US interim coach Mikey Varas moves closer to getting San Diego FC job

SAN DIEGO — Argentina’s Mauricio Pochettino was confirmed as the new United States men’s national soccer team head coach Tuesday afternoon, which means Mikey Varas’ tenure as interim coach ended with that night’s 1-1 tie against New Zealand in Cincinnati.

Varas is available to be hired elsewhere, like … Major League Soccer expansion franchise San Diego FC.

Speculation has centered on Varas as the leading candidate for several weeks, and rumor appears headed for reality. Sources told the Union-Tribune the club could make a formal announcement as soon as next week.

Few San Diego fans likely had heard of the 41-year-old Varas before last month, when he was named caretaker U.S. coach for a pair of September friendlies against Canada and New Zealand. But he has been quietly, and meteorically, rising through the coaching ranks since playing at the University of San Francisco in the early 2000s, and many soccer insiders are not surprised he has been handed the keys to an MLS club.

“I’ve been fortunate to work at every level across all age groups, men and women,” Varas told media after being named interim coach. “I haven’t coached professional women, but I’ve coached women from U-5 all the way to U-19. And I’ve coached boys from U-5 all the way up to the national team right now.”

The connection to SDFC is Tyler Heaps, the club’s 33-year-old sporting director who got the job after Carlos Avina, who held the same position at AS Monaco, backed out of a tentative deal a few weeks before he was supposed to arrive. Heaps spent six years at U.S. Soccer in its analytics department, overlapping with Varas when he was the under-20 men’s national coach.

Most of Varas’ career has been spent with youth teams, first in Northern California, then with the USL’s Sacramento Republic, then with the respected youth academy of MLS club FC Dallas. Senior team head coach Luchi Gonzalez elevated him to assistant coach for a couple seasons before U.S. Soccer made him its U-20 coach in 2021.

In many ways, Varas fits the SDFC model perfectly, which is to ultimately build from within using players from its Right to Dream youth academy. FC Nordsjaelland, the Danish first-division club owned by Right to Dream, has one of the youngest rosters in Europe, and Varas is known for his developmental prowess and not shying from bloodying youngsters. He also is fluent in Spanish, having spent a season playing professionally in Chile after college, and SDFC’s Mexican marquee signing Hirving “Chucky” Lozano speaks limited English.

With the U-20s, Varas guided the Americans to the regional qualifying title for the 2023 World Cup in Argentina, advancing out of the first round before being eliminated 2-0 by eventual champion Uruguay. He then transitioned to an assistant coach under senior national coach Gregg Berhalter last year.

“One of the most talented soccer minds in the country,” Gonzalez told The Athletic. “He really helped us step up our training methodology, in technical and tactical terms, and he did great work with our attacking set pieces as well.”

The risk, of course, is that Varas comes from coaching trees that have experienced mixed success. Gonzalez went 43-60-43 in MLS with FC Dallas and the San Jose Earthquakes before being fired by both clubs. Berhalter was axed in July after failing to advance from the group stage of the Copa America on home soil.

Varas’ two-game stint as U.S. interim coach, his first experience as a head coach at the senior level, didn’t go well, either.

The U.S. looked uninspired and fell 2-1 against Canada in Kansas City last week, its first home loss to its northern neighbor since 1957. Three days later, it tied 1-1 against a New Zealand team that was No. 94 in the world rankings and was smoked 3-0 by Mexico three days earlier.

The most notable moment came in the post-game news conference after the Canada loss, when Varas made comments that some felt cast public blame on the players — a no-no in coaching circles.

“The mentality is on the players,” Varas said. “Sorry, they know it. We speak the truth to each other. I love those guys. But they know that mentality to fight and to run and to sacrifice, I can’t do that for them. That’s on them. … The trainings were intense. They were aggressive. But when the game comes, you gotta get going. And the players are the ones that bring that. Coaches can only get you so far from a mentality perspective.”

Former national team defender Jimmy Conrad, speaking on his Golazo America podcast on CBS Sports, said “it felt like he threw the players under the bus a little bit there.”

Charlie Davies, another past member of the national team, chimed in: “Like, it’s not my fault. Yes, it is your fault. Your job is to motivate, that’s it. Because you’re not coaching anything (in a few days), you’re not teaching them anything new. You’re supposed to motivate. He didn’t do that, either.”

San Diego State alum Eric Wynalda, once the national team’s all-time leading scorer, was no less complimentary on his Sirius XM FC radio show, giving him a “fail” in his pass/fail segment.

“Mikey Varas, man,” Wynalda said. “When you take the stand and basically throw everybody under the bus, and say my plan was perfect outside of the fact that these guys couldn’t do it, if that’s true, then your plan isn’t so perfect, is it? … You can’t say, I love those guys but they know they’re wrong. He was way, way off base.”

Added co-host Jason Davis: “I don’t think it will change much, but I certainly think if I was working for San Diego FC and I was considering Mikey Varas to be the first-ever head coach of our brand, new team, I might have a second thought when I hear him throw players under the bus.”

In his next news conference, before the game against New Zealand, Varas appeared to address his post-Canada comments.

“One thing that’s important for me to relay to everybody is I don’t exist in isolation from the players, and the players don’t exist in isolation from us,” Varas told media in Cincinnati. “We’re a team. When we say the mentality is on the players, what we mean by that is they’re the key drivers. But I am them, and they are me. We’re in this together. … I just want to make sure that’s really, really clear.”