Current's Andonovski moves into new role, team embarks on search for head coach

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Current will embark on a search for a head coach as current coach Vlatko Andonovski shifts focus to his role as sporting director for the National Women's Soccer League club.

Andonovski, who has served in both roles for the team, will continue as coach until a successor is named, the Current announced Friday.

The Current also said that Ryan Dell, the head of soccer operations, has been promoted to general manager. The moves were part of a “long-planned” staffing model with separate individuals holding those three key positions.

“To continue the club’s upward and global trajectory, we must put in place an organizational structure that reflects the growth of what we’re doing within the KC Current ecosystem and beyond," Current co-owners Angie and Chris Long said in a statement. "These changes will allow us to further carry out our mission of staying at the forefront of women’s soccer globally.”

This past season, Andonovski's second as coach, the Current set NWSL regular-season records for points (65), wins (21), home wins (11), road wins (10), shutouts (16) and fewest goals conceded (13).

Gotham FC eliminated Kansas City from the NWSL playoffs last weekend with a 2-1 quarterfinal victory.

“It’s vital to move into this role to keep growing this club with the aim of being a perennial contender on the global stage and a top developer of talent," Andonovski said. “From world-class soccer to the first stadium in the world purpose-built for a women’s team to the best fans in the country, I am proud of what has been built here in the city that means so much to me.”

Andonovski served as the coach of the U.S. women's national team for four years from 2019-23.

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FILE - FC Kansas City head coach Vlatko Andonovski watches from the sideline before the NWSL soccer championship match in Portland, Ore. on Oct. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer, File)

BERLIN (AP) — Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96.

Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich.

Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume “Theory of Communicative Action.”

He was born with a cleft palate that required repeated operations as a child, an experience that helped inform his later thinking about language.

Habermas said he had experienced the importance of spoken language as “a layer of commonality without which we as individuals cannot exist” and recalled struggling to make himself understood. He also spoke of the “superiority of the written word” and said that “the written form conceals the flaws of the oral.”

FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2006 photo German philosopher Juergen Habermas is seen in Koenigswinter near Bonn, Germany. (AP Photo/Hermann J. Knippertz, File)