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As ӣ����Ƶ City SC president and general manager Diego Gigliani and sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel faced the media Thursday to talk about the departure of coach Olof Mellberg after just 15 MLS games as head coach, the focus wasn’t as much on the firing but on the hiring.

How did the team get it so wrong that just four months after the team began camp, the coach was fired after winning just two of his first 15 games?

“Lutz and I both take full responsibility for where we are,” Gigliani said. “We are clearly frustrated to be in this position, especially so shortly after Olof’s appointment. We are obviously reflecting on that recruitment process and the appointment of the head coach to see what we can learn so we can minimize the chances of this happening again.”

“We still believe that we have the tools to rescue the season,” said Pfannenstiel, “to play a good next part of the season. And I think that’s the most important part for us now to close that chapter but be reflective on what went wrong, but then also move forward.”

Mellberg was fired on Tuesday with a record of two wins, eight losses and five ties for 11 points, which puts City SC in 14th place in the 15-team Western Conference, 28th out of 30 overall, and was replaced by David Critchley, the head coach at City2. City SC has scored just 11 goals in those 15 games, tied for the lowest in the league, after scoring 18 goals in the final nine games of last season with essentially the same roster. (The team has already been shut out eight times this season.) In addition to being unsuccessful, the team has also been uninteresting.

“I think this is important that we know how we want to be organized as a club,” Pfannenstiel said, “that we know what our roots are, what our values are, how we want to play football and how we want to entertain the fans. I think entertaining fans is very important. We always were known for a team who were attacking. We were a high-pressing team, an entertaining team, a hardworking team, and I think this is what the people come to the stadium for and what they want to see. So that’s what we have to get back to.”

In a sport and league that is low on job security, Mellberg has the ninth-shortest term of any full-time MLS coach, the fourth-shortest of a coach not with an expansion team in its first season.

“We obviously first think about the process that we followed,” Gigliani said. “Was there anything that we missed in the process? I would say that I’ve been involved in many of these now, and I feel that it was one of the most thorough and longest processes I’ve been in to select a head coach. That is not to say that it is foolproof, as we can see now ... but we used a lot of data. We consulted a very large pool of candidates. We didn’t restrict ourselves. We had many, many conversations. We searched for references, but I’m sure that there was still something that we missed.

“A head coach is a head coach and it’s environment always, and you try to make the best decision based on what you’re able to see from a head coach, and that doesn’t always transport identically from one environment to the rest. A lot of the things that we saw in Olof are still true. ... Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to replicate that level of success here.”

Ultimately, what Gigliani and Pfannenstiel came back to was the team’s style of play. The team got away from the high-pressing style that Pfannenstiel has built the team for, and Mellberg didn’t get younger players experience.

“There was plenty of talks,” Pfannenstiel said, “there was plenty of data. We had workshops, and that was when we felt what we were looking for was pretty much well-communicated, and it was aligned that we wanted to play our City style, which we always said is nonnegotiable. That’s the way we want to play. We want to be front-foot defending. We want to be aggressive, want to be a pressing team. And unfortunately, we did not really see that that much once the season started.”

In an effort to improve a defense that allowed 17 goals in the final nine games last season, Mellberg went heavy on defense but at the expense of offense. City SC’s standard lineup included three center backs, which was what he thought he needed to do to win. Add in injuries, which knocked many of City SC’s top defensive players out of the lineup, and it made for a tough situation.

“The coach makes the final decision on match day who plays,” Pfannenstiel said, “and there are discussions before and after the game, how we want to play. But every coach wants to get the maximum results. And if the coach decides that the first 11 he picks or the style he wants to play in this moment, he does it to get wins, and that was the reason why Olof decided to select the way he selected.”

Gigliani and Pfannenstiel said the qualifications they’re looking for in a new coach would be much the same as they used in the search that netted Mellberg. MLS experience would be nice but isn’t essential.

As for choosing Critchley, Pfannenstiel pointed to the upcoming summer transfer window that opens on July 24 as an important one, and that’s one of the reasons they opted for him instead of technical director John Hackworth, who filled in last season when Bradley Carnell was fired.

“We have an important transfer window coming up,” Pfannenstiel said. “There is plenty of recruitment that has to be done. ... So there’s a lot of things to do when it comes to the technical part. So we work together hours and hours every day. So that’s my most important person on my side. The time he spends now with City2 is very temporary. Also, the time and effort he has to put in is much less than he would have to do with the first team. So this is why, for me, it’s not possible now to have Hack not with me in this moment in time.”