunate. When you win, there’s always good luck involved. We also beat Chicago the first game of the year, 4-3. It was not a 4-3 game, it was 4-1 going into 80th minute. We let the whole season speak for itself, and the reason why we did well was the players and not just their ability, but also their attitude. They grew together quickly because of their hunger for success. It was probably aided to some extent because many knew each other prior to getting together in 2000. It was extremely exciting, and I give all credit to those guys and Brian Bliss and Tim Mulqueen. We always worked as team to put things together on the field.
In 2004, about half of the guys from 2000 were no longer with us for one reason or another. We lost Preki in preseason with a horrific leg break, who was one of the best in the League ever. When you have him, you make sure pieces around him fit. That team is like a mosaic, the pieces gotta fit. Preki is the king piece of the field players. We had to re-do things. I thought that team in 2004, in a different way, found the way to maximize. They got everything out of themselves and each other in order to get to the MLS cup. We changed systems, we changed our approach to things and once again, I remember the partnership of Josh Wolff and Davy Arnaud up front. It was scintillating. We had never played with two forwards in that way and Josh even more so than Davy, because Josh was the senior partner. They were fantastic. In the back we had Jimmy Conrad and Nick Garcia, it was just really a sight to see because from what looked like disaster in April looked awfully good in September.
And it’s a game, like any game. If you say we were fortunate in the final in 2000, you would have to say we were unfortunate in 2004. But that’s the game, that’s soccer.
Both of those teams, in their own way, wound up to be about as good as they could be. That’s what you should expect from yourself and what a team should expect from each other. It’s always about talent and always about attitude. Every mosaic looks a little different. Everyone is driven by different motivation. The lack of success in 2000 drove us. Maybe as silly as it might sound, maybe because we didn’t have Preki and because everyone had to shoulder more of the load in 2004, that’s what drove us to the final. We lost the semifinal 2-0 to San Jose and that was with a young Landon Donovan. They were really checking out their next ring and ordering them at the jeweler shop, and we beat them in Kansas city 3-0. It was a team, that 2004 one, that was not going to be denied.
There was recently a story about how your teams in KC from 2000-2005 are amongst the top 10 in MLS history for most minutes played by American players. Why did you choose to form a roster that was based predominantly on domestic talent as opposed to a more international flavor?
I’ve always had belief in the American player. I was one of those. I’m German-Hungarian-American. But I’m American. And I got to represent my country in Pan-American Games, the Olympics and World Cup qualifying. I’ve always believed in the American player. You compensate what you don’t have in one area. You gotta compensate. So if you’re technically not as strong, you compensate. Saturday we’ve got the U.S.-Spain game. We better have a way to compensate against Spain, because technically we are not as good as them. There’s always tactical, you can outsmart them. Physically, you’re allowed to run faster and jump higher. And then psychological, that mysterious little thing. My favorite phrase is, intangibles have to be intact. That’s the psychological realm. For the American player, the good ones, and I’ve been in settings with them as a player and with the teams like that as a coach, but the intangibles are intact. I believe in the American player. I believed in them as a player and believed in them as a coach.
The 2000 or 2004 team, okay, maybe we couldn’t have out-juggled or out-nutmegged people, but we had a way of being effective and attractive enough. The game is about those two elements. And what you think is attractive and what I think is attractive could be two different things. Same goes for being effective. As long as you believe in yourself and you believe in each other, then you’re fine. If you want to throw a Peter Nowak my way, because there’s a guy – a foreign guy – who probably has had the biggest impact of any player who we’ve ever brought across (I don’t consider Preki a foreign guy, he was playing indoor soccer and he’s Serbian –American), great. I’m talking about the big-timers the League wants to bring over. You’ve got to be careful. I never had problem trusting an American player. I think I knew about the size of their heart and extent of his commitment. They would make sure the intangibles are intact. Hey, there’s different ways to skin a cat.
Last question, will we be seeing you at LIVESTRONG Sporting Park this season?
I would love to come and see the park. I’ve overbooked myself a little bit in June, so my wife and I can’t make it down. I would love to come down and see the park. More importantly, to see some friendly faces from the past.