Union sporting director Ernst Tanner turned down U.S. Soccer, but it wasn’t an insult

At some point in the last few weeks, Union sporting director Ernst Tanner was approached by the consulting firm the U.S. Soccer Federation hired to find the governing body’s next sporting director.

It was more than a coincidence that the guy who succeeded Earnie Stewart when Stewart left the Union was a candidate to succeed Stewart at U.S. Soccer, too. Stewart recommended Tanner as a candidate for the job, a source told The Inquirer after the Athletic initially reported it.

That is a sign of the strong relationship between the two men — and the formidable pipeline of players that the Union have sent the U.S. men’s national team program. Indeed, it could continue in Stewart’s new job as director of football at the Netherlands’ PSV Eindhoven, a powerhouse club in that country which regularly plays in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League. If Stewart sees a Union prospect coming up who he could sign before bigger teams take notice, he isn’t likely to hesitate before striking a deal.

Stewart’s last official day at U.S. Soccer was Feb. 15, and he began his tenure at PSV on Wednesday.

Exactly which individual or individuals approached Tanner, and who he spoke to directly, remains unknown. Much of the process by U.S. Soccer and the consulting firm hired for the search, Sportsology, has been hidden from public view. The main thing we’ve heard is U.S. Soccer president Cindy Cone’s repeated assertion that the aim is to have the sporting director hired within a few weeks of the start of the women’s World Cup, which would mean early July.

But we do know that Tanner declined Sportsology’s overtures, and this caused a stir. Why would one of a top front-office executive at a leading MLS team turn down what seems on paper to be one of the most prestigious jobs in American soccer?

» READ MORE: Earnie Stewart and Brian McBride leave U.S. Soccer, giving the men's national team a 'clean canvas'

The answer, a source said, is that this isn’t the first time Tanner has turned down a national federation offering him a big-time job. He has done so multiple times in his career, including to the Austrian federation — which knew him especially well from his years of success leading Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg’s youth academy.

National team and club team environments aren’t the same. A job this big with U.S. Soccer isn’t just about influencing one senior team’s playing style and the youth development below it. Indeed, the engine room of youth player development in the U.S. has for some time now been shifting away from the national team and toward professional clubs, as MLS teams spend more and more money on their academies. Men’s clubs in the lower-tier USL are now following suit, and lots of women’s soccer fans hope NWSL teams will start building their own player pipelines in the coming years.

That’s how the rest of the world does it, and has long done it.

So it’s fair to say that if you want to have the most impact on developing good soccer players, get a job leading a club team and push it to spend big money on its youth academy. That’s what Tanner did in Austria, and it’s what he has done with the Union.

With that in mind, Tanner politely told Sportsology he wasn’t interested.

We don’t know much else about what U.S. Soccer and Sportsology have been up to, beyond Delran-born Sporting Kansas City manager Peter Vermes — the longest-tenured boss in MLS, and a U.S. player at the 1990 World Cup — also turning down an offer. Vermes told the Kansas City Star that last week, not detailing what the offer was but hinting that he wasn’t interested. (He also noted he was already in contract extension talks with Sporting.)

That we know little else about what has happened, or could happen in the coming months, is a different story.

» READ MORE: For Jim Curtin and the Union, Earnie Stewart wasn’t simply a colleague, he was an ally