Dealing with a death in the family is never easy.
For Carl Robinson, losing his father Phil to a sudden and deadly illness in the fall of 2010 was especially tough.
The former Toronto FC and New York Red Bulls midfielder often described his dad as his best friend and hero, a working class bloke who turned down a chance to play pro soccer in order to remain in Wales and raise a family with his wife Denise.
Phil’s death hit Robinson very hard, as he began to seriously contemplate his future. At 35, Robinson could have continued playing, but the passing of his father led him to walk away from the game at the end of the 2011 MLS season.
Soccer is in Robinson’s blood, though, and the Welshman couldn’t entirely divorce himself from the sport, signing on to become an assistant coach with the Vancouver Whitecaps in January. Although Robinson sometimes thinks about what might have been, the Welshman has no regrets about his decision to retire, explaining he lost the desire to compete following his father’s death.
“People who know me know I’m a very professional person and do everything right and win in everything I do. Sadly losing my dad really took its effect on me,” Robinson told sportsnet.ca.
“The desire for me to play slowly waned and that’s difficult to say for a professional footballer because it was my dream. Since my dad passed, I wanted to move onto something new. I always had (coaching) in my mind and that was always the plan, and the plan just came earlier than I expected.”
A nagging knee injury was also a factor in his decision to retire. Robinson considered having an operation in order to prolong his playing career, but he decided against it in order to begin his journey into coaching.
“It was unfortunate for me last year that I picked up an injury midway through the season with regard to my knee. The prognosis of that was that I would need an operation to get my knee fixed and if I did that I would be out for eight months. At my age I wanted to focus on getting into coaching,” Robinson admitted.
During his final months in New York, Robinson served as a player/coach under Hans Backe, learning the tools of the trade from the Swedish manager. There was an opportunity to remain on New York’s coaching staff, but Robinson began talks with Vancouver coach Martin Rennie after the Whitecaps asked the Red Bulls for permission to approach the Welshman.
“I had the opportunity to coach in New York. They were very good to me. I had another year left on my contract there but I just decided because I know Martin — we’ve been friends for a number of years, and I liked his ideas — I decided to go to Vancouver,” Robinson said.
His apprenticeship in New York gave him a small taste of what coaching would be like and what to expect in Vancouver.
“I was thrown into the deep end but I gained experience last year at New York. Hans was great with me, I was involved in the coaching and I learned a lot from Hans, and I have a lot of respect for him,” Robinson stated.
The intimacy of being able to work with players on a daily basis is what Robinson likes best about being an assistant coach. And as a former pro, making the transition from player to coach has been fairly easy.
“It’s been great. Every footballer will tell you it’s as close as you can get to the game without playing. Every coach is different and they all have different opinions, and that’s what I am learning. You have to use your strengths and your characteristics as a person and put them across to the squad,” Robinson explained.
Voted TFC’s player of the year in 2007 and 2008, Robinson loved playing in Toronto and fell in love with the city and Canada as a whole. He often talked about the possibility of remaining in Canada after retiring — it just so happened that it would be in Vancouver, and not in the city he called home for three years.
“My family loved Canada while I was in Toronto and the plan was to settle down in Canada after finishing my career and go into coaching. It’s ironic how it’s worked out in Canada but in Vancouver,” Robinson said.
Ideally, he would have liked to have coached in Toronto, but the Whitecaps were the ones who made the offer a year after TFC hired a new management team led by Aron Winter and Paul Mariner.
After talking about it at length with his wife and two young children, the family decided to move to Vancouver.
“I had three great years in Toronto,” Robinson said “I have a lot of respect for TFC and their supporters but they went in another direction. But (coaching in Toronto) never entered my mind or entered the equation because I want to work with people I know and trust, and people I respect like Martin Rennie.”