Coaches and Technical Staff

Head Coach: Robert Warzycha

Robert Warzycha is now in his fifth full season as the Crew’s head coach. One of the Crew’s all-time greats on the field, he is now in his 11th season on the club’s coaching staff overall.

In his superlative first full season at the helm, Warzycha guided the Crew to the 2009 Supporters’ Shield title, with a 13-7-10 record, and into the championship round of the 2009-10 CONCACAF Champions League. In recognition of his efforts, he was named a finalist for 2009 MLS Coach of the Year honors.
Warzycha followed that up with a 50-point campaign in 2010 (14-8-8) and advancement to the CONCACAF Champions League Quarterfinals for a second straight season. In 2011, he led the club to its fourth straight playoff berth. In the midst of his tenure as an assistant coach, Warzycha distinguished himself during a 16-game stint as the Crew’s interim head coach from July 12, 2005 through the end of that season. Warzycha took over a 4-10-2 team and went 7-6-3 the rest of the way, including an impressive 4-4-2 mark on the road.

Following that season he accepted the club’s offer to remain on staff as Sigi Schmid’s top assistant – in so doing becoming the first Crew assistant ever to sign a multi-year contract – and he played an instrumental role the process that resulted in the club’s 2008 Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup championship season.

Warzycha’s retirement following the 2002 season capped a highly decorated, 16-year playing career. A native of Siemkowice, Poland, Warzycha (pronounced var-ZEE-hah) joined the Crew during its inaugural 1996 season and he remains the club’s all-time career assists leader, with 61, while ranking fifth in games played (160) and fourth in points (99). He added 19 goals in regular-season play and finished with two goals and nine assists in 17 career playoff games.

One of the more successful international signings in MLS history, Warzycha was a two-time MLS All-Star and the Crew’s team MVP in 2000. He is perhaps best remembered for his set-piece proficiency. He spent the 2002 U.S. Open Cup championship season as a player/assistant coach, before moving to the sidelines full-time in 2003.

Prior to joining the Crew, Warzycha made 47 appearances with the Polish National Team from 1988-95 and enjoyed a three-year stint with Everton of the English Premier League (1991-94), among many career highlights that also included time the Polish and Hungarian top flights.

Warzycha was born on Aug. 20, 1963. He and his wife, Eliza, now naturalized U.S. citizens, have three children, sons Konrad and Bartosz and daughter Olivia.

THE WARZYCHA FILE

WARZYCHA COACHING RECORD

Includes games of April 20, 2013

Assistant Coach: Ricardo Iribarren

Former Crew defender Ricardo Iribarren is in his seventh season as a member of the Crew’s coaching staff.

The La Plata, Argentina, native (whose name is pronounced ee-REE-bah-RAIN) boasts 29 years of playing and coaching experience, most recently serving as the head coach and director of soccer for the American School Foundation in Mexico City.

Iribarren’s coaching experience also includes serving as technical director and head coach for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds (USL1/USL2) from 2003-05 and head coach of Chatham College’s (Pa.) women’s team from 2001-03, as well as a number of posts at the high school and youth levels. Iribarren’s Riverhounds teams went 35-16-4 overall, including a USL2-best 17-2-1 regular-season mark in 2004. During that year the Riverhounds won 17 matces in a row. Iribarren enjoyed a 17-year playing career that included stints in Argentina, with Estudiantes, Belgrano and Almagro, and Ecuador, with Liga Deportiva Universitaria.

He joined the Crew during its inaugural 1996 season and returned in 1998, notching a goal and four assists in 49 games in Black & Gold overall. Stints with the Milwaukee Rampage (A-League), Dallas Burn (MLS) and Pittsburgh Riverhounds (A-League) followed. He retired upon being named the Riverhounds' head coach in July 2003.

Iribarren, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen on Jan. 25 2011, holds coaching licenses from the U.S., Argentine and Mexican federations and graduated with a degree in Economics from Universidad Nacional de La Plata in 1990. Born Nov. 2, 1967, he and his wife, Evie, have three children, Milena, Blas and Jeremias.
 

Assistant Coach: Mike Lapper

Former Crew defender Mike Lapper is in his ninth year as a member of the club’s coaching staff and 11th season with the organization.

Upon his retirement in July 2002, Lapper joined the Crew front office as Director of Soccer Business Development, a role he held through 2007 in which he ran the organization’s camp and clinic business. He joined the coaching staff concurrently in 2005.

A U.S. World Cup and Olympic Team veteran, Lapper earned his USSF “A” coaching license in January 2006. He has also coached in the national team program, serving as an assistant with the U.S. Under-20 National Team that competed at the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship in Holland.

A hard-nosed defender during his playing days, Lapper appeared in 110 games for the Crew from 1997-2002, following stints in Europe with VfL Wolfsburg (Germany) and Southend (England).

He played in college at perennial power UCLA, where he was a member of the Bruins’ 1990 NCAA championship team and earned first-team All-America accolades in 1991.

A native of Huntington Beach, Calif., Lapper was born on Aug. 28, 1970. He and his wife, Tara, have two sons, Kyle and Tyler.

Goalkeeper Coach: Vojislav "Scoop" Stanisic

A native of Belgrade, Serbia, Stanisic is in his second season as the Crew’s goalkeeping coach after joining the club in 2012.

He began his playing career in the youth system of Partizan Belgrade at the age of 15 and he remained with the storied club until 1984, when he moved to the United States to play for the New York Cosmos’ indoor team. He went on to build a reputation as one of the top goalkeepers in the indoor game over the course of a career that lasted until 2001.

Stanisic continued to play outdoors during the indoor offseason for much of his career, including a run in the APSL from 1989-92 with Albany, Washington and Miami. Upon receiving his U.S. citizenship in 1993, Stanisic was placed in the U.S. National Team pool and earned one cap, in a 2-2 tie with El Salvador on March 23, 1993.

In 1996, he transitioned to coaching during the offseason, when he was named head coach of the Franklin & Marshall College women’s team. He went 8-6-0 in his lone season there, before moving on to become an assistant coach at Central Missouri from 1997-99. He also coached the Kansas City Mystics of the W-League in from 1999- 01 and the Vermont Voltage of the PDL from 2001-03.

Stanisic earned a number of accolades during his indoor career, including MISL Newcomer of the Year in 1987, NPSL Playoff MVP in 1993 and 1997, when his Kansas City Attack teams won NPSL titles, and he was named to the NPSL All-Star Team three times (1995, 1996 and 1998).

Stanisic, 50, has also been very active in youth soccer, as the founder and director of coaching for the KC Inter and Indiana Inter Premier soccer clubs between 1998 and 2007. Most recently, he had been working in the private sector in Chicago, where he lived with his son Milan.
 

Assistant Technical Director/Assistant Coach: Duncan Oughton

Duncan Oughton is in his third season as a member of the club’s coaching staff. He retired from professional soccer after the 2010 season, following a stellar 10-year career in which he became the longest-serving player in club history. Oughton also serves as the club’s assistant technical director, in which he is involved in a number of functional areas, and color analyst on its regional television broadcasts on FOX Sports Ohio.

Over the course of his storied career in Black & Gold, Oughton was a part of all five major trophies won by the club and became one of the most beloved figures in club history. Originally selected by Columbus in the first round of the 2001 MLS SuperDraft (10th overall), he spent his entire professional career wearing Black & Gold, appearing in 136 matches (10th in club history) and logging over 9,000 minutes, while scoring three goals and recording 13 assists. He also saw action in 14 U.S. Open Cup matches, tallying one goal and three assists.

After appearing in 91 games over the course of his first four seasons, Oughton’s career was forever altered by a serious knee injury suffered in the final game of the 2004 season. He defied the odds by returning on Aug. 19, 2006 – making history by becoming one of the first athletes in any sport to come back from an experimental surgical procedure in which his own cartilage was grown in a lab and reimplanted in his knee – but not before he had missed nearly two seasons.

A 35-year-old native of Wellington, New Zealand, Oughton was also a longtime member of his national team, having been capped 22 times by the All Whites, which he also remarkably returned to following the knee injury. He holds a “B” coaching license from the United States Soccer Federation.
 

Director of Team Operations: Tucker Walther

Tucker Walther is in his 13th season with the Crew, having been promoted to Director of Team Operations following the 2009 campaign. Walther oversees all of the team’s preseason training camps, team travel, scheduling and administrative issues. He also works closely with the technical staff and players in the day-to-day operation of the team. 

Walther came to the Crew from D.C. United as the club’s Equipment Manager in December 2000. 

While with D.C., he gained experience in marketing, customer relations, game-day operations and equipment management. 

Following the 2004 season, Walther was named the MLS Kwik Goal Equipment Manager of the Year. He has worked with the league on MLS Cup 2000 and the 2005 Sierra Mist MLS All-Star Game.

Simultaneous to his time with D.C. United, Walther worked for the U.S. Men’s National Team and was also involved in ticket sales and game-day operations for the 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup at the Washington, D.C., venue.

Walther is a native of Ann Arbor, Mich., and earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Appalachian State University (Boone, N.C.).

Equipment Manager: Rusty Wummel

Rusty Wummel is in his seventh season as the Crew’s Equipment Manager. Wummel came to Columbus after spending the 2006 season as an assistant equipment manager with the Chicago Fire, a position he also held from 1999-2002. 

In between, he was the New England Revolution’s head equipment manager from 2003-05 and he was named the Kwik Goal MLS Equipment Manager of the Year following the 2005 campaign.

One of the highlights of Wummel’s career came in August of 2005, when he had the distinction of being selected to travel to Spain as the equipment manager for the MLS Select team that took on world-power Real Madrid at its famed Bernabeu Stadium.