AMERICANS like to spend Thanksgiving with family.
But Dubliner Alan McCann and his wife Hanna had to spend it apart last month as she settled in for an extended stay in Sweden to reveal some big news at home.
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McCann told SunSport: “She was over at home, we’re expecting in May and she had to get home to renew her passport. But her family threw a baby shower and all that.
“But she was away for us picking up the trophy too. I think that was a bigger deal.
“She stays out in the cold for every other game all season so it was a shame she wasn’t there.”
The there is Colorado Springs and the trophy the USL Championship.
McCann is part of a Dublin management team that has led the Colorado Springs Switchbacks to glory this year.
Former St Patrick’s Athletic player McCann is the club’s technical director, with James Chambers head coach and Stephen Hogan sporting director.
The trio guided the Switchbacks to the highest honour in USL football in the first year that Chambers and McCann had control of tactics.
Thanksgiving was then spent at Chambers’ house as the trio processed the year they have had and how it all came together.
McCann said: “I’ve won at college level and USL 2, which is semi-professional, but this was the first one at USL Championship level.
“We’d made the play-offs in all our years here. The first year, we lost a Western Conference final to San Antonio, they were the better team.
Last year, we just weren’t good enough and we got beaten again by San Antonio. But we felt this year we could do well.
“It was the first year of Chambo as head coach and me as technical director so it was our first time in charge of the smaller details.
“Before, we didn’t have as much of a grip on training or who you’re signing. But this year, the buck definitely stopped with us.
“But it was also a collective. We do a lot of build-up work and it’s a discussion with the players and they bought into it, took ownership of it.
“This isn’t a f***ing dictatorship we’re in. I don’t think that works anymore whereas when we were coming through, you did what the coach said unless he was an ahole or an idiot
“I would have had plenty of arguments on the sidelines at schoolboy level myself. But now I think the characters and leaders are different, so you manage in a different way.
“The group are able to go at each other and hold each other to account, and in the moment, that worked.”
What happened ‘in the moment’ was key for the Switchbacks who never quite hit top form during the regular season, meaning their play-off spot was in doubt until the end.
McCann, 35, explained: “Over there, you play your conference, get your seeding and go into the play-offs, and those seedings matter, especially for us if we can get teams at home, at altitude.
“We’d had chances to get the one or two seed earlier in the season but never took them, so we went into the last game with it still in the balance.
“Our head of ops actually showed us a live table ten minutes from the end of the game with Sacramento and we saw how results were going.
“It was 0-0 and we needed to win. So myself and Chambo decided to go 3-5-2 from 4-3-3. We had a throw-in and scored 15 seconds later, so we went back 4-3-3.
“We were looking at being the fifth seed and being away all the time, but that put us in second.
“The run through the play-offs was still hard, especially against Las Vegas, who are a very good team, and our goalkeeper pulled off a great save in the 88th minute.
“It was mental because the way they do it out there, they do the conference final and then the real final and we picked up two trophies in two weeks.
“So it’s very different to back home, maybe more like if you won the league on the last day of the season and then you won the cup the next weekend, it’s similar to that, I suppose.”
GOING FOR GLORY
The 1-0 Las Vegas win was in the Western Conference final, with the trophy presented. Then preparations immediately got under way to face Rhode Island in the overall decider.
That would be won 3-0 but it presented a rather different kind of challenge.
McCann explained: “The game was on at 10 o’clock in the morning local time. The game was on national television on CBS but they were showing American football all afternoon so we had to go early, which was very strange.
“I was up at 5am, in the stadium at 5.30am and then we got ready for the game. But it was a brilliant day, we sold out the ground — about 9,500 — and it was just a brilliant buzz.
“We then won it well, it wasn’t a nervy one when you’re 3-0 up.”
Winning a game and a trophy before lunchtime, of course, leaves extra time for celebrations.
McCann smiled: “The club were brilliant, they put on a party bus for the players and families and brought them around.
“So we were in an Irish bar and absolutely wrecked, just so tired, and it was only about five o’clock! We went until two or three in the morning though to be fair.”
Since then, it has been straight into work thinking about next season before McCann made a first visit home in three years.
Chambers, too, made plans to meet up with League of Ireland managers here to exchange ideas. But the LOI’s stability, with clubs tying players to long-term deals earlier, means that the Switchbacks’ Irish contingent acknowledge recruiting at home is harder now.
There is also the dilemma that faces every ambitious coach at USL level.
Winning the Championship is the pinnacle but brings no promotion to MLS, which means sooner or later coaches must move on to further their careers.
But that is for the future. Right now, McCann is just enjoying being back on home turf.
He was due at a cousin’s big day yesterday, adding: “The first time seeing family and friends in three years, and a wedding!”
