Red Bull New York held a midseason media roundtable with head of sport Julian de Guzman on Thursday at the recently opened RWJBarnabas Health Red Bulls Performance Center located in Morris Township, New Jersey.
De Guzman spoke for a total of 52 minutes, taking questions from a select group of invited media members, including South Ward Central. The entire roundtable has been presented in a Q&A format on South Ward Central.
In Part 1, de Guzman offered insight into the Red Bulls’ pre-World Cup break performance, transfer strategy, youth development, long-term strategies and tactical fluidity.
The 45-year-old executive discussed the excitement around the club’s new performance center, the goalkeeping department, the team’s leadership core, injuries and loan strategy in Part 2.
Part 3 will be the final installment of this series. Topics included designated players, international roster spots, Jürgen Klopp, Mario Gómez and the synergy between Red Bull clubs.
De Guzman Discusses Designated Player Tags
Q: When you look at your recruitment strategy in these premium spots, and I classify that as your under-22s, your couple of TAM (Targeted Allocation Money) players should have your DPs (Designated Players), and then to a lesser extent though, but I think it’s key to this squad, is your international spots, because they come at a premium of GAM (General Allocation Money).
Can you just talk about how you manage those and how you see each of those, because so far I think outside of Noah [Eile], the U-22 hires, signings have been a little more speculative, a little more like, we like elements of them, let’s see what we can build them to be, and then the TAMs have been kind of just a mixed bag in the past five years, and same with the DPs. It was like, young DPs, now it’s old DPs, names, no names. How do you kind of view those three kind of premium in terms of your holistic view of building a roster?
JDG: Yeah, I’ll be honest, with the tags, for the player, it’s such a tough thing. I wore the DP tag once upon a time, right, and I’ll be honest, I hated it. You’re a DP, let’s see what you have, right? Their salaries, for sure, that comes with it. Listen, I think with how the restructuring of the roster planning went in the last window, that, to your point, we had to make sense of a lot of these tags.
I mean, there’s money being spent, there’s money being invested. What’s the return on the field for these players? But before we even dove into that, what did it look like in the years before, or the past season, right? So, we talk about that every day, and you know, there’s always moving pieces that one day the DP’s not performing, the next day he’s performing, and then, okay, now we gotta restructure and re-evaluate, but it comes down to what could this give us long-term? Not just for this season, but the next season, because you want flexibility in your salary cap to spend on players that could continue to help the roster. In this case, budget’s quite tight right now, because we had to go hard in the last window.
We had to, there’s no doubt about that, and we knew we weren’t going to get everything right, but I think we took care of what was most important, and what was most important was bringing in wingers, and what was most important was making sure we had the box-to-box needs, because those were two clinical positions I think we just never spoke about in the history of Red Bull, and making sure Cade Cowell and [Jorge] Ruvalcaba were the right ones, and the right fits, that took a lot of effort, but that took a lot of investment as well.
Now, not to get into a crazy amount of detail, we found ways where we could look at these tags and have some flexibility between what a DP could look like, or what a temp could look like, or vice versa. So there’s flexibility going into the future years, and that’s going to be based on performance. I love that idea, and I think that doesn’t have your hands tied and strapped over the course of three, four years to a player because of his tag, this is what you get, hopefully he produces, right?
De Guzman: ‘I Would Love To Have These Tags More Performance-Based’
Q: Kind of like a Jorge is in that moment?
JDG: Correct. Jorge, Cade as well, right? I think moving forward, kind of using that mechanism will help us to be a bit more proactive for TAM players, proactive for U-22 now, and that could happen in the future windows, but in the window that just passed, it had to be wingers, because we just knew that was such an important piece to the system that we wanted to play.
We needed to be an attacking team, we needed to have creativity, we need to be exciting and scoring goals, so Cade and Ruva, they were the big pieces in the last window. Now, I think we just kind of watch, and like I mentioned in the first question, let’s see what happens, and we’re already in all departments, but let’s see what happens going into June 11th and what this roster could look like, but we also have to have flexibility.
Flexibility now, it’s going to mean flexibility could mean, you know, what could happen on the outgoing and timing, but as I mentioned, you want to win, and I don’t want us to, I don’t want to put us in a position where, okay, we have flexibility and let’s have a player move on and transfer or move out, and then our team performance drops, right? That’s the last thing I want. I want our flexibility to go out when our team gets better, performance-wise, so that’s going to be the thought process for the next window, but long-term, to make sense of the tags, in a perfect world, I would love to have these tags more so performance-based and merit tags, if that makes sense.
De Guzman on International Spots and Competition for Roster Places
Q: Just kind of touching on the internationals real quick, is there a push, I know this is just going to become harder to get green cards for these guys and be able to shed that, those 12, 13, 14 internationals that are on the roster into, to fit that 10 or 8 that, I know [the club] lost our international spot for life. Greatest trade ever, right?
JDG: Green cards, wow. I look at, or how does the club look? It’s a really valid point. This is a new look I want to drive, where, just like I was an international player when I went to France, or La Liga, or Buenos Aires, I had to be better than your domestic player, I couldn’t just be as good as your domestic player, I couldn’t be worse than your domestic player, that wouldn’t make any sense, based on the investment, that wouldn’t make any sense from a fans perspective.
This is what needs to happen here, and it wasn’t happening, is the issue. So there is a lot of value in international players, if you’re an international player, you better be better than the domestic player, that’s, that’s why you’re coming here at Red Bull. I could look at the international players that have taken up international spots from, in this window, so new signings, this window, they have that potential to be a star team player, we want them to be star team players, but we have players that are internationals that have taken up these spots a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, right?
So this is going to be extremely important here, and it’s what I lived as a player, it’s what Michael [Bradley] lived as a player, we were internationals in foreign markets, and we have to be very good players to fit the parts, right, if not, then you’re out. That’s my belief, to be honest. If you’re an international player, you’re here to bring this team to another level, and we have to make more sense of our international signings, because they cost a lot of money, it’s not easy to get cards, right, and I think the standard of MLS and the standard of your domestic players these days have now done this, they’re very good players.
If you have a system that we have where we’re developing them in our backyard, they’re very good players, as you’re seeing on the field, so the standard is now high. How good are you compared to Adri [Mehmeti], how good are you compared to Julian Hall, how good are you compared to Matty Dos Santos? I think that’s the standard where we need to make sure, if you’re an international player, can you match that level at least, that’s all we ask for, if you’re better, wow, fantastic, if you’re less than that, and you’re not really giving us the minutes, and you know, and we signed you, and you’re not producing, guess what, it doesn’t make sense, so we certainly need to make more sense of our international signs, and they have to be added value.
De Guzman on the Integration Between Red Bull Clubs
Q: Over the years we’ve always known there’s been an integration between all the Red Bull teams globally, but it seems like for the first time, like it’s really like straightforward, like we’ve seen Jürgen Klopp, we’ve seen Mario Gómez around, how has it changed at all, the integration between Red Bull New York, Leipzig, Salzburg, Bragantino, or is that something that’s just more out in the open now than it was before?
JDG: Since I came here, I’ve seen a lot of their faces. I’m just so used to knowing they’re gonna come and show up at our facility at some point in time, and we’re always expecting that, so I mean, it’s, listen, the relationship has been amazing with Red Bull. They show the support, we’re in constant conversation, I have my connection, and I pick up the phone to call Mario and Jürgen at any point in time.
They have been behind this, they show us a lot of respect, support, ideas as well. Jürgen, I mean, what an incredible individual. He just could just show up and laugh, and then you feel better about yourself, right? So, I really believe it’s becoming stronger, and from coaches, from our medical team, from nutritionists, everyone is getting some type of support in some degree from our global partners, which is so special, and what makes this experience unique. It’s a privilege to be a part of that, and we’re also open to finding ways to be creative, to welcome any other players and staff to be a part of this.
We have Shunya [Sakai], who’s from RB Omiya [Ardija], he’s on here with our second team, and he’s being able to continue his development under the Red Bull umbrella. Joyeux Bungi as well, same.
He’s come from Leipzig, and he’s continuing his development, you know, under the Red Bull umbrella, and between those players, they still feel at home, so why not take advantage of that? Why not use that to our strengths? So, we want to continue to see more of that, for sure, whether it’s our first team, second team, it doesn’t matter. We’re all in that, and I think that’s, for me, such an incredible thing to talk about, as to how we’re outlined from all, from all departments throughout Red Bull, and we’ll continue to grow with that, and we have incredible leaders like Jürgen and Mario. You’ll see them here very soon. I know everyone wants to come here to the facility and check it out, so, but yeah, and we do the same. We’re out at Leipzig, Salzburg, we’re in Bragantino, our academy gets to play there. I think that’s always a cool thing for our young kids to experience and learn from.
We learn from each other, we grow from each other, and that’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful experience to have at this level in soccer. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.
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