Vanni Sartini, the Italian-born manager of the Vancouver Whitecaps, is both a socialist and an atheist, two attributes that are oddly relevant in his team’s MLS playoff game with LAFC on Friday at BMO Stadium.
As a socialist, Sartini believes in cooperative effort, and he’s tried to mold his blue-collar team to reflect that.
“My motto is ‘The team is the leader,’” he said. “The thing that we try to do on the field collectively is much more important that what we do individually.
“Everyone according to their abilities to everyone according to their needs. That’s what we try to do.”
If Karl Marx has had a bigger influence on Sartini’s career than Pep Guardiola, that’s OK. It seems to be working out pretty well so far.
The Whitecaps had just one winning record in five years and were mired in a franchise-long three-season playoff drought when Sartini took over from Marc Dos Santos, now an LAFC assistant, late in the 2021 season. In his first job as an MLS manager Sartini, who turns 48 next week, won the last three Canadian Championships and made it to the postseason three times. A win Friday would put the Whitecaps in the Western Conference semifinals for the first time since 2017.
The team has never gone deeper in the MLS playoffs.
And Sartini’s share-the-wealth approach has had a lot to do with the recent success. Thirteen players contributed to Vancouver’s 52 regular-season goals this season but just two of them have scored in double digits. That mirrors the scrappy personality of the coach, who grew up in trying circumstances in Florence, home of the Renaissance, and went on to play semiprofessional soccer in Italy, supporting himself by working side jobs in marketing and as a courier.
“I really believe there’s something of who the coach is as a person when he thinks about the tactics that he wants to use for the team,” said Sartini, a voracious reader and student who is fluent in three languages. “That’s the reason, for example, I believe a lot in zone defense. Because everyone needs to defend.”
LAFC coach Steve Cherundolo isn’t so sure.
“Whether a coach can always impose his own personality on a group of individuals really depends on the group of individuals,” said Cherundolo, a right back whose playing career was far more noteworthy, including more than 300 appearances in the German first division and seven World Cup starts for the U.S.
Under Cherundolo, LAFC (20-9-7, including playoffs) has gone from a short-passing, possession-based team to one that prefers to bunker in on defense and score on the counterattack. Still, he admires what Sartini has done with his team, one whose $15.2-million payroll ranks 20th in the 29-team MLS.
“They are a tough team to beat,” he said. “It’s a team that works hard, works together and that’s what makes them effective. A team who follows some specific rules and plays within their means.”
Cherundolo should know, since Friday’s game will be LAFC’s 12th against Vancouver (14-8-14) in the last two seasons, including a two-game sweep in the first round of last season’s Western Conference playoffs. Under the league’s bizarre playoff format, the first round is a best-of-three series and LAFC won the first game 2-1 at home, while Vancouver took the second 3-0 in Canada.
None of that will carry over into the third game at BMO Stadium, where Vancouver will once again be an underdog against an LAFC team with the league’s second-best home record. The match will go straight to penalty kicks if the score is tied at the end of regulation, with the winner advancing to face the Seattle Sounders in the single-game conference semifinals.
“This is about who wants it more,” LAFC defender Sergi Palencia. “We have to want it more.”
Which brings us to Sartini’s religious beliefs — or rather his lack of religious beliefs. Although this has been a magical year for the Whitecaps — when they beat Toronto in Week 6, they topped the conference standings that late into a season for the first time since 2018 — a stadium scheduling conflict forced Vancouver to play its wild-card playoff game in Portland last month, where the Timbers had one of the best records in the league.
“God is a Timbers fan,” Portland coach Phil Neville said of the apparently divine intervention.
After the Whitecaps won that game 5-0, then beat LAFC last Sunday for just the second time in 11 tries, Sartini was asked whether God had suddenly switched allegiances and would be looking to join a Vancouver supporters’ group.
“I don’t know if He wants to join the Whitecaps. Or She, because maybe God is a She,” he said. “If She or He wants to become a Whitecaps fan, we’re going to give Him an honorary card of any group that He or She will enjoy.”
Sartini said he hasn’t heard back from God but insisted the Whitecaps’ good fortune was more the result of hard work and six goals in the last four games from midfielder Ryan Gauld than the blessings of a deity.
“That’s the work of the men we are, the working-class team that we have,” he said. “Let’s try to go to the next round.”
If Sartini can pull that off, God may not be the only one looking for a spot on the Vancouver bandwagon.