Vancouver Whitecaps FC announced the coaching staff for incoming manager Marc Dos Santos on Friday.
Vanni Sartini and Phillip Dos Santos will be assistant coaches, while Youssef Dahha will be goalkeeper coach. The trio will be on multi-year contracts.
Sartini, 42, joins from U.S. Soccer, where he has been a coaching educator since 2016 and taught the U.S. Soccer Pro License Coaching course. A native of Italy, he was head coach at AS Mezzana, and has been assistant coach at Livorno and Bari. He also served as a scout and coaching educator for the Italian FA.
Phillip Dos Santos, 40, is Marc's younger brother, and is reuniting on a coaching staff after serving together at Ottawa Fury (where he was also technical director) and San Francisco Deltas. The Canadian most recently worked as an assistant coach for Indy Eleven, and has also worked for Canada Soccer in the youth national team set-up. Among other licenses, he holds a UEFA 'A' license.
Dahha, 46, was most recently goalkeeping coach for the Ottawa Fury. Prior to that, he spent 13 years in the Montreal Impact organization. The Belgian-born, Morocco-raised Canadian citizen has also worked with goalkeepers throughout Canada and Quebec, and himself played for the Morocco national team at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
The trio have worked across six different countries, and between the three they are able to communicate in six different languages, including: Arabic, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
“Vanni, Phillip, and Youssef are all passionate teachers of the game,” said head coach Marc Dos Santos in a team statement. “They bring diverse experience, dynamic thinking, and a clear understanding of the methodology that we will be implementing in our training and preparation.”
