Martin Rennie

Martin Rennie

Personal information
Date of birth	(1975-05-22) 22 May 1975
Place of birth	Thurso, Scotland
Playing position	Midfielder
Club information
Current team	Seoul E-Land FC
Teams managed
Years	Team
2005	Cascade Surge
2007–2008	Cleveland City Stars
2009–2011	Carolina RailHawks
2011–2013	Vancouver Whitecaps FC
2014–	Seoul E-Land FC

Martin Rennie is a Scottish football manager who accepted the job to manage South Korean side Seoul E-Land FC which is scheduled to join 2015 K League Challenge.

Early life

Born in Thurso, Scotland to Fiona and Cliff Rennie on 22 May 1975, Martin Rennie spent the first 10 years of his life growing up in Bettyhill where his father was a Church of Scotland minister. In 1985, Rennie's father accepted a call to the Old Parish Church, in Larbert and the family moved there. Rennie was schooled at Ladeside Primary, and Larbert High School, at weekends he would watch Falkirk F.C. play, later becoming a ballboy for the team.^[1][2][3][4]

Rennie went on to study for a business degree at Glasgow Caledonian University. In his final year, he received a tryout for the Charlotte Eagles but suffered a cruciate ligament injury to his right knee. Returning to Scotland, Rennie continued to play for Scottish Junior Football Association teams Dunipace and Bo'ness whilst working in sales and marketing for Blackbaud. With the money earned from his sales and marketing work, Rennie was able to personally pay for his SFA coaching course costs. Rennie quickly rose through the coaching ranks and attained his UEFA ‘A’ License becoming assistant manager at Rosyth F.C. at 26.^[1]

In 2003 Rennie was asked by charity Ambassadors Football to embark on a playing tour of Africa, visiting, Mozambique, Sudan and South Africa. The tour comprised players from United States based teams Charlotte Eagles, Cascade Surge, and Minnesota Thunder, a South Africa international, a Nigeria international and a few players from the UK. During the trip, Rennie was offered an opportunity to manage the Cascade Surge.^[5]

Coaching career

Cascade Surge

Rennie took over as Head Coach with the Cascade Surge in Oregon, in 2005. He took the Premier Development League team to the best level of success the franchise experienced during its existence between 1995 and 2009. In his one and only season in charge Rennie led the Surge to the North West Division Title, West Coast Championship Final, US Open Cup Qualification and the Fair Play Award. In 16 games, the Surge won 12 games, and drew 2.^[1] Following this success Rennie had to return to his work with Blackbaud, and began to make plans for full-time work with AIS. In 2006 Rennie accepted an invitation to become the a director of AIS, as well as Head Coach of both USL-2 expansion team, the Cleveland City Stars and youth team Ambassadors FC (both owned by AIS).^[6][7]

Cleveland City Stars

In the club's remarkable first season, the City Stars lost only one game in the entire regular season and drew admiration from all quarters of the US Professional soccer community. Rennie won the coach of the year award in a season where the team allowed a USL all-time record low of 13 goals. The team finished its first season in existence as the runners up in the USL Second Division.

The only way that Rennie could build on the success of 2007 would be to win the 2008 Championship and that is exactly what the Cleveland City Stars Achieved with a 2–1 victory over the Charlotte Eagles in front of a sold out crowd at Krenzler Stadium in Cleveland and live to a TV audience throughout the United States. Again Rennie’s work was recognized in the shape of the coach of the year award. What made the Championship winning success even more impressive was the fact that many of the top young players that Rennie had recruited and coached in 2007 were transferred to professional teams at a higher level before the 2008 season began. Once again at the end of the 2008 season many of the most talented players were recruited by MLS and European teams.

Carolina RailHawks

These unprecedented levels of coaching success did not go unnoticed and this time the opportunity to coach the Carolina RailHawks from USL 1 was too much to for Rennie to resist. With the Carolina RailHawks he inherited a team that had only made the playoffs once in the history of the Franchise and had never finished above eighth place in a regular season campaign. Rennie decided to completely clean house and only kept 3 players from the previous RailHawks roster. He then completely changed the team culture and environment, introducing psychological, tactical and physical concepts that had never been implemented at this level before. The results were astonishing. In 2009 the team missed out on the regular season title by only 2 points finishing runners up to Portland who recorded one of the best regular season records in the 25-year history of the USL. Rennie was finalist for the coach of the year award and his team was recognized for the incredible turnaround that had taken place in just one season.

In 2010, the RailHawks established themselves as arguably the premier team in US Soccer outside of MLS. The RailHawks won the NASL league title and continued their success all the way into the post season with a run to the Championship final. For a team that had never even scored a playoff goal far less recorded a playoff win throughout the history of the franchise this was an even more impressive achievement. For the fourth year in a row Rennie was recognized as a finalist for the Coach of the Year Award, a feat that has never been achieved before at this level of professional soccer. The RailHawks also broke every franchise record in the book for a single season including conceding only 14 goals and scoring 54.

Rennie attributes much of his coaching success to the leadership and psychological lessons he learned during a hugely successful career in the corporate world as well as the invaluable support he has had from assistant coaches Brian Irvine and Paul Ritchie, both former Scotland national football team players.

Vancouver Whitecaps FC

In 2011, Rennie took over head coaching role for Vancouver Whitecaps FC two months into the season with the side bottom of the table. When Rennie took over, the Whitecaps had not won an away match in that league and had been described as the worst team in MLS history.^[5] At the end of the 2011 season Rennie revamped his playing squad by introducing experienced imports from the Scottish and English football league systems — Kenny Miller, Barry Robson and Andy O'Brien — then in his first full season in charge the Whitecaps reached the play-offs. In the process Rennie became the first coach to lead a Canadian team to the MLS post season.^[8]

In the 2013 season Rennie looked to build on his success by continuing to revamp the playing squad, reduced the age of the team and introduced young exciting players like Kekuta Manneh and Camilo Sanvezzo to the Whitecaps lineup as well as Premier League experience in former England U21 international Nigel Reo-Coker. The Whitecaps became known throughout MLS for their attacking and entertaining style. On October 29, with his side finishing 3 points short of making the play-offs Rennie was fired^[9][10] from the Whitecaps after their most successful MLS season to date where they finished on 48 points, 5 more than their previous play-off season. The Whitecaps also won the 2013 Cascadia Cup^[11] and won more games than they lost for the first season in their history.^[12] Bob Lenarduzzi, president of the Whitecaps cited inconsistent performances and tactics as well as a failure to win the Canadian Championship as reasons for his dismissal, but conceded that the five-man committee that made the decision had not come to a unanimous conclusion.^[13]

Seoul E-Land FC

On 17 July 2014, he was appointed as manager of newly formed South Korean side Seoul E-Land FC which is scheduled to join K League Challenge in the 2015 season.

Managerial record

As of 29 October 2013

Team	From	To	Record
			G	W	D	L	Win %
Cascade Surge	1 January 2005	31 December 2005	7001180000000000000♠18	7001130000000000000♠13	7000200000000000000♠2	7000300000000000000♠3	7001722200000000000♠72.22
Cleveland City Stars	1 February 2007	1 November 2008	7001440000000000000♠44	7001230000000000000♠23	7001160000000000000♠16	7000500000000000000♠5	7001522700000000000♠52.27
Carolina RailHawks	13 November 2008	26 October 2011	7001680000000000000♠68	7001310000000000000♠31	7001180000000000000♠18	7001190000000000000♠19	7001455900000000000♠45.59
Vancouver Whitecaps FC	26 October 2011	29 October 2013	7001680000000000000♠68	7001240000000000000♠24	7001250000000000000♠25	7001190000000000000♠19	7001352900000000000♠35.29
Total			7002198000000000000♠198	7001910000000000000♠91	7001610000000000000♠61	7001460000000000000♠46	7001459600000000000♠45.96

External links

• Official Website
• Vancouver Whitecaps FC bio

References

Vancouver Whitecaps FC – managers Thordarson (2011) Soehn (interm) (2011) Rennie (2012–13) Robinson (2014–)

Carolina RailHawks – managers Schweitzer (2007–2008) Rennie (2009–2011) Clarke (2012–)

Cleveland City Stars – managers Rennie (2007–08) Underwood (2009–09)