Ever wonder how MLS players adjust to new surroundings after trade? A cadre of team admins think about it all the time
Ian Harkes was halfway through cooking Thanksgiving dinner when he found out he had been traded. In truth, he knew it was coming. The previous few weeks had involved calls with agents and whispers from elsewhere. It was no secret that the 30-year-old midfielder could be dealt, and now he was on the move from New England to San Jose.
What he didn’t expect, though, was when the call would come.
“I was literally cooking our Thanksgiving meal, and I’m getting calls from our coach and our GM and everything,” Harkes told GOAL.
And in the public eye, that’s where the story ends. There are plenty of tales like that from around Major League Soccer, odd times to get moved, weird deals hashed out at the least convenient moment – at least from a player’s point of view.
But the real work starts after that: houses, flights, schools, insurance, hotel expenses, sometimes even learning a new language – not to mention meeting new teammates, coaches and learning a new tactical system. Many of those logistics are carried out by team administrators, a behind-the-scenes group who, team-by-team, keep the league ticking. They’re never in the spotlight, but the league simply cannot function without them.
“What I tell everybody here, including the players, is ‘You need to focus inside the field,’" FC Cincinnati Director of Player Welfare Rodrigo Frank told GOAL. “Once you get out of training or get out of a game, you should not be worried about anything, because we need to cover for those things. So the performance needs to be there. And there's no excuse.”
Getty Images Sport‘There’s a lot going on’
As a principle, it makes sense. Professional soccer players are world-class athletes and tend to perform at the highest level week in, week out. But for all of that to happen, clubs have to provide a platform.
For some, that means one heroic individual, holding everything together – from big-name designated players to the guy at the end of the bench for an MLS Next Pro side. For others, that means a whole department for player welfare. Whether a solo operator or army of round-the-clock staff, though, the principle remains the same: footballers can’t be at their best without everything else taken care of – and they tend to need help for that.
And ahead of Wednesday’s transfer deadline, their role is even more important.
“There’s a lot going on. It’s a stressful moment for a player to move, and we need to do our job well,” Andre Zanotta, FC Dallas chief soccer officer, told GOAL.
The first thing that needs establishing is that no two roles are alike. Different clubs exist in different markets, with different facilities and different communities. Different players have different needs. It is not the same to be an administrator in Salt Lake City as it is in New York City. For the men and women doing the job, that can be part of the appeal.
“If it's Elijah Winder who signed this year from Louisville, like, those type of players are very easy, because it's like, ‘OK, here's a flight from Louisville to LA, here's a hotel room.’ Zlatan Ibrahimovic is different,” said Zack Murshedi, LA Galaxy’s senior manager of team operations.
For trades within the league, the principles are clear enough. Players have bank accounts, social security numbers, visas – all of the basics. They might have even moved before. Bouncing from one club to another is an occupational hazard of professional sports.
The league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement codifies it all. Players traded within the league are entitled to three weeks of hotel accommodation, $10,000 in moving expenses, and a decent per diem to ensure that they get settled in a new environment. Domestic players are also entitled to three months of rent reimbursement to cover costs for breaking leases.
International signings can be a bit more complicated. League rules are slightly different – although hotels, per diem, and basic help are all in place.
AdvertisementIMAGN‘It's basically setting up a whole new life’
The bigger picture is one of a network that weaves throughout the league. As soon as a player is traded, the administration of one club will coordinate with the other. In the case of Harkes, he was almost immediately put in touch with the people in San Jose. The same goes for any other deal: from minute one, they have to be ready to start the process.
“They need to find a place straight away,” Murshedi said, “and sometimes their families aren't here, so it's setting them up with contacts that I have made throughout the years to help them find a house, help them get cars. I mean, it's basically setting up a whole new life.”
Of course, there’s paperwork involved. Domestic signings tend to be pretty simple, MLS admins told GOAL: payroll, bank account, a few standard documents for the league, adherence to CBA standards, and that’s about it.
International signings, though, can get far trickier. First of all, the players need legal status in the United States. That means social security numbers, visas, work permits, a new bank account, and all of the trimmings that come with a global move. That largely falls on the people at the club to put together.
Most places have it pretty well figured out these days – although there can be some bumps in the road. Real Salt Lake – one of the league’s best-run departments, with eight full-time employees – has dealt with social security card wait times extended due to recent cuts made by the federal government. It used to be a 48-hour process. Now, things are different.
“With the amount of layoffs in the Social Security Administration, appointments are required. So it took us two to three weeks,” said Chase Rusden, director of team Administration at Real Salt Lake.
There can also be issues with marital status and families. Some foreign players get married in the time between when they are acquired and when they legally move to the States, if only to secure more stable paperwork.
“Very young players sometimes decide to get married at 19 or 20, because then the visa can be extended,” Zanotta said. “If he's not married, the partner cannot come. The players come on a certain visa that is allowed for a wife and kids, but not for a girlfriend.”
Getty Images Sport‘I don’t know how I was gonna do it’
The face-to-face interactions tend to start at the airport. All clubs who spoke to GOAL said they send a team admin to the airport to greet new signings. FC Dallas, for example, puts together gift baskets with jerseys and merchandise for players and their families – something Zanotta described as a “good positive impact.”
But that’s where complexities and miscommunication can start. For admins, even the act of picking up a new player can lead to all sorts of headaches. A new player acquired by San Jose, for example, told the club that he would be arriving by himself – with maybe just a few bags. Instead, he showed up with a family of five and 12 suitcases.
Ricky Dorrego, one of the Quakes’ team administrators – and ever the diligent worker – made sure there were no issues.
“I had to get an Uber XL, send the bags with one person, and then drive the rest of the family,” he said. “Unless I had a 15-seater van and took out the back two rows, I don't know how I was gonna do it anyway.”
Admins talk of new signings walking into an arrivals lounge with just a backpack – assuming that luggage would be moved from an airport baggage claim by someone else.
“He left all his bags in the customs baggage area, and it took three and a half hours to get it because they had to screen it,” Dorrego said.
And for bigger names, it sometimes requires a bit more of a show. Murshedi was part of an extensive team pieced together to meet Ibrahimovic when he secured a high-profile move to Los Angeles. The striker flew in on a charter flight, was hurried into a van with blackout windows, and was met by hundreds of excited fans. He was in training the next day.
Imagn‘He wants to get a house, so we make sure that we tell him where to get a house’
Some players show up with Zillow links. Others don’t have a clue. Harkes admitted that when he was traded, he and his wife had already identified numerous potential houses. In other cases, clubs have to do extensive housing tours – sometimes returning to multiple spots to make the right pick.
“We have a specific person who is almost kind of like a tour guide, taking players around saying ‘This is where players lived in the past. These are good apartments, this is a good place to live if you want a house’,” San Jose Earthquakes administrator Sean Mearns said.
But clubs are generally prepared. Most have dossiers on good neighborhoods with the best schools. There is an acceptance, too, that some players might wish to live further from the training ground or in a specific neighborhood. Players are often in conversation with each other about the ideal places to settle down.
And then there are the issues of making sure a home is liveable. Such was the case of FC Cincinnati and marquee signing Kevin Denkey, with Frank dealing with a nearly month-long process of moving in the MLS record transfer.
“He wants to get a house, so we make sure that we tell him where to get a house, the location to get a house,” he said, “And by the time he gets the house, what does he need in the house? The houses here do not come with furniture, like other places do. So let’s go shopping. And then you have him saying, ‘Well, I've never done that.’ So when you're here, you are doing bed, couch, chairs, table, everything.”
And yes, even professional athletes have sticker shock. NYCFC, in particular, are crystal clear with new signings about the expense of living in the country’s largest market.
“No matter how much preparation there is with informing the player of the intricacies of New York City, there is always a level of surprise,” Sam Pugsley, NYCFC vice president of sporting operations and strategy, said via email. “We try to mitigate this by being very direct and honest with certain things – i.e. apartment costs – from the very beginning to help manage those expectations and get them in a frame of mind before they arrive.”
There are further concerns. Public school systems, of course, coincide with neighborhoods. There might be a nice house, but in a spot that doesn’t offer the best educational support for a player’s children. Sometimes that needs explaining, too.
“It’s making sure you don't get them a house, and then they're all mad about the schooling system or the school they have to go to,” Dorrego said. “It eliminates some places that they were kind of favoring sometimes, because the schooling isn't as good.”