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The new coach will continue to have autonomy over player acquisition, under the budget set by senior management, said Lenarduzzi.

“I honestly think it will always be the coach who will make that final decision. If we can add personnel to the recruitment side, that will provide additional support that we haven’t had up to now,” he said. “We’ve been a club that has relied on the network of agents that we have out there. And that is something that will continue.”

The team has had success with this model — Yordy Reyna and Kendall Waston have evolved into some of the best players in MLS — but there have been some misses. Efrain Juarez hasn’t panned out, and neither Anthony Blondell nor Bernie Ibini offered much in production. But Lenarduzzi was quick to point out that record of spotty player acquisition isn’t a localized phenomenon. The same could be said of any team in any league around the world.

But there appears to be a need for a supervisory role. For example, the coaching staff hadn’t planned on bringing Brek Shea back for this season. But by playing in a playoff game last year, it triggered an automatic player-option year. The coaching staff reportedly mitigated his minutes during the season, but the decision was made somewhere in the team’s murky bureaucratic depths to play him against Seattle, activating the clause.

It meant that Shea, the second-highest-paid player on the team at $745,000, spent most of 2018 on the bench, getting 11 starts among 24 appearances (1,211 minutes) while putting up three goals and two assists. He wasn’t part of the off-season overhaul that saw 23 players depart from a team that faded down the regular-season stretch, finishing third in the conference before falling in the semifinals to Seattle. The Caps did win their first playoff game last season, however, beating San Jose 5-0 in the knockout round.