Topdrawersoccer.Com's Ten Top Men's Division I College Coaches
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TopDrawerSoccer.com’s Ten top men's Division I college coaches Published: August 31, 2016 TopDrawerSoccer.com, by Will Parchman Men’s college soccer is historically an incubator for the next breed of the American professional soccer coach. As much as coaches filter through the academy ranks, college soccer still marks an important way station for a number of future pros. There are any number of ways to work your way to the top. For at least some of these 10 men, college soccer might provide the ultimate launch pad. Earlier this season, we took a look at 10 of the best coaches, both up-and-coming and firmly entrenched, in the women’s game. Now, we rake our spotlight toward the men’s game. These 10 coaches have either already established themselves as luminaries, or through a positive forward-thinking style have helped advance both the game and a number of young careers in the process. If you’re on the hunt for a group of coaches with baked in pro ability, here’s where to start. Jared Embick, Akron The Akron coaching pipeline is serious business. Caleb Porter’s coaching tree is still a relative sapling, but it is beginning to extend outward as his former assistants and colleagues stretch their own coaching legs. Embick is undoubtedly the strongest branch, and he’s done well to extend the Zips’ legacy as perhaps the most competent passing team in all of college soccer. Embick took Akron to the edge of NCAA glory in 2015, and with the nucleus of that team back the Zips could reach the pinnacle for the first time since 2010. Putting results aside, Akron is a machine with talented young players, and much of that goes down to Embick’s aesthetic. Akron seeks to dominate possession, build from the back and create scoring opportunities that way. That, in turn, creates well-rounded pros. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Embick follow Porter’s steps some day. Jeremy Gunn, Stanford It takes a shrewd operator to pull in a number of different talents and make a cohesive whole out of them. Gunn’s been doing that for several years now at Stanford, which he’s crafted into a national powerhouse on the back of both his recruiting successes and his pragmatic coaching style. The maturation of Jordan Morris is at least partly down to Gunn’s influence during Morris’s three years on The Farm. And don’t overlook the fact that Gunn didn’t overthink his team selection or style of play. In fact, Gunn probably caught on to Morris’s best usage before his first pro coach did. Gunn adroitly built his team around diagonals, through balls and over-the-top tracers to Morris, releasing the forward to play well within the system Gunn built. It worked spectacularly and Gunn led the Cardinal to their first ever national title in 2015. He’s only been in California a half decade and he’s already a program legend. Sasho Cirovski, Maryland The Dean. There’s no other way to describe Cirovski, who’s done as much in men’s college soccer as any active coach. He tends to be the leading voice when matters of reform are introduced, and there is of course his on-field success. He’s one of the few coaches to capture multiple College Cups, and his on-field track record of success as well as his program’s desirability among top national recruits speaks volumes to his ability to develop players. That’s echoed in his alumni list, which is undoubtedly the most impressive collection of players in the country. It includes, among others, national team vets like Omar Gonzalez and Graham Zusi as well as current pros like Patrick Mullins. Cirovski has a history of squeezing every ounce of potential out of his players, and prolonged success like this doesn’t go unnoticed. The soccer culture at Maryland practically bears his personal seal. Bobby Muuss, Wake Forest It didn’t take long for Muuss to imprint his own personal style on the Wake Forest men’s program. After engineering Denver’s return to national prominence in seven years at the helm of the program, he returned to Wake Forest in 2015, where he’d been an assistant for five years, and promptly fashioned the Demon Deacons into a national powerhouse. Eleven months after taking the job he’d coached Wake Forest to a consensus No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tourney and coaxed some pleasing soccer out of his team in the process. The continued maturation of future top overall MLS draft pick Jack Harrison had plenty to do with Muuss, and it’s no surprise the campus is suddenly a hotspot destination for some of the top U.S. prospects in the country. Wake Forest has been a name in college soccer for some time, but Muuss added some burnish to it and made it shine in a short period of time. Elmar Bolowich, Creighton Power in men’s college soccer tends to be concentrated on the coasts, with the ACC and Pac-12 routinely producing the most talented top-to-bottom rosters in the country. Aside from Akron, Creighton is doing as much to front positive soccer as any team in the midwest. The Bluejays got a huge boost five years ago when Bolowich made the move from North Carolina, where he won 248 games, and turned Creighton into both a recruiting and playing powerhouse in the process. In that time, Creighton’s produced outsize talents like Timo Pitter, Jose Gomez and Fabian Herbers. Bolowich can coax the best out of diminutive playmakers like few others in the country, and his track record with quality players who perhaps don’t have the most athleticism at their disposal continues to grow. Watch a Creighton match and you’ll find the Bluejays play the game the way it was meant to be played, and that’s down to Bolowich. Brian Wiese, Georgetown It may have taken Wiese some time to truly establish himself as a national name to watch with the Hoyas, but he’s certainly come on strong over the past four years. In that time, Wiese’s stepped out as a purveyor of fine soccer, fronting a style of the game that purists everywhere would find to their liking. One of Georgetown’s growing legacies - in addition to competent attackers like Brandon Allen and Steve Neumann - is producing defenders and keepers who can play out of the back. Josatthua Yaro and Keegan Rosenberry both hit MLS running, and the latter emerged as one of the best right backs in the league as a rookie this year. Both foundations were created under Wiese. If you’re looking for a program that flows forward as a unit, the Hoyas might just be your new favorite team. Pete Fewing, Seattle There are legends in their communities, and then there’s what Fewing’s been in Seattle over the past few decades. The coaching luminary has had two separate stints with Seattle and in each case he’s taken them to untold heights. The city of Seattle’s passionate but somewhat dormant soccer scene sat bubbling under the corona for years, and Fewing’s Seattle teams helped keep the lava percolating. When it finally exploded with the advent of the MLS Sounders in 2009, Fewing could claim some part in the renaissance. His Seattle teams have always been a proactive entity, spurring themselves to play competent soccer through the middle. Fewing’s abiding presence has been the cornerstone. Dave Giffard, VCU We’ve talked about Porter’s coaching tree already, and Embick may indeed be the most visible branch on it. But maybe the easiest to overlook is Giffard, the assistant from 2007-2009 (when Akron probably played its best soccer, apologies to the title-winning 2010 team) who decamped to lead VCU. He promptly built the Rams into a 12-win NCAA team in just his third season with essentially a blank slate. Giffard is perhaps a tad more pragmatic than Embick, but he’s had to be at VCU, which he’s built without the benefit of top-ranked national recruiting classes. That’s made the program’s transformation under Giffard all the more impressive. If pro clubs (or major conference DI programs for that matter) are paying attention, he shouldn’t be long for VCU. Tim Vom Steeg, UC Santa Barbara There is no single college atmosphere like a Friday night game under the lights at Harder Stadium in Santa Barbara. Amid the flying tortillas and under the crisp Southern California air, UCSB is about as professional an environment as it gets outside of the actual pros. Vom Steeg’s played his part in promoting that through his careful cultivation of a more or less professionally built outfit over the years. Vom Steeg recruits heavily from SoCal’s technically inclined player base, pulling dancers and speedsters and top class defenders from the region’s best academies. UCSB doesn’t have the strength of schedule benefit of the Pac-12, but don’t let that fool you: this team is almost always a contender for a reason. And it starts with Vom Steeg. Greg Maas, Utah Valley(m) When it comes to up-and-comers, there are few on a hotter track than Maas. The former youth coach took over the nascent Utah Valley program for its first season in 2014, and they’ve won 23 matches over those two years, made the NCAA tourney, poached a couple quality Development Academy kids with USYNT experience and played some quality soccer in the process.