During his playing days with D.C. United, Jeff Agoos was known as one of the team’s more fan-friendly players, a guy just as likely to be seen out at Clarendon Grill in Arlington as he was to sign autographs for fans after a game at RFK Stadium.
Two years removed from his final season on the field, Agoos has moved into the front office for Red Bull New York. As the team’s technical director, he’s the guy figuring out who will be the next Jozy Altidore or Juan Pablo Angel, a position that hardly allows him to reveal much to fans and media ever thirsty for information. But he’s still making himself as available as ever, listening to the people who matter to him, his team and his sport.
“Now that I’ve stepped outside the field of play, it allows me to interact more with the fans,” said Agoos. “I’m around the stadium more. Instead of on the field I’m up in the press box or around the fans. I get more in-depth with them, what they like, what they don’t like.”
Agoos is the most decorated player in Major League Soccer — he’s won a combined five championships, three with D.C., two with San Jose — but none of that prepared him for wooing Angel, who has four goals in four games.
“It was a completely different set of expectations on my side,” said Agoos, who doesn’t claim all the credit for the $1.5 million signing. “I did as much as Icould to make him learn what the team was about and what the league was about, but the real slap on the back should go to Juan.”
As a figurehead, Agoos also finds himself defending the organization as it slowly works toward building its own stadium in Harrison, N.J., — recent stumbling blocks have pushed its opening back from mid-2008 to early 2009 — and finally turn around the fortunes of arguably the league’s most beleaguered franchise.
“There’s nothing on our side that we can do,” said Agoos. “All we can do is put out a product that is entertaining and wins. I think so far we’ve been able to accomplish that.”
