Carl Robinson had already made up his mind that he was going to swap English football for Major League Soccer by the time the news broke at the start of 2007 that David Beckham would be signing for LA Galaxy. Eight years later and a host of other players from England and beyond have been and gone, but Robinson is still living the North American dream.
After three seasons with Toronto followed by another two with New York Red Bulls, where playing alongside Thierry Henry was one of the highlights – “You’d never meet a better human being than him” – Robinson stepped up from his role as assistant at Vancouver Whitecaps to take over as head coach in December 2013. Ambitious, driven and prepared to get his “hands dirty” to find new talent, the former Wales international has long been intent on making his mark, rather than just a quick buck, in MLS.
“When David Beckham signed it was a fantastic achievement for the league because he put MLS on the map,” Robinson says. “But there was a number of English players that, I think, came over based on Beckham. The reality is that most of those guys did it for the wrong reasons, didn’t settle here and went back. I stayed here because I had a plan of what I wanted to do with my life.
“Beckham has come and gone in five years, Thierry Henry has come and gone, since then you’ve had Kaká, [Robbie] Keane and [David] Villa join. None of it is has fazed me. I know what my goals are and they haven’t changed. It’s been brilliant that these superstars have come. Testing myself against Kaká, wondering how to stop Henry, has been an education for me, because if I get to where I want to be, I’m going to need to do that not for one player but 11.”
The 38-year-old appears to be on the right path. After rebuilding the team and reaching the play-offs in his first season in charge, Vancouver are second in the Western Conference four games into the new campaign. They have won their last three, including a 2-1 home victory over Portland Timbers last Saturday courtesy of a 90th-minute debut goal from Robert Earnshaw, another Welshman.
The other two wins were chiselled out a long way from home, against Chicago Fire and Orlando City, and mean that Robinson and his players have clocked up a staggering 9,000 miles already. To put that distance in perspective, Newcastle United supporters have the biggest travel demands in the Premier League and would cover 8,200 miles in an entire season.
“We travel the most in Major League Soccer because we’re in the Pacific Northwest,” says Robinson, who won 52 caps for Wales. “The other day when we travelled to Orlando it was a five-hour journey into Dallas, we had a two-hour layover, and we had another two to three hours back down to Orlando. That’s a lot of travelling and a lot of miles. It’s not easy for the players. But they get to play in some fantastic cities. In Orlando we played in front of 35,000 and had a former World Player of the Year playing against us in Kaka.”
Vancouver’s next opponents are LA Galaxy, and in Keane the MLS champions have a striker whom Robinson knows better than anyone. Named MLS’s most valuable player last season, Keane started his career alongside Robinson at Wolves and was best man at his wedding. “We broke into the Wolves team at the same time. I was 20, he was 17, and we’ve remained very close friends ever since,” Robinson says. “Our paths have gone different ways, Robbie went to Coventry, Inter Milan, Tottenham and Liverpool. I went to Wolves, Portsmouth, Sunderland and Norwich, so I’ve done the hard-working mens’ clubs!
“It’s funny how we’ve ended up meeting in North America. But it’s great now I get to coach against him: I did last year three times and, excuse my language, but the little bastard scored three times. He enjoys it and he rubs it in. But I enjoy pitting my wits against him because I know what gets under his skin.”
Keane will soon be playing alongside Steven Gerrard for LA Galaxy while Frank Lampard will be lining up for New York City FC in two transfers guaranteed to bring greater profile to a league where, Robinson says, the “standard of play has grown immensely” since he joined Toronto from Norwich in 2007. He predicts, however, that Lampard and Gerrard could find it tricky initially.
“Whenever designated players come in halfway through the year, it’s quite difficult for them. What I mean by that is that they have a full season playing in England, then they have a short three or four-week break, come over and they’re straight into the demands of games, travelling, climate. But they’re both world-class players and I’m really excited that we’ve been able to attract them.”
Robinson operates in a different transfer market at Vancouver. He spent three weeks travelling around central and South America in the off season, sometimes watching games played in front of little more than 100 people, to try to uncover rough diamonds and he may well have found one in Octavio Rivero, a 23-year-old Uruguayan striker who was playing in Chile for O’Higgins FC. Rivero scored in his first three games for Vancouver and pipped Kaká to the MLS player of the month award for March.
“Bringing in Octavio was a six-month process,” Robinson says. “After doing the research he’s probably No5 or No6 in the Uruguayan national team pecking order, which is not a bad thing when you think of people like [Luis] Suarez and [Edinson] Cavani. I also signed Diego Rodriguez, a centre-back who was playing in Uruguay for Juventud and whom Manuel Pellegrini signed for Malaga as a 19-year-old. Last season we signed Kendall Waston, a 6ft 5in defender who was playing for Deportivo Saprissa, a renowned powerhouse in Costa Rican football. It’s about getting your hands dirty and going out and travelling.”
As for football in Canada, Robinson says that it continues to grow in popularity - the Whitecaps, now in their fifth season in MLS, average just under 21,000 at BC Place Stadium. A report in the Vancouver Sun this week said that no sports franchise in Canada had grown more in relative terms over the past five years - a 280-fold increase - than the Whitecaps, which is now valued at about $70m. Ice hockey, however, will always dominate. “Canadians love ice hockey, that’s their No1 sport,” Robinson says. “Kids at three, four, five years of age get brought up to play hockey, the mums and dads get pads and skates on them straight away and they do it naturally, like we do in the UK with our children when we get them kicking a ball about.
“Then there is the financial aspect of it. You get a draft coming out of college in ice hockey and the minimum salary is probably $1m. With football that would be $60,000. But is football growing here? Yes, without doubt. In 2007, when I came to Toronto, from where football was then compared to where it is now, the difference is night and day.”
While Robinson says that he feels “extremely privileged” to have spent the last eight years living in Toronto, New York and Vancouver with his family, and talks passionately about his desire to bring success to the Whitecaps over the coming years, the long-term plan is to move back to England and manage at the top level.
“I know I’ve still got a lot to learn,” he says. “I class myself as an apprentice as a manager now. I was an apprentice as a player back at Wolves in 1995 and I carved out a career based on hard work, determination and wanting to prove people wrong, and I want to do that again as a manager, hopefully in the Premier League one day.”
