Struggling Valour FC sack head coach and GM

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This article was published 22/09/2021 (939 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After two and a half seasons of lacklustre results, Valour FC had finally had enough as they fired head coach and general manager Rob Gale Thursday morning.

Winnipeg’s professional soccer club has replaced Gale with former Vancouver Whitecaps assistant head coach Phillip Dos Santos.

Gale is the only head coach/GM Winnipeg’s professional soccer club has known as he was hired prior to the Canadian Premier League’s inaugural season in 2019. Including Canadian Championship results, Valour’s all-time record with Gale in charge was 18-8-30.

This season started out promising as Valour went 6-0-2 during The Kickoff — the CPL bubble in Winnipeg — but the maroon and gold have been flat ever since, going 1-2-7 in their last 10 league matches and losing 2-1 in the quarterfinal of the Canadian Championship to Forge FC.

“I’m always evaluating what we’re doing and where we’re going. Just the last month, basically, after the bubble, we just haven’t been headed in the right direction,” Winnipeg Football Club president and CEO Wade Miller told the Free Press on Thursday.

The team’s recent struggles weren’t all on Gale as the club has been playing without star defender/co-captain Andrew Jean-Baptiste who went down with a torn ACL at the end of the bubble. Key pieces such as striker Austin Ricci and midfielder Brett Levis have also missed time. But for Miller, losing Jean-Baptiste, or anyone else for that matter, doesn’t excuse the team’s poor play.

“We lost an outstanding player, an outstanding leader. At the same time, we have an outstanding locker room of other leaders and talented players,” Miller said of Jean-Baptiste.

“We need to be able to play through the adversity of losing a player or the different things that go on in matches. Injuries are going to happen… so, we have to be able to play through those and find a way to win.”

Assistant coach/general manager Damian Rocke and goalkeeper coach Patrick Di Stefani still remain with the club. The pair of assistants, who have been with Valour since Day 1, ran Thursday’s training session after the players were informed about the club going in a new direction.

“We loved working under Rob and we respect Rob a lot. Personally, he brought me back to Canada, so, it’s a tough one. It’s very hard to digest it right now. But we’re professional footballers,” said Valour midfielder/co-captain Daryl Fordyce, who was playing professionally in Ireland before Gale signed him in 2020.

“As I said to the boys, make sure to give Rob a call and thank him for everything he’s done for you, and then, you got to move on. You just got to do it. It’s professional and you have to control your own game and career. As harsh as it may sound, that’s just the reality of the business.”

Dos Santos, a 43-year-old who was born in Montreal and raised in Portugal, is in town and was introduced to reporters via Zoom on Thursday afternoon. He knows what it’s like to be in Gale’s position as he was let go by the Whitecaps at the end of August, as was his brother Marc who was the team’s head coach.

“I’m going to start by saying it was a bittersweet moment for me because I knew it would come with someone else being in a situation that is more difficult and more complex,” Dos Santos said in his introductory press conference.“But at the same time I realized on that day that had it been me, or someone else, when an organization is set on making a change you have to understand that it’s part of the process and part of the game. I tried to keep that to the side and think about what was best for me professionally. The club felt it was the best thing for them as well and everything happened really quick.”

Dos Santos will make his Valour debut on the sideline Sunday when the team hits the road to take on York United. Despite their recent stretch of losses, Valour is still in prime position to be one of the league’s four playoff teams. Valour (7-2-9) are three points behind fourth place York (6-8-5) and have a game in hand.

“I didn’t want to talk too much to the players. I want to progressively feel every individual. But the energy seemed there. The desire is there and I think they need to feel the responsibility as part of this organization that there’s objectives that were set at the beginning of the season and we’re still on track for those objectives,” Dos Santos said.“We all have to embrace the responsibility that we have and try to get across that line and make it up. When there’s a situation like this, it’s not only the coach, there’s little things we probably all have to work on and I want the players to also feel that responsibility.”

Dos Santos, who used to play professionally in Portugal and southern Africa, has held assistant coaching roles with the San Francisco Deltas, Ottawa Fury, and Indy Eleven over the years. Unlike Gale who was born in Zambia and has lived in Winnipeg for more than a decade, Dos Santos has no previous ties to Winnipeg.

“We received the phone call with this opportunity sometime last week and it was one of those where there’s 11 professional teams in reality in Canada (three MLS, eight CPL) and just being home, just being in the Canadian market, was something for me and my family felt (good about),” he said.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @TaylorAllen31