MENLO PARK — Jesse Fioranelli hardly had a moment to settle in as the Earthquakes’ new general manager after working for AS Roma. The Swiss-born soccer executive has had less than two months to upgrade the team as well as find a place to live for his wife and their 12-year-old son.

He has signed new players while also getting to know everyone within the team, including youth academy coaches. The family chose to move to Menlo Park, the Peninsula town where Quakes president Dave Kaval lives.

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Fioranelli recently met with the Bay Area News Group at Cafe Borrone, Menlo’s popular Italian-style cafe to talk about the team, his transition and his expectations. Here’s an edited version of the conversation:

Question: I still can’t believe you would leave Rome and Serie A for Major League Soccer.

Answer: MLS has a lot to offer. You have to be aware one of the great things about American sports, which everybody kind of envies, is the work ethic and the determination and the type of team spirit that you feel. These are not cliches. In some cultures, you have a much more individualist approach. This is one very important aspect in our search for talent. They have to fit into the team. There is not one single player who is not aware what he is going to be finding here.

It’s not an emerging league anymore. It is a promising opportunity to have a solid foundation. The single-entity system plays a big role in this because everybody has a stake in the product football. Many clubs in Europe would envy this type of organization. There is more than just curiosity, there is interest.

Q: Has anything surprised you after almost two months?

A: What I couldn’t have imagined is that the league and the club are so well prepared in several regards. The organization, the team spirit I feel inside the office. It is a very young team of people in the office. I was surprised because I was not used to that. That type of team spirit I have never felt before.

It’s a very vibrant and pro-active way of wanting to address problems. In many parts of the world you have to have not just seniority to be given an opportunity, you have to be vetted and extra vetted. In Italy, if you’re not 45 or 50 you’re not eligible yet to be given the baton and take on the responsibility.

Q: One of the biggest questions going into the 2017 season is the status of coach Dominic Kinnear, a man you are just getting to know. How will you measure him?

A: I’d like to reaffirm what I am doing right now I’m really absorbing what is taking place in this organization. Seeing this team molded with new players who also have to adapt to a new situation. It’s my effort to create trust here. Trust and communication are the most important thing before anything comes.

Q: So you will take a lot of time before evaluating Dominic’s performance this year?

A: To be frank, now that I have gotten an understanding of this team and what we needed, we got into a position we know we have the possibility and qualities to make the playoffs. We’re training that way. We might not be as convincing in preseason games but that’s a matter of not having the whole team together.

It is certainly about being able to win games. But the most important thing is we send a message of being courageous, taking risks because we understand what the opportunity is and making sure we are not alone to get to the goal. Nobody wants to achieve anything else but the playoffs. I hope we can send that message that we are committed to it.

Q: What are your conversations with Dominic?

A: Tactical decisions are up to the coach. I respect that. I believe it’s not the coach who puts the players on the field. It is the players that put themselves on the field. It’s also about how much they understand. If you don’t have the right mindset then don’t come to San Jose because nobody is going to be flying in private jets while we are coming home from a road trip. That’s not the right place, that’s not our place. My place is different.

Q: The five new foreign players and two rookies are big unknowns right now. But it appears this is going to be a deep roster where it will be difficult to even make the 18-man unit for game days.

A: I’m confident the quality of players we have recruited is going to help us raise the bar. An athlete without competition has nothing to strive for. We do realize now it is probably the challenge we’re taking up is ourselves before we take it up with our opponents. That’s what I appreciated in people I worked with as they took up the challenges themselves and realized maybe the problems aren’t everywhere else. That might be with us and they are every day with us. So how can we improve? How can we try to engage other people with a difference of opinion? I cannot exclude a person and say we have been slacking.

Q: How are you juggling all of this: getting a playoff-caliber roster when setting a five-year agenda?

A: There were certain decisions we had to take and certain decisions we want to take. The ones we wanted to take we took with a gut feeling. I wanted to give myself three months’ time. We’ve been to Reno twice. We’ve been speaking to all of the youth coaches, and to all of the players. The players we have recruited, we have a pretty good gut feeling and for what we had at our disposal we did a pretty good job.

Right now we’re trying to carry more than one backup and that’s good because we’re just at the beginning and I hope this trip is going to be a long one with ups and downs.

Q: What do you expect from players?

A: Whether you’re 21 or 30 you have room to improve. I had the privilege to work with Miro Klose, the World Cup star. You should see his work ethic. He is a coach on the field among the players. Not trying to act more important than he is. It is part of his strong belief that by working on himself and also demanding from himself to having a different standard he pushes other ones to do the same. That’s what I want players to feel when they come to work with us. That they realize it is a huge opportunity to play with the San Jose Earthquakes.

Q: Are you going to miss the Roman lifestyle?

A: Yes, I will miss Rome. But I missed the United States when I was in Rome. That’s the funny thing about a person with the heritage and roots but not really a single place where they draw from.

My grandfather was head of biochemistry department at Johns Hopkins. (His grandfather was Malcolm Daniel Lane, renowned for his groundbreaking studies of the chemical processes within the human body that affect hunger, the feeling of fullness and obesity. He was head of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Department of Biological Chemistry from 1978 to 1997). He always said to be me America is a melting pot where people had an opportunity.