Adelaide United chairman Piet van de Pol on coach Marco Kurz’s exit and plans for his successor

Reds chairman Piet van de Pol will travel to Europe next week to speak to the potential replacement for departing coach Marco Kurz. Plus, read his extensive Q&A with Rob Greenwood.

Adelaide United chairman Piet van der Pol has opened up on Reds coach Marco Kurz’s impending exit and the club’s plans to replace him. Picture: Dylan Coker

• Recruiting options abound for Reds next coach
• Good men waiting to take Kurz’s spot
• All over red rover for Kurz

Adelaide United chairman Piet van der Pol will travel to Europe next week to speak to the potential replacement he has lined up for departing coach Marco Kurz.

And the Reds’ supremo said a fresh start and new on-field direction were needed to ensure the club achieved its ambition of becoming a consistent A-League frontrunner.

Van der Pol granted The Advertiser an exclusive one-on-one interview on Thursday, 48 hours after the club announced Kurz’s two-year stint would finish at the end of this season.

The face of United’s ownership consortium revealed he had already taken steps to secure the German manager’s successor, having informed Kurz of his fate earlier this week.

“First of all ... until after I had sat down with Marco, I was not going to approach anyone else,” van der Pol said.

Adelaide United coach Marco Kurz will not return for the Reds next season. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Martin

“This means that this week, I’ve reached out to a (coaching) candidate with whom I’ve had a discussion several years ago about his suitability to work in Australia.

“I said ‘as a matter of fact, I’m now the owner of a club in Australia and would you be interested in working here next season?’

“He said ‘I would certainly be so’ and I said ‘let’s have a coffee next week when I’m in Europe’.

“We hope to make big progress on that in the next few weeks. However, football is football and anything can happen.”

Speculation had shrouded Kurz’s United future since January, when the club said it would delay discussions about extending his deal until later in the season.

The stand-off reached breaking point last week after Kurz claimed he had been attempting to contact van der Pol for a month, but had not received a reply.

Kurz, who led Adelaide to last campaign’s finals and won the FFA Cup this term, learned his time was up when he met with van der Pol on Monday afternoon.

“For me, after two years it’s usually time for a new approach,” said van der Pol, who headed the group which bought United last March.

“Marco was the coach when we took over the club and we have supported Marco by all means in the last year.

“Yet for next year, I thought it’s time for something new. This is normal in the football world.

“I understand that supporters appreciate Marco and that Marco was very popular, yet that cannot influence my decision on whether to renew his contract or not.

“The only question is, for what we want to do next season is Marco the best person for that?

“My conclusion was I want someone different in front of the group next year and that’s it.”

Van der Pol revealed that off-contract Senegalese striker Baba Diawara would not remain at the club next season, while fellow attacker Ken Ilso was unlikely to be offered a new deal.

In the wide-ranging interview, the Reds chief also discussed the club’s player recruitment approach, plans for its Chinese links and hopes to improve home game crowds.

QUESTION AND ANSWER

WITH ADELAIDE UNITED CHAIRMAN PIET VAN DER POL

Rob Greenwood: What were the main reasons a new contract was not offered to coach Marco Kurz?

Piet van der Pol: “The main reasons of employment, contracts and relationship between the club and an employee, I will not go into.

“Generally speaking, we define what people, what type of people and what type of organisation we need and then we will recruit the people that best suit our needs for the next year.

“That’s one thing. The second thing you should bear in mind is that in football, they are often talking about an expiry date and that is extremely short.

“An average player’s contract lasts between one and three years professionally and here in Australia they tend to be shorter than elsewhere.

“That would mean that out of a squad of 25 (players), roughly 12 will be out of contract every year and need to be replaced.

“It is important to refresh and continuously look for how you can improve or influence or change the set-up of your team because that is important.

“That doesn’t always necessarily mean that the 11 best players will make the best team together.

“Also I never speak about good coaches or bad coaches, because this doesn’t exist.

“You have the right coach for the right team for the right moment.

“(Jose) Mourinho nobody would doubt has been a very successful and a very good coach.

“Yet Manchester United decided to replace him with the inexperienced Ole (Gunnar Solskjaer) and he does much better.

“That says nothing about the quality of Mourinho, just that the club thought a different approach was needed for that team at the moment and that has worked.

“I don’t know the statistics globally, but I think one year is on average probably the duration of a coach’s contract. Beyond two years, I think is very rare.

“It’s difficult for a coach to manage a team. By definition if you have 25 players again as an example, 11 players are happy because they’re playing and 14 players are not happy.

“It’s very difficult to manage, for any coach in any club in the world

“There is always players who support the coach and players who don’t support the coach in any club in the world.

“For me, after two years it’s usually time for a new approach.

“Marco was the coach when we took over the club and we have supported Marco by all means in the last year.

“We sat down with Marco prior to the season, we had a list of requirements (and) except for one thing, we helped him with everything.

“We fully supported Marco this season and we continue to do so.

“Yet for next year, I thought it’s time for something new. This is normal in the football world.

“It’s absolutely not strange that after two years with a coach, a team and a club needs a new fresh person and a fresh approach, which is the same here.

“I understand that supporters appreciate Marco and that Marco was very popular, yet that cannot influence my decision on whether to renew his contract or not.

“The only question is, for what we want to do next season is Marco the best person for that?

“It doesn’t mean that he is good or not good. It means, do we want someone different or not?

“My conclusion was I want someone different in front of the group next year and that’s it.”

RG: How did Kurz’s football vision differ from the club owners’ vision, as noted in this week’s statement?

PvdP: “That is an internal discussion.

“What that entails, that is not for public discussion. We keep that discussion internal.

“But I’m sure that when we announce a new coach for next season we can explain what the characteristics of the new coach is and why we chose that coach.

“There is no perfect coach. Look at Mourinho at Manchester United and look at how many other big coaches.

“There is no right and wrong and there is certainly no perfect solution.

“The vision of the club is clear.

“You can see in our recruitment policy for this year that we signed some players on a short-term (basis) and some players on a long-term.

“When you look at our signings for next year, we have a goalkeeper (Paul) Izzo, we have Jordan Elsey and Michael Jaoksben in central defence, we have Ryan Strain and Michael Marrone on right back, we have Isaias and (Mirko) Boland, we have (Ben) Halloran, we have (Craig) Goodwin, we have Nathan Konstandopoulos there and we have (Ryan) Kitto.

“There is only five or six (seven) players off contract.

“Baba (Diawara) is unlikely to be renewed, let me break that news.

“There are a couple of other players who have already renewed, a couple of players we are talking to and a couple of players who indicated they would like to stay, but we have said we are looking at other positions first.

“If we fill those in, we will see.

“This is our shape of the team that already exists.

“The stories saying ‘ah, but what is going to happen now and the team is falling apart’?

“No the structure of the team is already there for next year and it was there six months ago. That’s clearly set-up.

“How we want to play, we’ve made no secret of this because I said exactly this last year in my first interview.

“We want to use the fact that Adelaide is a football city with football development.

“We want to extend that football development beyond two teams of youth.

“We want to fill a whole academy from the youngest age until the second team.

“This will help develop the quality of Australian football, which is badly needed because we’re getting two extra (A-League) teams in the next (two) years.

“Quality players in the A-League are difficult to find and there’s going to be more teams, so there’s going to be less suitable players.

“We need to improve Australian football from the basis.

“We have done exactly that in China (at the Reds’ sister club Qingdao Red Lions) in three year’s time, where we set-up an academy from under-6 until the reserve team.

“The under-6 are the best team in the division and two players have qualified for the national under-17 team in China with our club which is now at the same level as where the City (Football) Group bought the (Chinese) club (Sichuan Jiuniu) two weeks ago.

“We know what we are doing and we are setting that up (at Adelaide) and we will engage the right people to manage the first team and to coach the first team in this structure.”

RG: What are the on-field goals for the club going forward? Is it winning trophies, developing young players or both?

PvdP: “I have been very clear about this last year.

“Long-term means it will take me two to three years to move the club in that direction to get the club there.

“With existing contracts (in place) you always need time to implement your ideas, because you cannot just replace 20 players and get everything right.

“I’ve always said I want a club to structurally be a top-three team in Australia. There can be no misunderstanding about that.

“The aim for this year was reach the cup final and make it into the playoffs.

“It looks like we are doing that, so Marco (Kurz) has done a good job with that and I’ve told him that.

RG: What budget did Marco Kurz have to work with in terms of recruiting players during transfer windows?

PvdP: “Budgets have nothing to do with the quality of players.

“That is a stupid misunderstanding that fortunately has been proven wrong by Ajax recently beating Real Madrid (in the UEFA Champions League) with six times the budget.

“As (Dutch football legend) Johan Cruyff said ‘a bag of money won’t score a goal’.

“Budget has nothing to do with quality and especially not in Australia.

“Relatively speaking the Australian players are overpaid because of the increasing salary cap.

“The salary cap a few years ago was $1.5 million and it’s gone up to $3 million now, but it’s the same players so they get double the money roughly.

“That hasn’t had any effect on the quality.

“Budgets are not relevant to this discussion because we don’t have the budgets or the competition to compete for the top players.

“They can get $15 million in China or $5 million in the Middle East or $1 million with $20 million of endorsements in the United States.

“We cannot compete with that, so that is absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.

“The key thing is, halfway through the season you cannot go shopping because either you find a player whose competition ended in October and hasn’t done anything for three months.

“He’s out of contract or you have a player who’s doing well and the club won’t let them go in the middle of the season without a huge compensation.

“So the mid-season transfer window is useless.

“The successful transfers in that period globally, not in the A-League, are less than 10 per cent. It’s always extremely difficult.

“Secondly you cannot put a new player in and say ‘there you go and now start scoring goals’.

“It doesn’t work like this anywhere in the world.

“Here when you have 12 games to go at the end of January, bringing in a player that’s going to make a difference is extremely difficult.

“Finding Australian players, we have focused on a defender for the whole season.

“The reality is, finding a good defender is difficult.

“We have Elsey and Jakobsen, who are one of the best central (defensive) duos I think in the country, so you have to put someone behind that who won’t be playing.

“That’s not very tempting for a new recruit to come in.

“Can we find someone who suits that bill in the middle of the season? No, that’s very difficult.

“We put our squad together one or two years in advance, like we are doing now for next season.

RG: Why wasn’t departed defender Taylor Regan replaced when the coach wanted another centre back in January?

PvdP: “It’s very difficult to find a replacement (for Regan) and we have come up with several options and in the end everybody needs to be behind it.

“If people say ‘no not that one or he needs too long to be fit or he isn’t good enough’, then we don’t do it.

“I’m not going to sign a player because then the people will be happy that we signed a player.

“That’s not how we work here. Give me the criticism that ‘no we didn’t sign anyone’. I’d rather sign no one.

“We try to do our best with all these things. You have to make decisions.

“At some point later in (this past) pre-season, Ben Halloran was offered to us which is also a very good player.

“But shouldn’t we take a defender instead if we have room for one more signing?

“Then we chose to sign Ben Halloran which we are very happy about.

“You need to find a balance. Things can work out well and things can work out the wrong way.

“I think all our long-term signings for this year I’m very happy with and I think the foundation for next year is there now and is there to see for everyone.

“What do we need? I will be going to Europe next week and I will be talking to some people and looking for some players for next season.

“We’re in the middle of that process.

“But in June with a three-month pre-season and players coming off contract in the major competitions, that is a better moment to find the right players than halfway through a season.”

RG: How advanced are plans to find a replacement for Marco Kurz? When do you hope to make an announcement?

PvdP: “First of all and I’m old-fashioned in that way, until after I had sat down with Marco I was not going to approach anyone else.

“That’s how I’m used to working. I first tell the current people what the plans are with them and then I start talking to new people.

“This means that this week, I’ve reached out to a (coaching) candidate with whom I’ve had a discussion several years ago about his suitability to work in Australia.

“I said ‘as a matter of fact, I’m now the owner of a club in Australia and would you be interested in working here next season?’

“He said ‘I would certainly be so’ and I said ‘let’s have a coffee next week when I’m in Europe’.

“We hope to make big progress on that in the next few weeks. However, football is football and anything can happen.

“Real Madrid can come for my candidate and probably they will prefer Madrid over Adelaide.

“I cannot guarantee that, but that is something that we’ve started working on now.”

RG: Would the club prefer an Australian or overseas coach at the helm?

PvdP: “I always have a preference. I first look internally always, with any role in any company.

“What I would like to do, just like our club would like to develop players, as a strategy of advancing as a club I would also like to develop our own coaches.

“If I cannot find a suitable local coach, I will look domestic and beyond domestic, I will look international, that’s how it works.

“However, with a foreign coach, I would like to have a local assistant coach because of the connection with the community, because of the knowledge of the local leagues for talent and the national league for preparation.

“So I would always have a mixture of this.

“I would not bring in three foreigners for instance as a coaching staff because they know nothing about football in Australia and the learning curve would be too steep to have three weeks to watch all the videos and know what’s happening.

“I need to find the balance.”

RG: What will the club’s recruitment priorities be during the off-season? Will it target young players, locals or overseas imports?

PvdP: “All of the above.

“We have visa spots available, we have Baba (Diawara) and Ken Ilso coming off contract, so that is normally two contracts that will be replaced by other players for next year.

“The issue you get and which concerns me because I came to Australia to invest in Australian football, is that you end up with the same problem as they have in China.

“Every club has three foreign attackers and the national team never scores a goal.

“It annoys me hugely that we have in George Blackwood a player who I think has potential, but has been criticised massively this year.

“How are we ever going to get a player to score goals for the national team if they don’t get the opportunity to play in the national league first.

“These are all considerations that you need to think about.

“We had a young player here (Apostolos Stamatelopoulos) who has announced that he will be signing for another club (Western United).

“We said ‘we would like to renew your contract and then loan you out to another club because here you will be number three (striker)’.

“That was our plan for him, but he decides to go directly to another club rather than being loaned out by us.

“I’m thinking, how can we develop players?

“Last year we had a player (Jordan O’Doherty) whose contract expired.

“He was a young midfielder who I thought was promising, but for whom I did not see a place in the team for this year.

“There is no point in renewing the contract of a player who has the talent but will not get playing time.

“The club has to make a decision based on many factors and not just ‘he is good or he is not good or he is young’.

“There is no point in keeping him here because he will be number five or six (midfielder) and he will be in the stands.

“That was a player that I rated and thought has quality and has a future, but we cannot keep.

“This is actually quite complex and what it needs is a long-term perspective.

“This is our team for next year, this is our team for the year after, this is our youth team, will we extend the 30-year-old player’s contract for one or two or three years?

“That depends on which player and which position or when the replacement from our own academy or second team will be ready to step in.

“That’s how it works. It’s a complex thing.

“If you look at individual cases of ‘why don’t you sign this or why don’t renew that or why do you let this player go?’

“The answer is it’s more complex than looking at the individual player.

“It’s looking at the team, it’s looking at the salary cap.”

RG: Who are the other members of the club’s ownership consortium?

PvdP: “The ownership of the club is in my hands.

“I’ve given the answer to that question last year and I’ve said that the other people do not wish to become public.”

RG: Why is the club reluctant to reveal who the other members of the ownership consortium are?

PvdP: “That is for privacy reasons.

“Strangely enough it’s become common for club owners to be flashy, to be an ego, to be at the forefront, but not everyone is like that.

“There are people who do not wish to do that.

“Even I do not wish to do that, but I take my responsibility in the person who makes the decisions here and I’m not afraid to explain these decision to anyone or to go into discussion about this.

“That’s my responsibility and my sole responsibility.”

RG: Why has this ownership consortium bought the club? What is their overall vision or long-term target for Adelaide United?

PvdP: “Because Adelaide is a football city and Adelaide has a football culture and Adelaide has a lot of talent.

“The second thing is we already had a club in China in Qingdao (Red Lions) which is a sister city of Adelaide and Shandong is the sister province of South Australia.

“It makes more sense than going to Gosford or Newcastle or Brisbane or Wellington or any other city.

“The connection there is already existing because the club, and don’t forget this, is about more than football.

“The club is a part of the community and especially of the football community.

“The club is also a part of the business community.

“We’ve started our Chairman’s Club this year where I’m extremely approachable, where I have 150 guests each week (at home games) and they ask me questions and I answer them.

“Like when I meet a supporter at the game or at the pub, when they ask me a question I also answer them.

“I don’t have a problem with that at all.

“The club is a platform for supporters, for football lovers, for business people, for entrepreneurs and for everything else.

“Having a link with China increases the commercial; opportunity for the club in a massive way, so that is also part of the long-term philosophy of the club.

“The fact that our China club is now in the same league as where the City (Football) Group have bought a club gives you an idea of the size of that.

“Don’t underestimate having a partner club or a sister club in China, one of the 64 professional clubs there in a country with a population double that of the US and Europe together.

“That is a big thing.

“Our commercial staff have reached out to China and have travelled with me to China in the last month.

“They’ve worked on educational projects, talent exchange projects, business opportunities, bringing our first-team in the pre-season to China to have a training camp and friendly games.

“This will be backed by governments, both in China and here, and the business community.

“These are the big things and these are the big things that offer Adelaide United something that no other club has.”

RG: How will Adelaide United benefit from bringing Chinese players to SA? Will these players be A-League ready and up to the standard of quality imports across the competition?

PvdP: “That will be a regular feature absolutely.

“I want to stimulate development and just like people like to send their children to a university in another city or another country, especially players from a completely different educational and coaching culture, will benefit really from that.

“Absolutely (future players coming to Adelaide from China will be of A-League standard).

“Chinese players’ physics aren’t different from Koreans or Japanese or Italians or Brazilians or Australians obviously.

“The amount of talent there is absolutely massive, as it is here in Australia.

“Our small club there (in China) has produced two national team under-17 players which is rare because the rest is from (Guangzhou) Evergrande, Shandong Luneng and huge clubs.

“It shows that with the right education from a young age, you can nurture the talent and develop the player.

“For Chinese players to have a western or Australian coach for a couple of months to get a completely different approach, I think will be very beneficial.

“The holy grail in football that everybody is looking for is the Chinese (Lionel) Messi.

“Every club in the world is looking for that.

“Every western club is trying to form partnerships and co-operations with Chinese academies and clubs — Bayern Munich, Barcelona they are all there.

“Why did the City (Football) Group buy a club in China? Exactly for this reason.

“Funnily enough, we are a little bit ahead with this.

“Therefore we need to stay ahead and that will be very difficult because there is huge competition.

“But we have set-up a youth development program (in China) which already gets players into national representative teams. How good is that?

“Why does Barcelona want the Chinese Messi? Because there is 1.5 billion people and commercial opportunities that will increase even the biggest clubs in the world.

“Imagine if Adelaide United has a Chinese player here and 30 million people watching the game compared to several ten of thousands on Fox (Sports) here.

“Why did Melbourne Victory sign (Japanese star Keisuke) Honda? The commercial opportunities, besides that he’s a great player.”

RG: What plans do you have for Adelaide United development teams? How soon can you implement them?

PvdP: “There are two difficulties. First resources in people and secondly that historically Adelaide United hasn’t taken it’s responsibility in regards to youth development.

“There won’t be for us, but in youth development there is a commercial part of that for most clubs.

“We are trying to re-establish a good relationship with the local clubs.

“If we suddenly start taking 150 or 200 quality players from all the team, we’re going to have a problem.

“We want to do that carefully, but we will do it because in the end all the other clubs will benefit from this as well.

“Out of 20 players from an under-18 team, two will make it to first team of Adelaide United.

“The other 18 will go back to the other clubs and will be better players than they were before.

“Otherwise there’s no point in doing it.

“This is a little bit of touchy issue that we need to deal with carefully.

“We have a good working relationship with the FFSA who have taken charge of youth development until our NPL reserve team, everything underneath.

“We are working together with them and normally this is the main source of our players already.

“So there is something in place that isn’t branded Adelaide United, but that is the development path for local Australian talent, which of course we will develop together with the FFSA.

“I would’ve liked to have been further after one year with this.

“One of the reason for appointing (former Adelaide director of football) Aurelio (Vidmar) was because I want to strengthen our football department into working on all of these things.

“That has stalled a little bit, but again in China we have successfully set-up all this up in three year’s time and we will do it here as well as soon as possible.”

RG: Why do you think crowds are at their lowest in the club’s history? How can you bring people back?

PvdP: “One thing that brings supporters is winning games obviously and the results in the last months have been a bit disappointing.

“Funnily enough I think our membership (number) is the second-highest ever this year in the history of the club.

“But walk-on tickets (on match-day) have not been great. This is the case in the entire league, it’s not only us.

“Results and match-day experience, that is the two key things.

“We’ve worked hard on the match-day experience and we are continuously working hard on the results because that is our key focus.

“The other thing is the atmosphere at our games, which I think arguably is better with us than anywhere else in the country.

“That is something very strong that we would like to keep and improve.

“Coopers is a fantastic stadium, but limited in opportunities to improve things.

“But we will try continuously and (work) with the family park and the fan village and all these things we are doing.

“We’ve had meetings with supporters groups and I engage with anyone who approaches me with questions.

“I tend to think we are more approachable than before (under the previous ownership) and we continue to be so.”