Oct 2, 2026 · 27 min · 11 segments
This week on the podcast, it's international break time, so naturally we have more to talk about than ever. Covered this week: - Is the Loons search for a new chief soccer officer taking too long?…
John MarthalerHost
It's been 43 days since Khaled El-Ahmad pulled the, the, the Indianapolis Colts, the Baltimore Colts and left town in the middle of the night.
Outgoing CEO Cherry Ballard is still there, still fin-- sort of finishing her term while Hennington is picking it up, and now she has the unenviable task of hiring a new chief soccer officer, hiring a new sporting director, which is-- it's an important hire.
And the, the reason I think they need to hurry is that if they lose their next game [chuckles] it's, it's almost like the 2027 season starts now.
They're not out of playoff contention, but they're almost out of playoff contention at this point, and they have to start thinking about what 2027 looks like.
It's a little bit like a, a baseball team that's out of it down the stretch and gets their September call-ups and starts figuring out what their team the next season looks like.
And right now, the Loons are in a position where they need to start thinking about that, and they have no-- they, they have no one that is definitively going to be in charge long-term to set the direction for the team.
I, I have written before that I think that Hank Stebbins would be a good pick for that.
Someone asked me whether I thought that the sort of bad decisions that have been made in the past by Loons leader- leadership, or what I consider maybe to be the wrong decisions made, i- if that sort of should be disqualifying for Stebbins.
I, I, I don't think you can necessarily look at a guy who wasn't in charge and then tag him with decisions that went wrong when he wasn't in charge.
It, it's a little bit like you look at the decisions Derek Falvey made when he was the Twins general manager or Twins president of baseball operations or whatever his technical title was, and th- they had sort of a similar situation in which Falvey left on the eve of the season and they hired his right-hand man, Jeremy Zoll, to be the, be the general manager of the Twins.
Yes, Zoll and Falvey obviously worked together, but Zoll is different than Falvey and might have his own ways of looking at things, and I think if you look at this season with the Twins, they did do things differently, and I think the same would be true for Hank Stebbins and Khaled El-Ahmad.
He was-- Stebbins was here for the last few months of the Adrian Heath tenure, and then they hired El-Ahmad, and Stebbins got put into what was his previous role before he became interim sporting director when El-Ahmad left.
Um, I don't think it's necessarily fair to tag him with what happened under El-Ahmad.
It's been 43 days since Khaled El-Ahmad pulled the, the, the Indianapolis Colts, the Baltimore Colts and left town in the middle of the night.
Outgoing CEO Cherry Ballard is still there, still fin-- sort of finishing her term while Hennington is picking it up, and now she has the unenviable task of hiring a new chief soccer officer, hiring a new sporting director, which is-- it's an important hire.
And the, the reason I think they need to hurry is that if they lose their next game [chuckles] it's, it's almost like the 2027 season starts now.
They're not out of playoff contention, but they're almost out of playoff contention at this point, and they have to start thinking about what 2027 looks like.
It's a little bit like a, a baseball team that's out of it down the stretch and gets their September call-ups and starts figuring out what their team the next season looks like.
And right now, the Loons are in a position where they need to start thinking about that, and they have no-- they, they have no one that is definitively going to be in charge long-term to set the direction for the team.
I, I have written before that I think that Hank Stebbins would be a good pick for that.
Someone asked me whether I thought that the sort of bad decisions that have been made in the past by Loons leader- leadership, or what I consider maybe to be the wrong decisions made, i- if that sort of should be disqualifying for Stebbins.
I, I, I don't think you can necessarily look at a guy who wasn't in charge and then tag him with decisions that went wrong when he wasn't in charge.
It, it's a little bit like you look at the decisions Derek Falvey made when he was the Twins general manager or Twins president of baseball operations or whatever his technical title was, and th- they had sort of a similar situation in which Falvey left on the eve of the season and they hired his right-hand man, Jeremy Zoll, to be the, be the general manager of the Twins.
Yes, Zoll and Falvey obviously worked together, but Zoll is different than Falvey and might have his own ways of looking at things, and I think if you look at this season with the Twins, they did do things differently, and I think the same would be true for Hank Stebbins and Khaled El-Ahmad.
He was-- Stebbins was here for the last few months of the Adrian Heath tenure, and then they hired El-Ahmad, and Stebbins got put into what was his previous role before he became interim sporting director when El-Ahmad left.
Um, I don't think it's necessarily fair to tag him with what happened under El-Ahmad.
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