SKC makes historic academy hire in Ribeiro

SKC makes historic academy hire in Ribeiro
by Will Parchman
May 1, 2017

Michel Ribeiro had interest from everywhere. Porto. Manchester City. Roma. Some clubs even as distant as China. But there was one point of interest in particular he couldn’t stop thinking about.

And it was from Sporting Kansas City.

This week, Sporting KC announced the hiring of Ribeiro to its coaching staff as a technical coach, a position that has never before existed in explicit terms in an MLS academy setup. Ribeiro will start with the club in July with the stated aim of increasing the technical level of Sporting KC’s individual academy players. Like most pro clubs in the U.S., Sporting KC brass identified technical ability as an across-the-board deficiency, and for the better part of a year Sporting KC academy director Jon Parry worked on Ribeiro to gauge his interest in bringing his unique set of skills to the midwest.

By the end, Ribeiro couldn’t turn down the opportunity.

“I think it speaks volumes to his character that he wants to be really involved in a project,” Parry said. “The most important thing for him and for us is making sure he’s in a place where the kids can go from the academy to the first team.”

Ribeiro spent 14 years as a development coach at Genk, the Belgian version of the Netherlands’ famed Ajax system. Most recently as Genk’s technical coach, Ribeiro oversaw the development of the core of a Belgian national team side that’s currently ranked No. 2 in the world. Kevin De Bruyne. Thibault Courtois. Christian Benteke. Yannick Carrasco. Divock Origi. All of them passed under Ribeiro’s technically-inclined teaching at Genk.

After a decade and a half, though, Ribeiro sought a new challenge, and his reputation preceded him. A number of clubs pursued his prodigiously successful teaching pattern, and one was Manchester City and its motherlode of academy resources. But after visiting he realized he wanted more of a holistic project that allowed him to develop players for the first team. At a number of European clubs competing for Champions League titles, that simply isn’t the landscape.

This is a unique reality today in MLS academies, and a big reason why Ribeiro perhaps won’t be the last of his kind to leave the Continent to come to a league now seen as a development frontier. No MLS club is big enough to ignore its own academy (though some do anyway), and yet most all have facilities that rival all but the world's best few teams and leagues. As MLS clubs slowly up their investment in youth, they’re drawing more and more coaching eyes in this direction. Ribeiro simply heeded the call.

“It was the philosophy for Sporting KC was a little bit the same as we have in Genk, not always buying big stars but developing youth players and bring them all in the coming years to the first team,” Ribeiro said. “The facilities and the vision and the way they work, everything was great. That’s why I chose Kansas City.”

Ribeiro first connected with Parry during Parry’s trip to Genk for a coaching course last year. Parry watched Ribeiro work and was mesmerized by his methodology, both in how meticulous and how involved he was. Over the following months Parry and Ribeiro stayed in contact before the latter was invited to Kansas City in February to tour the facilities and even lead a coaching session with some of the club’s youth players.

Parry already knew he wanted Ribeiro, but that trip convinced Ribeiro that he could implement his brand of development on Sporting KC’s up-and-coming academy and have an impact on the first team in the process.

Broadly speaking, Ribeiro’s job is essentially as an auxiliary to the current stable of Sporting KC academy coaches focusing specifically on individual technical skill. He’ll target areas like first touch, dribbling technique and one-on-one ability while floating between each academy team every week. By drilling down on these areas, both the club and Ribeiro hope to create a more specialized and technically advanced breed of American player.

“For me, that’s the thing they don’t work on a lot in the USA is the technical,” Ribeiro said. “I think the United States has enormous potential to make big players, because they have the talent. The people in the United States have to think it’s possible to bring youth players into the first team. That’s one of the keys here in Belgium that we do. We put young players in the first team. We are a very small country in Belgium, but we are the No. 2 in the world ranking. I think that’s the way you need to work. I think in the USA, it’s just a big potential of talent.”

As for the more sprawling first team implications, Ribeiro’s hiring represents a dramatic spasm of ambition from Sporting KC. Over the course of coach/GM Peter Vermes’ eight-year tenure in Kansas City, the club is more well known for shrewd draft picks and money-conscious buys in the international transfer market - names like Oriol Rosell, Krisztian Nemeth and Roger Espinoza - than their own cultivated youth players. Since making goalkeeper Jon Kempin its first Homegrown player in 2010, Sporting KC’s only signed three since, and none are currently first team regulars. The club has high hopes for defender Erik Palmer-Brown, who will captain the U.S. U20 World Cup team next month, and forward Daniel Salloi, who just made his first team debut on April 9. But the club’s total of three active Homegrowns is in the bottom third of the league.

Ribeiro’s hiring follows a pattern for Sporting KC. Less than two years ago, the club made each of its head coaches for its U14, U16 and U18 Development Academy teams full time, something it had not done in the past. Ribeiro represents an acceleration, and as far as the club is concerned, his specialization expertise will hopefully grease the rails between the team’s youngest U9, U11 and U12 age levels to the first team.

“I think I’d lie if I didn’t say that I’d love to see some day that we could put a roster out that has 11 kids that have been through our academy or Swope Park Rangers,” Vermes said. “That would be tremendous. And I would say that’s probably a goal of ours. When we reach it, I’m not sure. It probably took Barcelona 50 years. But I think our academies are more accelerated because we kind of jumped over a lot of the mistakes and pitfalls a lot of them have made over the years, and now we’re putting a lot of investment into them.

“So what’s the number (of Homegrowns we want in the first team) right now? It’s really more about making sure when a kid does enter, they’re going to be prepared for success. And everybody in our academy is part of that.”

Whether or not other MLS clubs follow suit by adding this sort of specialized skill position is still a matter of some conjecture. Even in Europe, technical coaches aren’t particularly common but for a few of the top developer clubs, and most academies simply rely on their head coaches to do the lion’s share of the technical coaching on their own players. But for Sporting KC, the canyon between where its players are technically and where it wanted them to be was too wide to not reach outside the bubble.

“Not to be critical but just to state a fact, but this is just an area the American player has to improve at,” Vermes said of technical skill. “So having somebody who can specialize in that area in our academy as we’re developing players, I think it can only help.”

The answer was Ribeiro. As for whether Sporting KC is on the cusp of producing its own De Bruyne or Carrasco? Ribeiro’s ready to get to work to find the answer.

“For me the most important thing was just the way they work,” Ribeiro said. “I’m going over there and it’s not a vacation for me. It’s going to be the same as it was in Belgium. I just need the balls and the cones and the pitches. The rest will follow. We are going to move on and we will see what the future will bring. Everyone’s telling me it will be an immense, beautiful experience, so I’m hoping for it.”

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