EDMONTON -- After a two-month search, the Eddies have found their man.
Alan Koch becomes the fifth coach in FC Edmonton history, replacing Jeff Paulus who stepped down in September following a winless 2020 campaign.
“We needed a coach that had a history of winning,” said club owner Tom Fath, “and we need to be winning on the field to be filling the stands and keeping the excitement for the team.”
Koch inherits a Canadian Premier League team that has notoriously struggled to score goals, going back to their days in the North American Soccer League.
It’s something Koch plans to address.
“I definitely pride myself on trying to play attacking soccer and that’s obviously philosophically, but to do that you have to have attacking players,” said Koch. “Players that can come play the way that I want them to play, but also players that can captivate the market.”
The 45-year-old South African native has head coaching experience at many levels including Major League Soccer (MLS) and the United Soccer League (USL). More recently, Koch led the Vancouver Whitecaps to the USL’s Western Conference final in 2016 and was the first coach to offer Edmonton native and Bayern Munich superstar Alphonso Davies a professional contract.
Koch admits there’s a lot of hard work ahead but says he’s confident the Eddies will find success.
“Winning just doesn’t happen overnight. I’m very process-based, I don’t overly concern myself with making playoffs or winning championships,” says Koch. “That’s the desired outcome, of course, but that’s at the end of the process and we have to focus on creating the environment that will allow us to achieve those goals.”
Before moving into coaching, Koch was a standout midfielder at Simon Fraser University and played professionally in South Africa, Ireland, and Germany.
