Ian Harkes was halfway through cooking Thanksgiving dinner when he found out he had been traded. In truth, he knew it was coming. The previous few weeks had involved calls with agents and whispers from elsewhere. It was no secret that the 30-year-old midfielder could be dealt, and now he was on the move from New England to San Jose.
What he didn’t expect, though, was when the call would come.
“I was literally cooking our Thanksgiving meal, and I’m getting calls from our coach and our GM and everything,” Harkes told GOAL.
And in the public eye, that’s where the story ends. There are plenty of tales like that from around Major League Soccer, odd times to get moved, weird deals hashed out at the least convenient moment - at least from a player’s point of view.
But the real work starts after that: houses, flights, schools, insurance, hotel expenses, sometimes even learning a new language - not to mention meeting new teammates, coaches and learning a new tactical system. Many of those logistics are carried out by team administrators, a behind-the-scenes group who, team-by-team, keep the league ticking. They’re never in the spotlight, but the league simply cannot function without them.
“What I tell everybody here, including the players, is ‘You need to focus inside the field,’" FC Cincinnati player welfare coordinator Rodrigo Frank told GOAL. “Once you get out of training or get out of a game, you should not be worried about anything, because we need to cover for those things. So the performance needs to be there. And there's no excuse.”