KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Vlatko Andonovski was 9 years old when he was taught that losing was unacceptable.
The boys at F.K. Vardar learned that early. Andonovski, 44, grew up in a middle-class, soccer-playing family in Skopje, the capital of the country now known as North Macedonia. But almost as soon as he joined the academy of the country’s biggest and most popular team, in 1985, the stakes were raised.
Vardar’s academy attracted the most talented prospects in Macedonia, and the competition for places — even for preteen boys — was fierce. Being accepted into one of the youth teams was merely the start. From there, the boys had to keep their spot, to earn it, every single day.
“You lose two games at the age of 12 and you are no longer part of the team, it’s that simple,” said Dino Delevski, a close friend of Andonovski’s who also played in the academy. In the youth teams, Delevski added, “there was no mommy and daddy to go to.” You performed, or you were out.
Andonovski spent 10 years in the Vardar academy. He does not remember each win. He does remember each loss. There were two. “It is one thing winning the game,” he said, “but it is another thing staying the best for such a long time.”
It was, in hindsight, the perfect training for Andonovski’s current job as coach of the United States women’s soccer team.
Except that now he is not allowed to lose at all.
On Top of the World
“Blunt” is how the United States midfielder Kristie Mewis described Andonovski, whom she has known for nearly a decade. She admitted that she has had a few conversations with him that she first described as “not brutal,” which is how you know they were brutal.
Becky Sauerbrunn, perhaps the national team player who knows Andonovski best, says that, almost paradoxically, he has gotten “harder” since he first coached her in 2013. “Early on, he was so willing to give, and players weren’t willing to give back, he would give, give, give,” Sauerbrunn said. “Now he will ask for a return.”
Andonovski readily cops to the charges. He knows his players do not need to be taught how to win. He knows they do not often not need their competitive fires stoked, either. But even in that hypercompetitive environment — Carli Lloyd has called the constant battle for roster places and playing time in tournament years “cutthroat” — someone has to set the bar and then raise it again and again, to demand more.
“I am doing it not to hurt them,” Andonovski said of his frank evaluations of his players. “I’m doing it because I am trying to help.”
For a U.S. team eager to regain the Olympic title it once took for granted, there is little time for hand holding. Andonovski’s job comes with such high expectations that one of his predecessors was dismissed shortly after losing a single game out of 55. Another, Jill Ellis, heard persistent calls for her firing even as she led the team to consecutive World Cup victories.
Andonovski knew all of this when he was appointed 21 months ago, on the heels of that second straight World Cup title. His task was to take a team stocked with popular, elite professionals — though many on the wrong side of 30 — and to retool it on the fly, all without offending anyone and, oh yeah, while winning every trophy and, preferably, without losing a game.
Ever.
In describing these challenges, Andonovski used the word “easy” four times. To be clear, he said in an interview in his backyard on a sunny day in June, “I knew what I’m getting myself into.”
And in March 2020, he felt he was in a great place: His team had just beaten Japan, and he thought it was peaking right on time for the Olympics, which were then only months away. Then came the pandemic, and Andonovski, who buzzes with energy even when he is sitting perfectly still, was reduced to meticulously preparing in an office in a spare bedroom upstairs in his Kansas City home, limited to virtual meetings with his team instead of the occasional training camp and games.
The preparation he did in that spare room — everybody who knows Andonovski has a story, or five, about his exacting nature — will be on display Wednesday, when the United States, unbeaten under Andonovski (22-0-1), opens the Olympics against Sweden in Tokyo Stadium. The team is, again, arriving in strong form and in the role of tournament favorite.
But the expectation, Andonovski knows, is unchanged: Anything less than a gold medal will be viewed — by casual fans and devoted ones, by the players and the federation and especially by Andonovski — as a failure.
A Soccer Mind
Andonovski fell just short of becoming an elite player in his own career. Groomed at Vardar, he later played as a central defender for a number of Macedonian professional clubs, always with the hope that he might get noticed, that he might move on to one of Europe’s bigger, richer, more prestigious leagues. He never made it.
“I was probably never good enough to begin with, or I was never good enough for what I wanted,” he said. Blunt honesty is not just for his players.
That is when Delevski, who had left Vardar to live as a foreign exchange student in the United States, changed the path of Andonovski’s career. Delevski was playing for the Wichita Wings, a professional indoor soccer team, in the late 1990s when he persuaded Andonovski to join him. Andonovski thought it would be fun, and he was attracted to America. The pay was $12,000.
When his playing career ended, Andonovski dived headfirst into coaching. At one point he was the head coach of multiple teams: women who played outdoors, men indoors, youth teams that played wherever they could.
Huw Williams coached youth teams with Andonovski back then, and was an assistant under him with F.C. Kansas City of the nascent National Women’s Soccer League. On the drives to games, Williams said, they would sometimes have to pull over so that Andonovski could take a walk, to set one team aside and prepare himself to focus on the next.
“He had to have his head right,” Williams said. “He was so driven, so focused, so motivated.”
Williams is one of the many people who, once they entered Andonovski’s life, seemingly never left. Another is Milan Ivanovic, who played indoor soccer for him on the Kansas City Comets. Ivanovic has since served as assistant coach at each of Andonovski’s professional stops, including the national team.
Andonovski keeps the most trusted members of his soccer circle close. Williams is over at his house weekly, where Andonovski’s wife, Biljana, often makes crepes, topping them with Nutella from an industrial-kitchen-size jar. He is still in regular contact with many of the players he coached as children years ago.
Ivanovic, his national team assistant, even spent part of the pandemic living with Andonovski — he has his own little desk in the spare bedroom office in Kansas City. The arrangement allowed the men to engage in regular discussions over coffee about players, opponents, ideas, best practices. Some tactical discussions got so involved, Ivanovic said, that Andonovski would make his points by moving dishes and condiments around as if they were players.
And then there are the videos. Andonovski says his preparation for the Olympics has involved watching every club game even a fringe national team member has played since he was appointed, almost two years of matches. But he keeps an eye on the rest of the world, too, meaning he has seen more or less every major women’s soccer game played over the past two years.
“There is no hanging out with Vlatko,” Williams said. “He is always working. Always.”
A Unifying Force
In some ways, winning the Olympic women’s soccer tournament is even more difficult than winning the World Cup. There are no easy opponents, the rosters are smaller and the games come fast and furious. Many of the U.S. players have been through this particular crucible before. A few have gold medals, and painful scars, from those trips. Andonovski does not.
This partly explains the devotion to his work, and if you hear enough stories about Andonovski, it’s possible to begin to think of him as an unemotional soccer automaton, a man who plans “everything,” Ivanovic said, from where players sit in meetings to how long each practice drill will last.
But he is not just compelled to do the work. He also loves doing the work, and takes joy in doing the work. Andonovski loves his job, loves the process and loves his players, a love that comes through clearest when he speaks about the battle his players are waging concurrently with their Olympic campaign: the team’s equal pay fight.
Most of the U.S. players have been engaged in a legal standoff with the federation for the past five years. It is — other than winning championships — the team’s unifying force. Given that Andonovski is employed by the federation, it should be the untouchable third rail of his job. But it is one he knows he must navigate to win the trust and respect of the players.
So rather than diplomatically steer clear of the topic, he explains that he backs his players unequivocally, that the type of players he wants to coach are those who won’t settle for anything less than what they believe they have earned, on or off the field.
“They’re fighters,” he said. “They’re fighters. That’s who they are, and they thrive off of battles.”
Over the next few weeks, Andonovski will need his fighters. And they will need him.
Losing, after all, is not an option.
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