| | NEW YORK -- Sunil Gulati, fired eight months ago as Major
League Soccer's deputy commissioner, returned to the league Tuesday
as managing director of Kraft Soccer Properties.
Gulati, 40, will have control of the New England Revolution and
San Jose Clash, including player personnel operations, as well
future projects the Kraft family might enter.
Gulati, who for the first three years of Major League Soccer's existence was
responsible for every player signing by the league, says his first
priority will be to hire a replacement for Walter Zenga, who was
dismissed as the Revolution's goalkeeper-coach on Oct. 1.
"I think a fundamental decision, since your coach has to be
central to your player decisions, has to be on the coach," Gulati
said. "After that, we have to be reasonable in determining what
players we want and who the league has the resources to get.
"Nobody gets all those decisions right, not at Manchester
United, not in MLS. You hope to get two or three right in any
season. We have to get three or four right."
Despite both teams having qualified for the playoffs only once
each in their four years, Gulati's immediate attention will be on
the Revolution because their needs are more immediate.
"It's a different dynamic (with the Clash)," Gulati said.
"We'll focus early on the Revolution. The Clash have coach in
place, and there are fewer decision variables."
Gulati was a key executive in the organizing committee of the
1994 World Cup and later moved on to become one of the major
figures in launching MLS in 1996. Under the league's "single
entity" system, in which the league owns all the teams and
singularly negotiates and signs all players to contracts but
investors pay for the right to operate the clubs, Gulati was
responsible for all player acquisitions.
It was his decision to unilaterally exercise the option on Tab
Ramos' contract, renewing it without the approval of New York-New
Jersey MetroStars' operator-investor Stuart Subotnick, that
reportedly caused then-MLS commissioner Doug Logan to fire Gulati
on Feb. 23.
Logan was subsequently fired by the MLS Board of Governors,
headed by Subotnick, on Aug. 4.
Gulati said he feels his extensive experience within American
soccer, his international contacts and his intimate knowledge of
MLS' internal machinations give him a unique perspective that
should enable him to be successful.
"From where I sat for the last few years, I think I have a
pretty good understanding of what parameters the league operates
under," Gulati said. "You're not going to find us in a situation
where we are going to be in the New England press or the (San
Francisco-San Jose) Bay area press saying we didn't get players we
wanted.
"Are we going be irritated if we don't get exactly the player
we wanted? Sure. But we're going to take responsibility for the
decisions we make. Everybody is playing with same constraints."
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