Lothar Osiander and Timo Liekoski have added their names to the Major League Soccer coaching register.
They both were born in Europe and came to this country as teenagers. Both played at American colleges, both rose through the U.S. Soccer coaching ranks, both coached the U.S. Olympic team, and both were shoved out by U.S. Soccer president Alan Rothenberg.
Now, both have a chance to build their own MLS teams.
Six days apart, Lothar Osiander and Timo Liekoski were named head coaches of the Los Angeles and Columbus franchises, respectively. In assembling a team from a vast MLS player pool, they have the advantage of working with many of the players who will make up the rosters of America’s new pro league.
“They both have international experience, but they come from American soccer,” says U.S. defender Alexi Lalas, who played for Osiander on the ’92 Olympic team and graduated to the national team. “You hear about how the American soccer player is a different animal, and it’s absolutely true.”
Liekoski, a native of Finland, has more than a decade of coaching experience in American pro and indoor leagues, in addition to his three years of assisting former U.S. national head coach Bora Milutinovic. He won an MISL indoor title with the Edmonton Drillers in 1981, captured two NPSL championships with Canton in 1989 and 1990, and was NASL (outdoor) Coach of the Year in 1979 with the Houston Hurricane.
Last January, he took on an impossible burden as director of player development and director of the USSF coaching schools in addition to the Olympic team, and after the U.S. lost three straight games at the Pan American Games without scoring a goal, his departure was inevitable. U.S. Soccer fired him in late September.
Yet once he became available, Columbus general manager Jamey Rootes pushed aside the three candidates he had been seriously considering to nab Liekoski.
“I had three criteria,” says Rootes, “and I was having trouble finding someone who met all three.
“I wanted a proven winner, someone who would work well in the Columbus community, and someone I could work with. Obviously, Timo meets all those requirements, and is a class individual as well.”
Rootes does’t feel Liekoski’s highly publicized firing hampers his image as a head coach. “I can’t remember where I read this, but coaches are hired to be fired,” he said. “And his Olympic experience is fantastic. His knowledge of American players will be invaluable when we go into the draft.”
MLS clubs recently submitted “wish lists” of players they would like to be allocated, but most of a team’s players will be chosen at a draft to be held in February. More than 250 players are expected to be invited to a scouting combine in Irvine, Calif., Jan. 5-15.
“They both have the innate ability to evaluate a player’s strengths and weaknesses very quickly,” says Lalas, “and that’s going to be crucial in this league.
“Everything’s new. It’s not like a coach has a core of players coming back from last year, and they don’t have a lot of time, either.”
Osiander got his notice largely because of one game: a 2-1 loss to Italy in the opening match of the 1992 Olympic soccer tournament. His refusal to play top scorer Steve Snow never yielded a satisfactory explanation to Rothenberg, and after Snow played and scored in a win over Kuwait and a tie with eventual finalist Poland, Osiander got the boot.
Unlike Liekoski, Osiander’s pro coaching resume is skimpy: One season with the A-League Atlanta Ruckus, which he led to the championship finals last summer. In addition to coaching the U.S. through Olympic qualifying and at the 1988 and 1992 Games, he coached the full national team from 1986 to 1988 while juggling his regular full-time job as a waiter at Graziano’s, a San Francisco restaurant.
When the restaurant was sold in 1992, after the Olympic Games, the new management brought in its own staff. Otherwise, Osiander says, he would still be there, coaching on nights and weekends while helping taking care of his mentally retarded son, Eric.
Osiander, who was born in Germany, capped his long club coaching career with a U.S. Open Cup title last year with the San Francisco Greek-Americans, a championship he had previously won with the same team in 1985. His job at Graziano’s prevented him from coaching full-time, so for several years he coached the Greek-Americans, one of the nation’s top semipro teams, in addition to his stints with U.S. Soccer.
Once married to a Salvadoran woman, he speaks fluent Spanish, which is considered a vital factor in dealing with L.A.’s vast Spanish-speaking community, not to mention Mexican goalkeeper Jorge Campos.
“I won’t have a problem with Campos,” Osiander says when asked if there might be a power struggle between him and a goalkeeper who likes to score goals as well as let them get chipped over his head. “I’m 6 feet, he’s only 5-6.”
Osiander’s quips belie his structured approach to tactics and team preparation. Paul Caligiuri, a member of the 1988 Olympic team, recalls Osiander needed to assimilate varied elements in readying the squad for qualifying play and the Olympic tournament.
“At the time, we had players from all over,” he says. “Some were playing in Europe, some were playing indoor, others were just coming out of college. It was a transitional period for American soccer, and we really didn’t have a specific system of play we were used to.
“I remember Lothar spent a lot of time talking with us on the field, about the roles we needed to play and how we were going to blend as a team. We’d complain about the talking, telling him to just let us play, but he did a very successful job of bringing us together.”
And the ranks of ex-Olympic coaches heading into MLS should be supplemented very soon when current head coach Bruce Arena formally announces his departure from Virginia to accept the D.C. United post as well.
“I’m glad they are getting MLS jobs,” said Caligiuri. “This is hopefully the start of something great in American soccer, and they know about how soccer in this country has developed, where it’s been, and where it’s going.”
by Soccer America senior editor Ridge Mahoney