Few people can claim the resume of Frank Yallop. After a 13 year playing career with Ipswich Town, he made the jump to MLS 1.0 and joined the Tampa Bay Mutiny, playing three seasons as a defender in the early years of the American league. With his playing career finished, he moved to the sideline and has coached consistently for the last 20 years, now with USL Championship side Monterey Bay FC. That long career has made Yallop into the steady leader you’d expect him to be. And while he may be seasoned, he’s no less passionate about winning.

“You’d think you’d be more relaxed, but I can’t sleep after we lose. I’m miserable on a Sunday when we’ve lost a game on Saturday. By Monday or Tuesday, when I’ve seen the guys again, I feel better and I build up for the next game. I still have that hunger. I love it, trying to get a bunch of young men to win a game,” Yallop said, reflecting on how the job continues to inspire him. But he’s quick to admit that he works hard to keep his perspective positive. “It’s not an easy job, but you’ve got to go through it with positiveness and a smile on your face. You’ve got to enjoy what you do and I enjoy what I do.”

Leadership and Experience

Yallop’s steady approach to developing Monterey is rooted in the belief that it’s all part of the plan. “Some clubs come in and they immediately want to win. We wanted to build the fanbase, build the infrastructure of the stadium and all those things that go into it, and not rush stuff,” he said about the club’s launch. “We’re slowly growing. We’ve had a good season…For us, it’s about building. I think we’re doing a good job.” That perspective has benefited Yallop in multiple stops during his coaching career.

When San Jose became the Earthquakes in 1999, the team struggled under several coaches before Frank was brought on. His arrival (plus some guy named Landon Donovan) would bring unparalleled success in MLS. In 2001, the team won MLS Cup and won again in 2003 (he joked that winning two titles in three years made him think that “coaching is an easy job”). From that success, he coached his native Canada’s national team for two years before returning to MLS. That move was to head the LA Galaxy during the Beckham experiment (which Frank says “really changed the landscape of everything”). After a short stint in Hollywood, Frank returned to San Jose for another six year run before continuing on to multiple other stops on his way to Monterrey.

Taking a winding path to his current position has shaped Yallop’s coaching approach, but, in the end, it’s always been about the players. “I coached at MLS and the Canadian national team. Obviously they are at a higher level than the players that I coach here now, but they’re the same athletes, they get upset when they don’t win, they’re trying to work on their skills…Sometimes it may be a little harder to coach at this level, nothing against the players, but I’ve obviously coached at a higher level, played in the Premier League and Championship in England.” But don’t think that he’s unhappy to be in the American second-division, there’s benefits to working with this level of players. “I’m really enjoying this group, I think they’re hungry to learn and they didn’t get their heads down when we had that bad run, they kept going and stayed positive and now we’re seeing the rewards of that. Even if we don’t make the playoffs, I still think we’ve grown as a group this season and it’s still rewarding for me.”

That reward comes from helping construct this team from the ground up, an experience that only starting an expansion side can offer. For Frank, he lives for it. “I feel I’m one of those guys that likes to build. I don’t mind building from scratch. The pressure is off a little to start with, but I like the pressure when it gets going.”

Team of Destiny

Frank is now the Head Coach and Sporting Director for Monterey Bay FC, joining on in for the club’s launch into USL Championship. The team had a typically rough expansion season, finishing 12th on the table with a 12-18-4 record. This season though, the team sits 9th, just a single point from a playoff spot. Before last Saturday’s match with El Paso Locomotive (which Monterey won 2-1), the coach was optimistic about his team’s chances at that final playoff spot, given the USLC schedule. “A lot of the teams are playing each other. Towards the end of the season, they tend to match up the divisional teams. I tell the guys, ‘destiny is in our hands.’ If we win 4 to 5, we’re in.”

The Western Conference hasn’t been easy for Monterey, given the strength of the clubs this season. Yallop’s club would already be playoff-bound in the East, a fact not lost on the coach. “I look at the West and I’m like jeez…It’s not an easy one, but its the division we’re in and we’ve got to get on with it.” But from his veteran perspective, their current standing is less an indicator of the quality of his roster and more about bouncing back from a midseason setback. “We’ve had a decent season, had a good cup run, we just got on a bit of a bad skid…we were just a little bit off. For me it’s always looking forward.”

This Saturday Monterey will be in Memphis to face 901 FC, it’s one of only two remaining matches against Eastern Conference opponents. The remaining five matches are all against Western clubs trying to make it into the playoffs. How Yallop’s team faces those matches will determine if Monterey is ready to take the step from expansion side to playoff participant. Regardless of how it finishes, Frank Yallop will be ready for that next step in the journey.

- Dan Vaughn