The Interview: Kansas City's Peter Vermes
The KC Coach Opens Up On His Process, Approaching the Playoffs, Selling Busio, His Four Core Values and More
Sporting Kansas City opens its MLS playoff campaign on Saturday against Vancouver, and I recently had an in-depth conversation with manager and sporting director Peter Vermes. It was an absolute blast, because you’re guaranteed to have a memorable conversation when Vermes is on the other end of it. This conversation is edited for clarity and timeliness, but it’s a really fun window into how Vermes operates.
Grant Wahl:
Our guest now is our old friend, Peter Vermes, the manager and sporting director for Sporting Kansas City. Peter, it's good to see you. How are you?
Peter Vermes:
I'm doing well, Grant, thank you very much. Thanks for having me on the show and hope you're well.
Grant Wahl:
You've been through a lot of these stretch runs in your coaching career. What are the things that you're looking to learn about your team during this stretch run this season?
“My father and my mother were both from Hungary. They came to this country in '56. They escaped from Hungary when the Russians were coming in and taking over all of Eastern Europe, if you will. And so my father was a professional soccer player, so he cut his professional career short, but he instilled in myself and my brothers a love for the game. And he told me all the stories when he was a pro, when I was a kid growing up, and those were all things that really made me fall in love with the game. And so then I also was able to go and I was able to read about Hungarian players of way back, the '50s, with their golden era, with [Ferenc] Puskás and all that stuff. And I got to meet him later in life, and then I obviously played there.” — Peter Vermes
Peter Vermes:
Where we've been pretty good all season is that we've taken game plans where for us, we play very similarly. I don't change the formation all that much, so from that perspective it's pretty turnkey. It's when you put the little nuances in based on the opponent that you're playing, or something that we think maybe we can take advantage of or something they do really well that we have to be aware of. It's the implementation of that where the guys have grown, but we have to grow a little bit more. And I also believe that as you get at the end of the season and even closer to the postseason, if you want to go far, you have to be able to defend well. And that's a really important thing to get on and get into that form that you need to.
And look, I played in a team many years ago. I remember I got traded from New York to Colorado in '96. Colorado was the worst team in Major League Soccer. I'd go there for the start of the '97 season, and we go to the MLS Cup final. And when we got into the MLS, we got in as the last place team, and we made it all the way to the final because we changed our team around a little bit and we were lights out defensively. And we scored some very timely goals, if you will, against our opponents. And all of a sudden it's kind of a Cinderella story, everybody starts to believe. So you can change that very quickly, but also can change the other way as well. And so you have to be very concentrated, focus on that and those are the little things that we're building toward as we move forward.
Peter Vermes’s four core values: 1. The team always comes first. 2. Intelligence. 3. Work ethic. 4. Winning mentality.
Grant Wahl:
You're the longest-tenured head coach in this league by quite a bit at this point, I think. And I'm wondering from your perspective, what are the keys to longevity as a coach beyond the obvious of winning?
Peter Vermes:
I actually think the better word, because obviously everybody has to win. We both know that. At this level, everybody has to win. It obviously helps if you win a trophy here or there, because it validates what you're doing. But I think the real thing is making sure that year after year you have a competitive team. Obviously everybody always states before the season starts, "Hey, we want to win MLS Cup, and we want to win this. That all sounds great, but I think at the end of the day, you have to be a team that puts yourself in a position to be able to compete with the best teams. And that's what we try to do each year. And I think that is the key, personally, to the longevity of any coach, any team, and consistency.
“If you would ask me as the coach, do I want to sell [Gianluca] Busio? Absolutely not. I thought Busio, man, he was flying. He was coming into his own. He was providing us with a look that was really good in the way that we were playing. He just had other qualities that he brought to the position, and I could move other guys around and use some of their strengths to help us do other things. And so the coach didn't want to sell them, but the sporting director understood that there was also a conversation when I was signing him that he had other ambitions. And so I had to make also a business decision, which we were all on the same page with. And I thought Busio was a great player here, but I also felt that had to be true to the team in what we were trying to do.” — Peter Vermes
Grant Wahl:
And as somebody who has seen this league from the start to where it is today, there's so much more money in this league now when you have $325 million expansion fees. I can remember a decade ago it was $5 million. And so a lot's changed, and Kansas City is not the biggest market in the league. How have you adapted as a club to continue being able to be near the top of the league in a much richer environment league-wide?
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Peter Vermes:
Yeah, and it's okay. I know you're trying to be respectful and I appreciate that, but we're not a SuperClub, right. We're not spending big amounts of money like a lot of clubs in the league are, and that's just not our model. And so personally I have a responsibility in that. Both being the Sporting director and the coach. And so at the end, I can either figure out how to be successful in it, or I can just complain about it all day, and the latter is just not my personality. It's more of trying to figure out how can we continue to compete with other teams who actually get a chance to really bring in some high quality players? Not to say that we don't have those, it's just that we have to try to do it in a different way.
I wind up getting a lot of guys that frankly, and it's no disrespect to them, it's just reality. Wind up getting a lot of players that either had really high projections sometime in their career and didn't get there for whatever the reason is. It's not always their fault. Or they had a really good run at some point and then they fell off a little bit. And we've been able to bring a lot of those players in and sort of resurrect their careers, and they become extremely productive for our club. So that's one.
The other is, I think if you're going to be in this business for a long time, and I would say that this doesn't exist in most corporations, if you will. And that is you have to have a strong culture, and I know that is used a lot in business and in sports. And I think it's used very loosely, but everybody has a culture. But I would say that 95% of them are negative cultures because, first off, if you're going to have a good culture and you're going to sustain it, it's going to be because of consistency of people. Because it's people that create the culture in your organization, and so the fact that I have been here for a long time helps a lot.
And I'm involved in all the people that are hired on the technical side. I do that. So I try to hire those people that are a part of who we are and what we want to try to accomplish year after year. And that has a big effect on the players and how they perform on a regular basis. But I also think the guys that we do recruit are high quality. Like I said, just at times they haven't maybe been able to reach that or hit that potential, and that's been a big success for us.
“So I turned over to the fourth official and I said, ‘Hey, what is the call?’ I said, ‘The guy gets a forearm from behind in the back of his head.’ And the assistant, Marc Dos Santos' brother, he must think either I'm talking to them or that he hears me talking and sees me talking to the fourth official, because they're on the other side. And then he mouths, ‘Hey, F-off,’ to me. And I go, ‘F-off?’ Anyway, so you know what it looks like. When I saw it, I know exactly what happened, so I kind of was like, ‘Yeah well, that's exactly what happened because that's what I was trying to figure.’ Like, ‘F-off? F-off.’
Grant Wahl:
The word you just used, I thought it was really fascinating. It was all interesting, is resurrect. Like, how do you resurrect somebody in your position?
Peter Vermes:
I can say this because I'm here, as you said, for a long time, right. I can say this. And that is, I think when you're in sports, whether you're a player or you're a coach, you're always searching. And even staff members for that matter, you're always searching for a home. You're always searching for a place that you can really say, "Hey, I really feel comfortable there."
So I think the first thing is, is that if you will, in the profession, we try to create a home for those players. A place that they actually feel comfortable where they can reach their potential, and the first thing you have to create there is trust in the relationship. And that doesn't always happen right away. They have to see it. When I say they have to see it, they have to see examples of that. And so that takes a little bit of time, the adaptation.
You always have this one thing, and that is whenever a player first comes in, he believes. He's excited, right, it's a new chapter in his career. He's all excited and all those things. You have to make sure that you take advantage of that in a positive way, not in a negative way. And so always really be careful to make sure that that is at least as much as I can control, I control to make sure that it's going in the right direction and not the other.
Grant Wahl:
You are the manager, you're the sporting director. It's fairly rare in the modern game, even in MLS, for that to be the case. Bruce Arena's having a really good season in New England running the personnel side and the first-team side. I guess I would wonder how are you able to make it work in the modern game?
Peter Vermes:
I think it would have been difficult if I would've started out coaching and tried to do the other. The fact that I started out the other, I always wanted to be a coach that... I mean, I don't think that's news to anybody, right. I mean, I always wanted to do it and I was with Sigi [Schmid] with the U20s, and so I always wanted to do that. When I got into the management side, it was actually a great education because I learned about all the player mechanisms, When I was a player, I did all my own contracts, so I'm not going to say that I knew everything, but I had a good step in the right direction of being able to then negotiate with players on their contracts.
What I've been able to do though over the years, and as you had stated earlier, where the league had progressed from '96 until now, I mean, obviously it's night and day. So I can't do all the contracts anymore. Not because of time even. It's probably not the healthiest of relationships when I'm asking the guys, "Hey, run through a brick wall for me. I'm the coach." And then, "Hey, I'm not giving you all the money that you want." And that can always be a contentious situation, so Brian Bliss is here. He does a ton of that stuff, and so we’ve got a very good relationship and working environment and process and the way that we do all those things.
So, some of that is how do you manage that situation? And this is going to sound funny. I'm joking, but I'm not in a way. There's a real benefit and there’s also going to be a lot of pressure to this. And that is when I want a player, I just have to look in the mirror and tell the sporting director, "Hey, I'm interested in this guy. What do you think? Oh, great. We can do it, let's go." There's no argument. But that's also pressure, because when he doesn't work, we're both the same guy and now the criticism comes back that way as well. But I'd rather be in control of my fate as opposed to the other way around.
Grant Wahl:
I wanted to also ask you about another type of balance, and we're seeing around the league fans of, in particular, Dallas and the New York Red Bulls right now saying publicly, "We've developed good young players. We've sold players to foreign teams in Europe. We want to win. We think the balance is out of whack." And you're a team that has sold players abroad, just sold Gianluca Busio to Venezia. You've sold other young players. How do you find that balance the right way so that you don't have your fans putting out public statements like that?
Peter Vermes:
It's a great question. I'll never forget this, so in 2013, we're embarking on the season. We're in preseason and Kei Kamara, who was an excellent player for this club. He really was. Both on and off the field. He has an unbelievable personality, and he was our leading goal scorer. And so he comes to me... And you may or may not know this, but I have a very strong philosophy around the transferring of players. I believe that or I should say, when I'm trying to recruit players in, I look for players that have strong personalities. I look for players that are ambitious. And sometimes that ambition can be with our club, and sometimes that ambition could be, "Hey, I want to do well here to use it as a stepping stone to go someplace else."
And I'm very respectful of that because I know that for some, like a Graham Zusi, we might be one club. For the Kei Kamaras of the world, he may have other ambitions and I'm fully respectful of that. That's the way it is. So he comes to me before, we're in preseason, we're in Arizona. And he says, "Hey, listen, there's an EPL team that's interested in bringing me on loan. And as you know, I would really like to do that." And I was like, "Kei, you're our leading goal scorer. Tell me a club in the world that's going to loan out their leading goal scorer." He's like, "I know, but this is something that I really want to do." And I said, "Listen, let me think about it."
And I remember going away, it was kind of in the morning. I thought all through the day and into the night, I came back to him the next day. I said, "Look, if the club comes and provides a good offer, then I will seriously consider it." Obviously, I have to always approach our board which is our owners. Just to tell them, "Hey, this is an opportunity." And so long story short, we loaned him. And that wasn't easy, okay. But I also had to go with something that we have in our club, and that is... So, I have four core values that make up our culture. And the number one is the team is always first.
And so at that moment, Kei was interested in something that he wanted to do. And I have to believe in the team, because the team is always first. And so I chose to allow him to go while still remaining true and trustworthy of the core, which was the team. And so that year he left and he came back. Probably was here for about six weeks, and then a purchase came in for him and we sold him. And we went on, as you know, to win MLS Cup that year.
And it was a great lesson for me, because even like this year, if you would ask me as the coach, do I want to sell Busio? Absolutely not. I thought Busio, man, he was flying. He was coming into his own. He was providing us with a look that was really good in the way that we were playing. He just had other qualities that he brought to the position, and I could move other guys around and use some of their strengths to help us do other things. And so yeah the coach didn't want to sell them, but the sporting director understood that there was also a conversation when I was signing him that he had other ambitions. And so I had to make also a business decision, which we were all on the same page with. And I thought Busio was a great player here, but I also felt that also had to be true to the team in what we were trying to do.
And look, we're still competitive. Even though Busio has left, we're still kind of in a good place and we're going to continue to keep working towards that. And so to your point, I think it's also planning, but look, and I think young players, it's always on them. Just because the guy's young doesn't mean he can't play, but they also have to take advantage of the opportunities they get. And so there is a fine line between having veterans. I always say, middle-class guys, which... And I say, veterans are 28 and above. The middle-class guys are usually like 23 to 27, 28 and then below 22 is your kind of young guys.
And you’ve got to have a good balance of those guys in your team because there's going to be moments in seasons where you're challenged mentally. And if you haven't been through that a lot, you can only rely on sort of the young buck who's just willing to just try it all but that's not necessarily going to win the day for you, and you’ve got to have some veteran guys around. At least that's what I believe.
(The interview continues below for paid subscribers.)
Grant Wahl:
You mentioned you have four core values, and you specified one of them with me. What are the other three?
Peter Vermes:
Intelligence, but I'm not asking guys to perform brain surgery on Monday morning, right. I'm asking them that when we have a game plan, and they have either individually a role to play or within the team for that game, that they can implement that onto the field. So soccer intelligence.
Third is work ethic. If you're not going to work here, you won't last long. It doesn't matter how long your contract is or anything. You have to know that every game in this league is a battle. Every team can beat anybody on any given day. And if you're going to be successful, you’ve got to work.
And then the fourth is a winning mentality, but really is defined as you pursue excellence in everything that you do. So the easy way to break that down is that if we have lunch, and we do every day, breakfast and lunch, and the guys have got to clean up their area. You put your plate where it belongs, your utensils after you're done. You clean up your area. If you can't do that, then more than likely you might miss your assignment on a corner kick per se. But I also know that when the guy leaves here that when he goes home, his house might be a pigsty.
I don't go home to his house. I hope that some of the values that we try to implement here, they carry forward to other things they do in their lives. But for sure when they're here and they're part of the team and all that, my objective is they pursue excellence in everything that they do. And hopefully that lends itself to the field as well.
Grant Wahl:
Fascinating, thanks for sharing. We had Bruce Arena on here recently on the show. He is famously anti-data analytics in soccer, makes no apologies for that. How much do you use data in your job?
Peter Vermes:
I would say that I'm probably the guy in the middle. So I really enjoy technology, I'm always interested in whatever new is out there. But I don't necessarily all of a sudden go, "Oh, forget everything else and now I'm doing that." I know I don't do that. I use certain parts of data, things that I think pertain to the way that we play, little trends that you might see with your team or another team. I like to see little things like that, but I'm probably like a middle of the road guy when it comes to data and technology.
Grant Wahl:
I always feel like I should ask you about the US men's national team. You're a former player, played in world cups. I know you care deeply, how are you feeling about where the team is right now?
Peter Vermes:
I think Gregg [Berhalter] and his staff, they're doing a great job. I think those guys, they really care. I know that they work really hard, and I know that it's a very difficult job because you want to create a style play. You want to play a certain way. You want all those things, but you also have a very short period of time. And it's really hard to get all of those concepts into the players, especially when they're playing at their club teams and that's their main focus, and that's where they get most of their information from.
So I think those guys are doing a great job. I have all the faith in the world that they'll qualify the team. It's a battle. I mean, I don't care. You could take a European team and bring them over here and put them in our qualifying and have to travel to all the different places, and the way the games are and all that. And they would find it a difficult road to haul, so I think they're doing a good job. I really do.
And I think there is a really good crop of players that we have coming through right now. And I think they've shown that, one, they can win. When you look at especially the Gold Cup. I say that because you had a different team there and a lot of those guys I thought took a really big step forward to showing that there's a whole other group of guys that are right there pushing to be in that first team. And I think that's really healthy for now and for the future for our men's national team.
Grant Wahl:
I also just wanted to ask you really quick about Hungary. I know you've been influenced a lot by Hungarian football. You have Daniel Salloi been playing for Hungary. They were a pretty big part of the Euro this summer, and can you explain to our listeners, I guess, a little bit of your connection and how you've been influenced by Hungarian football? And how you stay connected?
Peter Vermes:
Sure, so my father and my mother were both from Hungary. They came to this country in '56. They escaped actually from Hungary when the Russians were coming in and taking over all of Eastern Europe, if you will. And so my father was a professional soccer player, so he cut his professional career short, but he instilled in myself and my brothers a love for the game. And he told me all the stories when he was a pro, when I was a kid growing up, and those were all things that really made me fall in love with the game. And just understanding what it was like to be a pro and how you had to conduct yourself.
And so then I also was able to go and I was able to read about Hungarian players of way back, the '50s, with their golden era, if you will, with [Ferenc] Puskás and all that stuff. And I got to meet him later in life, and then I obviously played there. And so the one thing that I have respect is I think that Hungarian soccer players actually individually, after a certain period of time after the '50s, '60s, individually they were really, really good players. And what happened was they lost, I believe, a lot of the team concept.
So individually they were really good, technically they were great, but they were only playing for themselves. And they never really had this manager-coach, somebody who could get them to understand the team concept. And what's happening now is, I believe that that's changing. They're seeing the rest of the world and how so many different countries that you wouldn't think that could compete, compete because they play as a team, they work as a team. And Hungary now is getting back to that, but you're adding the ability that they can play the game. And so I have a lot of respect for the individual qualities of Hungarian players.
Grant Wahl:
I've really enjoyed watching the development of Dominik Szoboszlai, who has been playing for Jesse Marsch at Salzburg and now Leipzig, missed the Euro but just a really promising player. And they've got a few of them now. Do you speak Hungarian?
Peter Vermes:
So we used to speak it when I was growing up all the time. Problem is I don't really get a chance to practice at all, so I can under understand everything. I would say that my Hungarian from a vocabulary perspective is probably more like a higher end than Spanglish, if you will, and Spanish. But if I go there and I spend, say, two days there, it's amazing how much just comes back to you.
Grant Wahl:
It's a hard language, man.
Peter Vermes:
Very hard.
Grant Wahl:
Like most of those European languages, I feel like I can get some of it, but that's not one of them.
Peter Vermes:
No. I mean, people that go there and don't have any background and learn it, to me, they're incredible, because it's a tough language.
Grant Wahl:
If you get to know me, you'll know that the only Hungarian I know is Royal Tokaji but that's another story... I want to ask you about one other thing and this one's random, and I hope you have a sense of humor about it. Kind of my favorite GIF in the history of MLS came out a year or two ago. And it is of you during a game against Vancouver, basically saying the phrase F-off down the sideline in three different ways. And for me, it's kind of poetry. And so I feel like I know you a little bit and it was good stuff. But how did you feel about it when you saw that for the first time?
Peter Vermes:
Well, so I remember the situation really well. Khiry Shelton was down in the left-hand corner from where I was standing on the bench, and we were visiting Vancouver. And so he basically gets forearmed in the back of the head, call's not made. And then all of a sudden a call does get made, because he's down on the ground, but we don't know where it's going. And so I turned over to the fourth official and I said, "Hey, what is the call?" I said, "The guy gets a forearm from behind in the back of his head." And the assistant, Marc Dos Santos' brother, he must think either I'm talking to them or that he hears me talking and sees me talking to the fourth official, because they're on the other side.
And then he mouths, "Hey, F-off," to me. And I go, "F off"? Anyway, so you know what it looks like. When I saw it, I know exactly what happened, so I kind of was like, "Yeah well, that's exactly what happened because that's what I was trying to figure." Like, "F-off? F-off." You get it, so yeah. It was one of those moments where it's heat of the moment in the game and whatever. It is what it is. But he actually came over and I like those guys, so it's no big deal. I get that sometimes as part of the game.
Grant Wahl:
I also am someone who loves language, and love how you can express yourself in different ways with language. And for me that was poetry. So I don't know if you intended it, but it was great.
Peter Vermes:
Appreciate it, appreciate it. It could have been a lot worse, put it that way. Could have come off a lot worse.
Grant Wahl:
Peter Vermes is the manager and sporting director for Sporting Kansas City. Peter, it's always a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Peter Vermes:
Thank you.