Des and Greenie won't be at the helm next season.
Email from Dome...
Back in Wellington, we’ve also been working round the clock to finalise our recruitment process to appoint a head coach for the 2017/18 A-League season and beyond.
Whereas some clubs have seen a revolving door of coaches come and go across the last decade, at Wellington we pride ourselves on our stability and on getting the big decisions right. Ricky Herbert was the standout candidate when we first launched ten years ago, and we strongly believe the club has continued to evolve under Ernie Merrick during his three and a half seasons at the helm.
Coming in amid difficult circumstances co-coaches Des Buckingham and Chris Greenacre performed admirably, picking up a points-per-game ratio that across a full season would have seen Phoenix qualify for their fifth finals appearance in ten season.
Chris and Des earned the right to interview for the top job next season and impressed the football committee with their tactical awareness and vision for the club. While they have been unsuccessful this time, in Des and Chris, we believe we have two of the most talented young coaches currently active in Australasia.
Since it was confirmed, on April 8, that Wellington Phoenix were out of finals contention the club has engaged in a thorough review of our coaching structure – our present strengths and weaknesses – and what leadership attributes are necessary to take this club forward.
I’ve previously and publicly expressed our commitment to a 31 May deadline for finalising the head coach appointment, and after six weeks of winnowing out applications, conducting interviews across three continents (and numerous timezones!), I can happily report that we have met this commitment ahead of schedule.
We have a signed contract with our preferred candidate and pending flights and immigration we look forward to presenting our new head coach in Wellington, early June.
In the interim our new head coach has been talking to our football operations department, assessing our current squad of players and potential new signings from across Australasia and beyond.
Currently off-contract players have been evaluated by our prospective head coach over previous weeks and any departures come with our best wishes.
At present, we have fifteen players from last season’s squad contracted for the next campaign, with three or four more to be confirmed in coming weeks.
With a deep knowledge of European football, experience of developing young talent and a wide network of scouting contacts our prospective head coach is excellently situated to attract quality players to our football club and we look forward to announcing several key signings over the months ahead.