More changes for Whitecaps

VANCOUVER -- The merry-go-round within the Vancouver Whitecaps organization continued on Friday, as the club announced CEO Paul Barber is stepping down at the end of February 2012.

The 44-year-old Londoner is leaving for a new position elsewhere, but didn’t get into the details during a hastily called press conference on Friday at The Landing, the building in which the Whitecaps organization has its head office.

It’s the latest move in a calendar year which has seen three coaches and now a shuffle at the executive level within the club.

For many it was a surprise. The Whitecaps are having tremendous off-field success, with the league’s third-highest attendance in 2011, and have secured a collection of sponsorship agreements many other organizations would kill for. As CEO, Barber deserves credit for his contributions toward bringing the club seemingly instant business viability in Major League Soccer.

The club will not be searching for a new CEO, instead splitting Barber’s responsibilities between club president Bob Lenarduzzi and chief operating officer Rachel Lewis.

“To be really clear, we’re not replacing the CEO position,” co-owner Jeff Mallett told sportsnet.ca. “Rachel Lewis, our COO, will pick up a large portion of (Barber’s responsibilities) and Bobby will pick up some additional things on the football and technical side of things, and then myself and (co-owner) Greg [Kerfoot] will continue to be active at the league level.”

While Mallett seems confident that Lewis, named as one of the “40 under 40” by Business in Vancouver in 2009, is ready for the new responsibility, some informed observers, such as TEAM 1040’s Tyler Green, insinuated she isn’t all that highly regarded in some quarters.

“The other problem lies in talking to people associated with the club during the division 2 years at Swangard Stadium and the city of Burnaby,” Green wrote on the Full Time soccer blog Friday afternoon. “The reviews of Rachel Lewis (from) those people are less that desirable.

“The Whitecaps have gone from a man at the top of his profession with major experience in the soccer world and (who) could captivate a group with his stories and his business sense. Now you have a quiet COO with some less that desirable reviews and a President with an apparent lack of business aptitude. One interested observer suggested it's 'quite the downgrade'.”

Whether or not it’s a downgrade, the club is losing an executive with experience from the very top of professional soccer in England, and replacing him with two individuals with no executive soccer experience beyond the Division 2 level prior to this season.

But while there may be some legitimacy to those concerns, Lewis has proven herself in elite sport before, acting as tournament director for the Air Canada Championship PGA event during a three-and-a-half-year period.

Her nearly decade-long experience with the Whitecaps, first as director of stadium and development management, and then as chief operating officer, should also stand her in good stead. Working under Barber for two years will surely have helped in her professional development and Mallett suggested that Barber had acted as a sort of “teacher” during his time with the club, allowing Lewis and others to “pick his brain.”

It’s been an interesting week for the Whitecaps between signings, re-signings, a trade and now this announcement.

And with a coach in Martin Rennie without top-tier experience and a pair of executives in a similar boat, those interesting times are sure to continue.

Martin MacMahon is a Vancouver-based writer who covers the Vancouver Whitecaps for MLSsoccer.com. Follow Martin on Twitter.