Three days after being eliminated from the USL play-offs, Sacramento Republic FC announced that they would not be renewing the contract of head coach, Simon Elliott and his assistant, Benjamin Ziemer. This can only mean that the team wants to put in place the coach that will lead the team into the MLS in 2022 and give him two seasons to build a squad and staff up to the task.
It also points to them wanting to pursue a higher profile name in the soccer world, but someone on that list might be an old friend of the club – namely, current Seattle Sounders assistant, Predrag Radosavljevi…
Preki.
Beloved by the Sacramento faithful for delivering the 2014 USL Championship at the end of the teams’ inaugural season, the Serbian-American left the club 18 games into the 2015 USL season for England. Believing he would be appointed manager at Leicester City, the job went to Claudio Ranieri and Preki found himself unemployed, as the Republic had already replaced him.
After a year away from the game he rejoined the USL with Saint Louis FC before joining the Sounders in Washington, where he helped lead the team to the MLS Cup. He could obviously remain in Seattle but the offer of building his own MLS squad and coaching staff, in an area he knows and is loved, might be too much to resist.
Over the coming months we’ll be following this story and the other developments as Sacramento becomes part of Major League Soccer in 2022.