Portland Timbers assistant Miles Joseph describes life of a coach during coronavirus pandemic

Miles Joseph is an MLS original.

The Massachusetts native, raised in Clifton Park, NY was drafted 12th overall by the NY/NJ MetroStars in 1996 and assisted on the first goal in club history – by his current boss, Giovanni Savarese.

The winger, who played four years at Clemson University, made 96 appearances for the MetroStars followed by stints with the Columbus Crew and Dallas Burn where he was teammates with Jason Kreis.

Miles first coaching assignment was as an assistant for the women’s team at Siena College. Eventually, he joined Kreis as the lieutenant at Real Salt Lake, New York City FC and Orlando City SC before linking with Savarese in Portland as an assistant for the Timbers.

He won an MLS Cup with Kreis at RSL in 2009 and most recently was assisting Kreis as the U.S. U-23 National Team was preparing for the Olympic qualifiers – which have been postponed indefinitely much like the 25th anniversary celebration of the league due to the coronavirus pandemic.

MLS has extended its training moratorium to April 24 and I spoke to Miles about some of the things the Timbers are doing to keep their players occupied and prepared during these unique circumstances.

Glenn Crooks: Before we get to Portland, you played on the 1996 Olympic team coached by Bruce Arena – and you were helping Jason (Kreis) as a coach with this year’s U-23’s. It must be massively disappointing for him.

Miles Joseph:  I've been a part of that staff all the way up until the last trip just because I needed to be with our team for the beginning of season. There's a lot of work that went into getting them ready for qualifiers. Jason was really looking forward to the qualifiers and qualifying them for the Olympics. Hopefully, we'll have another chance to qualify at some point.

(Note: The Tokyo Olympics were officially postponed until July 23-August 8, 2021 and no new qualifying dates have been announced.)

GC: So, you get back to Portland, split the first two matches of the season and then it shuts down. What were the first things you did as a staff?

MJ: Obviously, it was a very serious situation and when we heard things starting to happen in Seattle we kind of knew it was going to be a serious situation so we met as at the staff to start and started brainstorming about protocols.

(Note: Jan. 21 was the first reported coronavirus case in Snohomish County, Washington – about 55 miles north of Seattle.)

GC: What were some of the protocols you were dealing with as a club?

MJ: We had to decide how to separate the training facility if we were allowed to continue to train in small groups , that kind of thing. And because we have a second team, a women's team and the academy we had to organize the traffic through the facility. Sharing facilities, sharing meal rooms - I mean there was a lot of thought and detail that went through it. 

GC: The impact on the players and families is really unfortunate.

MJ: For sure - we had players coming back from Olympic team duty or national team duty and had to prepare for how long they would have to be away from the team. Then the family members coming in from out of town before the flights were shut down and how long they would have to be away from their family. There's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes that not everyone is aware of.

GC: What are some of the ways you are staying engaged with the team?

MJ: The first thing was our performance staff meeting with them. We have an app that they are familiar with for offseason training. So, the first thing they [performance staff] did was create a program and obviously a different program than what they used for the offseason. At first, they were able to go out and run to stay engaged. 

Miles Joseph can no longer train the Portland Timbers at their facility. Like all coaching staffs, the Timbers have come up with alternate methods to keep their team engaged while also considering the families.

GC: Things have changed now with the new state and federal warnings.

MJ: Now with them staying at home we had to deliver bikes to each player's homes. We sent other training equipment, a lot of little things that they would need in order to continue with their fitness.

GC: You sent bikes to their homes? 

MJ: This was all part of the early discussions. We also deliver meals to the players so they'll have meals for the families. We have our chefs and we want them to be involved so we had an idea to do the meals and deliver them to homes because you know some guys have wives that are pregnant or with kids and can't go to the grocery store. We were trying to think of every little detail possible for the players to make sure that they were safe and have the ability to focus on their families. 

GC: It’s also nice that you can control their nutrition a bit – especially the less experienced players - since you are no longer having meals together at your training facility.

MJ: Yeah, there’s always that wide spectrum. There's the young guys that aren't on the same program as some of the older guys as far as eating which could catch up to you pretty quickly. There's also the language barriers and guys might not be comfortable going out. 

GC: What are you doing on the tactical side to keep your players engaged?

MJ: This is an interesting one. We are basically doing a slow drip of everything we’ve done in preseason and what we’ve built over the last couple years. Kind of a shortened version of that for the players and then throw in a couple clips of how it looks in each phase that we're going to send them. Then add in a couple of questions to check for their understanding of what we're looking for and then opening up those conversations on video chat with some of the guys. Being worried about their families, it’s a little bit of a break from that for a few minutes during the day doing those video chats.

GC: Is there an area of coaching where you’re spending more time then if the season were still progressing?

MJ: At the beginning we broke down our two games that we had already broken down. Looking at it again to see what went well, what didn't go well. Things that maybe we would have done differently or want to tweak a little bit moving forward. And we went into tweaking some things on our style play document that we have for our club. Just more reflection on kind of what we're doing, how we're working.

GC: So, really spending time reflecting when that would never happen during the season.

MJ:  It's been good, there's a lot of good dialogue about different formations. So, it's been pretty interesting. We have another call after the one that I'm on with you and you know we'll be talking about all this stuff again. We’re getting to do a lot of the work that gets pushed aside when the season starts.”