Vermont Green FC Head Coach And Sporting Director Adam Pfeifer End of Season Interview

The Blazing Musket talked to Pfeifer about The Green's performance in 2023, the growth of the club, and of course promotion and relegation

Photo By ©J. Alexander Dolan

After making the playoffs in the club’s inaugural season, Vermont Green FC narrowly missed out on making the USL League Two playoffs. The Blazing Musket sat down with head coach and Sporting Director Adam Pfeifer to discuss the 2023 season, the growth of the club, and of course promotion and relegation.

(Editor’s Note: This interview took place shortly after the end of the 2023 USL League Two Season)

The Blazing Musket (TBM): It's been some time since the season ended. So what are your thoughts about the season? What are some of your takeaways from this kind of up-and-down season?

Pfeifer: Yeah, still kind of processing everything. I think it goes without saying I think we were disappointed where we finished. I don't think that's a secret. You know, trying to evaluate where things went wrong is made a little bit more difficult by the fact that I think that any objective observer to the games where we didn't get maximum points would probably say, ‘you guys were the more influential team you were in control of the game in a lot of ways’ and that went for all four of the games where we didn't win. That part of it makes evaluating where things went wrong, a little bit more difficult just from the standpoint that we did have a lot of the ball in those games. We did probably create more opportunities than our opponents in those games. So it makes that process a little bit more difficult. Where when you get dominated in a game or games, kind of back and forth and possession and opportunities and those kinds of statistics are somewhat even. It's easier to find areas where you feel like you could have done better and but I think, you know, I think for us, we probably we had so much of the ball during the course of the season that we probably needed to score more goals than we did. And, you know, so so that that part's a little bit difficult.

TBM: Were there any players in particular who stood out this season?

Pfeifer: Yeah, One guy is Moussa N’Diaye. I mean, I think that he was fantastic from start to finish. We played him out of position in several games at the start of the season, kind of playing him in midfield and a lot of that is because we felt like we had like five really strong center backs. Nate Jones came later in the season, obviously, Diego Ochoa left to go to BC (Boston College) about halfway through the season. So there was a little bit of fluctuation there. We also had besides Nate Jones besides Diego, there was also Jake Ashford and Zach Barrett who are really experienced high-level college players. So we tried to move Moussa a little bit and it was fine, but at the end of the day, I think to put him in his best spot was at center back. I think that's where he kind of projects as a professional and he's got a really bright future ahead of him.

TBM: Yeah, and you kind of mentioned with USL League Two play there's lots of fluctuation in the roster, even in the middle of the season. So can you kind of talk about the difficulties managing these two seasons?

Pfeifer: Yeah, that's the nature of the beast. For us, it's really important to kind of manage the player’s minutes. It's one thing with the center backs, another thing with guys that play in those more attacking positions in midfield that do a ton of running and a ton of hard running. You want to be able to manage those minutes so that when they go back to their colleges, they're still fit and sharp but they're also fresh. The colleges invest so much in those guys, in their careers, in their education’s, [so] that really is, high priority for all those guys. So it's important to us to make sure that we manage those minutes. I think if you look in our roster compared to maybe some of the other rosters I think we did a really good job. Moussa was probably the only player that played over 1000 minutes during the season and some of those minutes were not as physically taxing just given the fact that we had a lot of the ball and you're not being asked in that position to do the same amount of running. It's a challenge with guys coming in and out. There's balancing guys going off to MLS teams to go and trial for a week. You want to build in some vacations for these guys, just to be able to see family and friends and things like that because basically they get here right after school and then for a lot of them they'll go right back to sort of captain's practices at their colleges right when we finish. So there's some of that and then there's obviously for us, we had some guys that we knew were going to leave early like Gevork Diarbian and Diego and we tried to replace those guys with the guys from Washington, who's who were on trimesters and they didn't finish up till the middle of June with college with their classes. It's a balancing act in USL 2. I think we did a better job of it this year than we did last year from the standpoint of having players available for every game and having the ability to choose from a pretty robust squad, to choose our 18-man rosters, which is difficult. Everybody wants to play, everybody wants to be in every roster and so managing that can be a bit of a trick. It's something that needs to be managed. I think it's something that is good for the guys before they go back to college because they don't have to play every minute of every game, we're able to manage them. But it also puts them in an environment where they really have to compete for spots and that's what they're gonna have to do when they get to those professional levels, to break into some of those teams they have to be patient. They have to be able to come off the bench and they have to impact the game or hold things down. It’s a different prospect for a lot of them than what they experienced in college where for most of them, they're big players at their colleges and just the kind of stress on getting into an 11, getting into a team is just different in USL 2 and that would be with the way that the substitution rules are or the roster rules in college. So, all that stuff goes into the experience and I think ultimately it's a positive short term for some of them. It feels a little bit negative at times but I think, like I said, that experience of having to fight to get into an 11 or get into an 18 is really valuable. I know it was for me when I was when I was playing in the PDL.

TBM: You mentioned MLS trials, so I feel obligated to ask if you would be able to disclose one of those and how many people participated in those?

Pfeifer: Yeah, there were three or four guys. Gevork was down with the Revs for a little bit. He's a former Academy player there. We had a couple guys go out to Columbus, one player that went down to Austin. So it's just part of it and we're really happy to help facilitate that. I don't think every USL 2 club is comfortable doing that. I think for us we try to be really player centric and being player centric while still trying to win games, that's a difficult thing at times. At the end of the day, our number one priority is the individual experience for each guy and helping to be part of their developmental journey into hopefully becoming professionals.

TBM: After the 1st season multiple multiple players got drafted and you mentioned these trials. How rewarding is it to see these players get these opportunities whether it be in MLS, MLS NEXT Pro, after playing for The Green

Pfeifer: Yeah, I think that part is obviously incredibly rewarding for the club. I think even taking it the next step is that those guys, whether it's Eythor, Diba, Owen O'Malley had a couple of days off and came to Vermont. I think Diba would have would have probably done the same thing if he had a couple of days off. That’s pretty special and speaks to the culture and the experience these guys are having here. That they want to come back to this club they were only at for two months is pretty unique and pretty special. So, I would think that those opportunities will continue to come along for some of the guys that we've worked with and again, just as being a supplement to what their colleges are doing, that's what we hope to do. And I think again, it is incredibly rewarding for the club to see those guys push on and that's what we're rooting for and we're hoping for. As much as we would love to have Dibo and Owen back this year and you know, Eythor was a senior so he was probably going to move on. As much as we would love to have those guys come back it's also really exciting to see them getting to the level that they dreamed about.

TBM: So, I was wondering if you could talk about the goalkeepers I believe Schnur might have gotten a majority of the starts but we also saw plenty of Kristofferson just overall you know what stood out about both of those guys?

Pfeifer: Yeah, they were both with us last year. I've said this a few times to those guys, I do think being a goalkeeper for us is difficult because their involvement in the game tends to be with their feet. Schnur in the game against Western Mass, that had nothing to do and then all of a sudden there were three opportunities one after another where we made mistakes and three kind of one-v-ones with the goalkeeper and that was kind of wild. So I've always thought it was difficult to play for our group just because again, like I said, for goalkeepers to be involved consistently that keeps them engaged and keeps them sharp and I do think at times it's been difficult for our goalkeepers. They probably don't have a lot of work to do in most games. They were both really good for us this year. Two very different goalkeepers just in terms of the things that they each do really well but they both had very good seasons.

TBM: Where did you see the club possibly grow from that first season and are there still any areas that you might be hoping to improve upon?

Pfeifer: Yeah, I think from a sporting standpoint, the results, I think we finished with three more points, our goal differential was a little better than it was last year. Those are just things that you can look at to kind of help gauge sort of where things are. I think in terms of the eye test, I think we were we were better this year. Every game that we played this year, opponents were trying to organize their teams to stop what we did well, and that's hard, right? That's hard to deal with and fair play to the teams that were able to get results against us playing that way because it worked. They were able to organize, Western Mass especially, was able to really organize their team to frustrate us and get in our heads a little bit and make us sort of overly emotional at times in games, myself included. They were able to just make things difficult for us. I think where we'd like to see improvement is just to be a little bit more ruthless in those games, both, emotionally and in terms of just scoring more goals in those games, because it would have only taken a couple goals, to sort of flip the whole season and win the league. So from that standpoint, we're still trying to search and find solutions. And again, I don't want to sound like I'm being dismissive of Seacoast or Western Mass because I'm not at all, like so much respect for what they do. They did a great job of making things difficult and trying to take away the things that we did well and find a way to get a result. I think that at times when we were tasked with making the game and creating more when teams were very organized and sitting deep and just trying to muck up the danger areas, that's where we needed to improve was in those areas. Also not be as susceptible to counter attacks. That was kind of our Achilles heel last year and it was similar this year. Just because again anytime you have a lot of the ball and you're advanced up the field, there's a lot of space in behind. We are pretty expansive and so when we do give the ball away, there are holes and gaps and teams know that and Seacoast and Western Mass were able to exploit us in transition a couple of times in both those games. It is what it is but I also would say we're not going to change the way we play. We want to continue to be a ball dominant team. We just got to be more ruthless in the last third and give the guys some more ideas in terms of how to break position down and then it's going to be on our players to just be ruthless and clinical.

TBM: And when it comes to the whole USL system, the hot topic right now is regarding promotion and relegation. I don't exactly know if it would affect you guys, in League Two but just overall what are your thoughts on the whole possibility of implementing promotion and relagation into USL?

Pfeifer: Yeah, I don't think it would really affect us right now. You know, it's a hot topic even outside of USL just American soccer in general and I think that there will be a lot of pros to having promotion [and] relegation, just in terms of forcing some of the clubs that maybe are not as ambitious to be a little bit more ambitious or rewarding some of the USL championship kind of clubs that do a really good job with being able to play in in the top league. I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, in terms of any real pro-rel structure. In terms of our top division, which is obviously MLS is that right now and it's hard to imagine that happening here. If it did, at least in some fashion, whether there's a top tier of MLS and a second tier of MLS and somehow maybe the USL can get involved in that. I don't know how that would be structured. I think we're still a ways off from that but you know, it would be cool. It would be fun. It would be exciting but I think the financial reality is that it's probably not going to be in the cards right now. There's a lot of exciting stuff going on in U.S. Soccer from our national team and our top players really coming together this summer to put in a couple good performances which was which was fun and cool to see. Even last week with Messi scoring a goal in that first game and just got the attention around that to the women's team doing what they do and starting off the World Cup with a win and looking forward to watching again tomorrow night at nine o'clock. So there's so much good stuff going on and with the World Cup on the horizon, the more attention that there is on the sport and the more young kids — and I think that was the most exciting thing about our environment is just seeing how much people actually cared about the club and their awareness of the league table and things like that. That was really cool and just seeing young kids that really look up to the guys on our roster.

TBM: Overall what has it been like kind of seeing the Vermont community embrace the club and come together around the club?

Pfeifer: Yeah, I mean, goes without saying it is special. It's a special community. Obviously grew quite a bit from the first year. I remember the first game last year there were 1,000 people there and we were like this is crazy. Like we couldn't believe how many people were there and then this year, the only games that didn't completely sell out were like, downpours. I think we had a friendly that had like 1,800 to 2,000 people at it. I think probably five out of the seven games probably were complete sellouts meaning that there were actually 2,500 people in the stands. I think they probably sold out the tickets to every game this year. It's a matter of whether people actually come to the game because the weather was just ridiculous this summer. I think it was probably five out of the seven home games it was raining or thunder and lightning. Even the last game was wild. There was a downpour storm, thunder and lightning, game got delayed an hour. We walked out from the locker room at like 7:50 to go back out to the field and there were 1,000s of people standing out there cheering the guys on before they even went back into the stadium. Get back into the stadium and the place was completely full. I was like we're sitting in the locker room when it was raining and I was like, oh, man, this is too bad. Like there might only be 1,000 people left at the end and it was completely packed. This was a Sunday night like kids at school the next day, and people had work and things like that and they wanted to stay to watch the soccer. It wasn't just about going and hanging out and chatting and stuff like that. People were engaged in the game and they stayed till the very end, place was still packed, and kids were still running out on the field afterward. I think those environments are what every young player aspires to play in. I think also just from a community standpoint, knowing that you have those events to be able to come together around a sporting event, which is obviously for us is soccer is incredibly special. It's only going to grow so pretty excited.

TBM: Obviously, after missing out on the playoffs I can assume what one of your goals is but just what are kind of early goals, whether it be just as simple as making the playoffs or just kind of more organizational things in terms of 2024

Pfeifer: Yeah, I think it's funny like, sat down with Matt [Wolff], Sam [Glickman] , Pat [Infurna], after the last game, a couple days after and they asked me what my goal and vision was for the club, short term and long term. The short-term goal is to become the premier destination for aspiring college-age soccer players to come for the summer to be in the best possible training environment that they can be in. From that standpoint, I think we are already kind of meeting our goals and wanting to continue to build upon that moving forward. I think the winning will come with that. But yeah, I mean, our focus is and I know, it's the thing that we really want to do is just be that premiere destination where college coaches know, ‘hey, this is where we want to send our players because they're going to be friendly to send them out on trials to MLS clubs. They're going to take care of them physically and mentally and not overtax them.’ We're never gonna put a player out in the field that has any sort of injury that can be made worse. You know, a place where they can trust that they're gonna be put in a really good, competitive training environment. But also them feeling comfortable and knowing that our technical staff has an eye on their fall season and is not going to put them in any jeopardy that we could avoid. Obviously, there's going to be freak injuries and stuff like that happen but going into our last game of the year, every single player was available. Nobody was ruled out due to injury. You know, Yaniv [Bazini] had a knock, he could have played, but we held him out. We just weren't going to do that. We had several other guys throughout the season, had very little things that they were able to recover from, it didn't turn into a bigger issue. We had one guy that he was in like the second day that he was here tore a hamstring. That’s out of our control but outside of that, like there was nothing and I don't think there's any other clubs — at least in our area — that could probably say that. I don't know that for a fact but I feel pretty comfortable with with the way that we're taking care of our players and the condition that they're, going back to their college environments. That's probably number one, the most important thing to us and then after that it's going to be finding ways to get into the playoffs. We watched some of the games last week, we do feel like if we had gotten in, we could still be playing now. But it's football and it's tough and it's a short season so we got to be able to get past the Western Mass and Seacoast’s of the world. They've definitely had our number. These first couple years, I think we were two and six in those games and two of those games were kind of back and forth. That was last year and so we've got to do a better job with that.