After Axel Schuster’s opening press conference a week ago, I took a moment with Vancouver Whitecaps co-owner Jeff Mallett to discuss the state of the club’s youth development situation, and to hear what he may have learned through the “Sporting Director” hiring process.
Often in the sports world, interviewing candidates for a top-ranking position provides a wonderful opportunity for a club to learn about how their own organization is perceived from the outside, even if some of that information doesn’t come from the candidate they end up hiring. With this in mind, I asked Jeff Mallett what he had learned from both Nolan Partners, and the candidates they had interviewed, in regards to how their youth development programs were perceived, and where people from elsewhere in the football world saw room for improvement.