Lutz Pfannenstiel's Winding Journey Leads Him to St. Louis and MLS
When asked for his resume, Lutz Pfannenstiel could do worse than simply providing a world atlas. Before his career regained some semblance of stability and normalcy during nine years as a scout and sports director at TSG Hoffenheim and Fortuna Düsseldorf, the 47-year-old German had first-hand experience with the global game in just about every corner of the globe.
The former goalkeeper is still the only player to have appeared as a professional for clubs in each of FIFA’s six continental confederations. His travels took him to Malaysia, England, South Africa, Scandinavia, Singapore, New Zealand, Canada, Albania, Brazil and more. He served as the goalkeeper coach for the Cuban national team and managed Ramblers FC, a club from Windhoek, Namibia.
“The completely crazy CV has helped me a lot to develop into what I am, because I have a global, international approach,” Pfannenstiel said. “I’ve used this word, if I translate it correctly from German—I call it ‘intercultural competence.’ That’s not when you go to 50 countries on holiday and you’re there for like a week. If you’re living in that place and you get to know the culture and the people, it’s a completely different kind of thing.
“That means when you’re now talking to players, agents, clubs, all over the world, you get a much better understanding of who they are, where they come from,” he continued. “It gives me a much better way of convincing players to come play for my club, because I can refer to things in a different way.”
Pfannenstiel is now ready to put that intercultural competence to good use in one of soccer’s most exotic destinations—MLS. After a relative eternity back home in Germany, Pfannenstiel is on the move again and on Monday, was announced as the new sporting director for St. Louis City SC, the expansion club scheduled to begin play in 2023. He’s owner Carolyn Kindle Betz’s first technical appointment, and he’ll be responsible for “all on-field operations,” the club said, including recruiting coaches and players and laying the groundwork for an academy.
St. Louis City unveiled its name and logo last week and is currently building a stadium on the western edge of downtown St. Louis.
Pfannenstiel decided in February to leave Düsseldorf and said there were conversations with multiple clubs in multiple countries, including Newcastle United and Inter Milan. So what drew a guy who’s been everywhere to middle America and an MLS expansion side? Pfannenstiel said his decision was informed significantly by his experience at Hoffenheim, a club he joined in 2011. It had been playing in Germany’s fifth tier as recently as 1999-2000 but it rose through the ranks under owner Dietmar Hopp, earning promotion to the Bundesliga in 2008 and its first appearance in the UEFA Champions League in 2017.
“I got talking to St. Louis and Carolyn and it was for me the most convincing idea, but it all reminded me of the starting point at Hoffenheim,” he said. “We’re starting literally on a blank piece of paper. There is no academy, no training facility, no nothing here right now. So we can start from scratch to really put in all the ideas of what I learned in football in the last 30 years or so.”
A massive part of that of that blank piece of paper will be devoted to the academy, Pfannenstiel said. He can’t wait to get started, and has every intention of putting at least one academy team, if not more, on the field before the MLS side kicks off in 2023. St. Louis has been producing U.S. internationals for decades. Now comes the chance to keep them home as professionals.
“They’re not just doing this to win an MLS title and to be like a franchise which just wants to win every week,” he said of City ownership. “They think the ideal of giving everybody a chance in soccer, like throwing the idea to pay-to-play finally out of the window and using the game of soccer as a tool to really get the people of St. Louis on to the same page, that really impressed me.
“These nice words—‘soccer capital’—we have a very rich history of football talents over here: good high school soccer, good university soccer. Not just in St. Louis but also the region, all that made me immediately feel very attracted to the idea,” he added. “For me to go somewhere to fit into structures that already exist and flow in there was by far not as attractive as coming somewhere where you can really fulfill your ideas and bring all your experience and expertise to create. That’s why for me, I literally fell in love with the idea of St. Louis and decided against the bigger clubs and against the bigger leagues and said St. Louis and MLS is the place I want be.”
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Regarding roster construction, St. Louis City will be not be a destination club for foreign players signing their final contract, Pfannenstiel confirmed. He’s played and worked with men in far-flung corners around the world hoping to play their way onto bigger and brighter fields. Those are the players he’ll be looking for, whether they’re internationals or academy products. And he wants to start soon. Pfannenstiel said the league’s decision to push City’s start from 2022 to 2023 will help him get a handle on the local talent available (as much as the pandemic allows).
"To move it for a year is like a comfort situation because we can focus on our bread and butter, and that is local boys, the homegrown talent,” he said. “[An MLS roster] must always be a very interesting good mix, but we do want to focus on young boys, make them into better players and give them the opportunity to be transferred into Europe if one day they’re good enough.
“We must also be part of the experienced MLS players who come here and ply their trade, and when it comes to the international approach, I’m more into the direction that we bring young hungry players who really want to develop and they can still make the next step,” he continued. “Maybe we get one or two experienced players who also have achieved something, but I’m not necessarily a big fan of bringing the absolutely huge names at the age of 36 over here. We’d rather go for players who are hungry.”
There’s no timetable at the moment for naming a head coach, but there is time. Pfannenstiel has some leeway, and time to get comfortable in a new place—something with which he has considerable experience. He said signing several players and loaning them out in 2022 is already something he’s pondered, although those decisions likely are still a ways away. He’s also committed to hiring staff with MLS experience, but isn’t sure whether that’ll come in the form of a technical director/GM or manager. Rest assured, however, that Pfannenstiel’s address book is bursting. He’ll be able to comb the soccer world for a “good mix,” he said.
