Payne may not arrive at TFC until 11/28, but there's nothing to say he hasn't been involved and giving guidance to his new employer and club colleagues (and not doing much of anything for his previous bosses in DC) for the last few days/weeks. The resignation/hiring announcements concerning Kevin Payne are just that, announcements. The wheels of Payne's FO club reassignment within MLS have likely been in motion for a while, and it makes sense that Cochrane (and TFC) could be operating this week (or the earlier portion of their off-season) with Payne's input and blessing.
Hardly! TFC can have Kevin Jong Il. He was ahead of his time once, but not in the last 12 years. He got 1996 right: no stupid names, good uniforms, a great coach. But after that he got a lot of things wrong -- or more precisely, having been right once under one set of circumstances, he was unable to adapt to new and changing circumstances. The team didn't evolve with the times. Then there's the whole stadium issue. Maybe KP will out-perform my expectations with TFC. But the more I think about this, the more I believe that the apparent happiness I'm seeing from TFC fans is testament to the depth of their old FO's incompetence, than it should be testament to the competence of Kevin Payne. He looks like an improvement not because he's so great, but because the old guys were so bad. Honestly, I'm kind of shocked TFC picked him up. All that said, I'm happy to be among those ardent United supporters who Payne once derisively called "internet nuts".
live stream of TFC's introduction of Payne, and he's taking questions (or just rambling on his own) now: http://www.torontofc.ca/live
Folks here are already talking him up as "Payne's guy" and the next head coach. There is a deep, DEEP, ignorance of MLS in T.O.
Same here. I was really pissed off the first time he called us internet nuts, but now I'm pretty damned proud to have been one of them. Payne's sell by date was circa 2001, and he's gotten a lot worse since then. And while I know that the DC government and Adrian Fenty screwed us over in terms of the stadium deal at Poplar Point, Payne's reaction to try something in PG County at Morgan Blvd was a mess, and then his threats to go to Baltimore, Philadelphia or St Louis were just total bullshit. I'm glad he got fired, and it's about damned time. I also think the front office is a gigantic mess, and 99% of that is because he was surrounded by sycophants who were too afraid to tell him when he was doing something stupid. Good riddance. TFC can have him with this particular Internet nut's blessing. By the way what year did we hire the plane to fly over the stadium with the "IT'S THE COACH, STUPID" banner? Was that 2001 (reference of course was to the "it's the economy, stupid" political campaign. Did you contribute to that? I think I dropped about 50 bucks.
Okay, DC fans, there seems to be a lot of animosity directed towards Payne. That being said... is he really worse than whatever TFC had on the go this season? Is he so worthless that you truly believe he can't bring anything to the table for Toronto? Just curious. As a fairly new MLS fan (I certainly wasn't around in his "glory days") I know very little about this guys career. But I do no how bad TFC needs SOMEONE with a vision to take on the job Payne has. Do you honestly believe he has no redeeming qualities, and he'll do more harm than good? Toronto strikes me as not having much further to fall. And with that in mind, someone with some track record for success, even if the success wasn't particularly recent, will likely at least be able to get the ball rolling and make some sort of positive change. To me, at the very least, this suggests MLSE is prepared to try and make some big moves. And that's good news.
One of the most oft-mentioned issues DC fans seem to have with Kevin Payne (in this thread, at least) is that he couldn't get a stadium deal done. That's not a problem in Toronto.
There's nothing so wrong with Kevin Payne that it can't be fixed by Kevin Payne. That's what Kevin Payne thinks, anyway ... I stand by what I implied earlier, which was, in effect: 1. He was better at MLS 1.0 than anybody else. 2. But he never brought DC United into the era of MLS 2.0. 3. We're now onto MLS 3.0 and Payne's DC United is still basically a 1.0 team. TFC's situation is different than DCU's. So TFC's mileage may vary. Still, Kevin Payne is who he is -- it's just that, for better or worse, he is now who he is with TFC. But - fair or not - the sense was always that the stadium woes were a symptom of Kevin Payne's deficiencies. In other words, it wasn't just that the stadium situation sucks so let's blame Payne. It was more an underlying sense that perhaps the stadium situation sucks because of Kevin Payne (at least in part). There are long discussions about this dating back years on the DCU board if you really care. Like this old gem: https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/threads/fire-payne-and-kasper.822774/
Yeah, but he had a lot of other problems too. Like acting as if he knew as much about soccer tactics and coaching as Bruce Arena, Thomas Rongen, Ray Hudson and Piotr Nowak. OK, maybe Hudson, but I'm not giving him the others. Also, I really hated him for his flip flop on Olsen when Onalfo was fired. At first Olsen was just a interim to take over the remainder of the (IIRC) 2010 season, and that that he wasn't good enough to be the actual head coach for 2011. So DCU put out feelers for a bunch of coaches, not a single one said "why yes, I'd love to go work for that dysfunctional organization" and suddenly, Payne tells everyone that Olsen is the permanent coach, which was what he planned to do all along. He's a lying sack of shit, at least IMO.
5 years without playoffs. 0% success rate in signing DPs. Steadily declining attendances for years. There's many more problems than just the stadium. DC United has been a miserable club since around 2007 until about halfway through this past season ...
JeremyEritrea's and Knaves's views on Payne are nowhere near universally held among DCU supporters. They are a very vocal minority. Even among many of those who have taken issue with some of KP's actions there is much respect for what he's done for the club. Count me among those who think KP did, on balance, a tremendous job for United, though I do think the time for new blood had come. He'll be very good for TFC. He'll bring stability, deep knowledge of and contacts within MLS, and he'll make your supporters groups a priority. For a more balance view on KP from a DCU perpective see this blog post: http://www.blackandredunited.com/2012/11/27/3700240/kevin-payne-leaves-dc-united-toronto-fc
I completely respect what he did for the club, from 1995 through 2000 or 2001. After that, not so much. I have no idea how old you are, but I'm 50, and I've been following this team since before they started. As far as your balanced view, IMO that's pure propaganda.
The problem with "on balance" evaluations of KP is that the good stuff dates pretty much entirely from years that begin with 19. I actually think I'm pretty fair to KP. I just refuse to candy-coat the last decade or so. Yeah, no kidding. That was some seriously crazy brown-nosing going on there. "I trust Kevin Payne" -- wow! Was that written by KP's mom or something? Damn ... (But you actually could make a very good argument to include KP in the Hall of Tradition for what he did in United's early years. See! I'm fair!)
I'm 49, and also followed them since before the first kick (was at the first home game against the Galaxy). I also followed the NASL's Washington Diplomats (and the Cosmos before that as a kid living in NYC). To each his own, of course, but that's not my balanced view; it's a balanced view. It's not shared by all, but it is by many.
Balanced? It read like the writer did CTRL+H on a KCNA story after Kim Jong Il's death. No mention, for example, of turning the Supporters' Shield winners of 2006 and 2007 into a team that missed the playoffs four years in a row, and the accompanying 30% drop in attendance.
Well, certainly a mix of opinions. I appreciate the responses. I'll have to wait a few years before forming my own view.
And that's the really interesting thing with Payne being given a clean/fresh start at TFC, where he is presented with basically the opposite scenario. and it will be interesting to see what he can do with that club in the next 3, 5 or 10 years (or however long he keeps his new gig).
Doesn't MLS's structure guarantee up and down cycles, though? I see DCU as being the trendsetter since they have gone through 2 cycles already (up, down, up, down, now going up). Can you really attribute that behavior to Payne?
http://www.socceramerica.com/article/49375/paynes-exit-100-percent-my-doing.html Do we believe it was 100% his own choice to leave? I'm not sure I buy it.
I've been following them since the beginning myself, and I can remember the debate on what the name should have been (although, I admit, I can't remember the choices - there were three that began with "Washington" and three that began with "DC"). Like I said, I thought he did a great job in the beginning, and from 1995 (before the league started) through 2000 or 2001, I think he ran the best front office in MLS. When I said "your balanced view" I meant the one you presented to this thread. If you're going to cite it as an example of a balanced view, I'm going to assume that you agree with it. And I stand by what I said - it was a propaganda piece. I couldn't resist posting a response on the page. Here it is: In addition to Williams, Agoos, Etcheverry, Pope, Olsen, Moreno, Gomez, Eskandarian, and Luciano, let's not forget some of the other guys who came on board in the "post dynasty" years of the late 1990s. How about Scott Vermillion, Mark Watson, Craig Ziade, Lazo Alavanja, Galin Ivanov, Facundo Erpen, Steve Guppy, the "Gonzalo brothers" (Peralta and Martinez), Pat Carroll (hey, if his brother was good, he must be good too!), Micah Cooks (ditto on the brother thing), Greg Vanney, the return of Raul Diaz Arce, Devin Barclay, Lucio Filomeno, Franco Niell, Henry Zambrano, David Stokes, Ivan McKinley, the return of Richie Williams, keeping Etcheverry around past 2001, the return of Christian Gomez, Kevin Ara, Ange N'Sulu, Quavas Kirk, Jay Nolly (we got rid of Rimando and Adu for him!) and a whole lot of others?Oh, and you might want to do a fact check. You stated that:"The D.C. United Hall of Tradition is becoming a bit crowded. The names of the players that hang on the wall behind the north goal at RFK Stadium can be pretty easily separated into two tiers. Players like Richie Williams and Jeff Agoos certainly hold their places in United history and we may even have one or two fewer stars on our jerseys right now without them."But that doesn't mean that their names necessarily should be mentioned next to those of Marco Etcheverry, Eddie Pope, Ben Olsen, and Jaime Moreno. Names like Williams and Agoos deserve to be on that wall at RFK Stadium. Names like Etcheverry and Moreno deserve to be written on the sign that will proclaim the name of our soccer specific stadium."However, Moreno's name is not on the wall, at least not yet. Click for the official listI agree that Agoos, Etcheverry, Pope, Olsen and two guys you didn't mention (Raul Diaz Arce and John Harkes) deserve to have their names on the wall, and I have no doubt Jaime Moreno will be there at some point in the future.DC United from 1996 through 1999 was arguably one of the best teams in the Western Hemisphere, and yes, that happened when Kevin Payne was running things. But you can't simply dismiss how horrible the team was from 2000 through 2003, and the five year drought from 2007 through this year. Those happened when Payne was in charge too.Full points for the name, the uniform, Bruce Arena, Thomas Rongen's first year, Piotr Nowak, and eventually making Olsen the non-interim coach.But let's not forget that Payne also gave us Ray Hudson, Curt Onalfo, and told us all that Olsen was only a caretaker manager until the end of the 2010 season, and only made him official in 2011 when no other coaches expressed interested working for the team. Also, let's not forget the fact that Payne presided over TWO stadium debacles, and to date we are still stuck in aging RFK.So yeah, Payne was great. From 1995 through 2000 or 2001. But after that, not so much. And if the rumors are true, Erick Thohir and Jason Levien were both shocked by the incompetence of the front office once they started looking at how the team was being run. I wish the best for Kevin Payne in his future MLS career, but to write an article as if his entire career at DC United occurred before the team turned into one of the worst in the league (2004 - 2007 and 2012 being notable exceptions) is disingenuous and revisionist. And how the hell did you leave out Harkes and Diaz Arce off your list of the early DC United legends on the "Hall of Tradition?"`
Is this some sort of stock market trading strategy? I can attribute the team sucking from 2000-2004 and from 2007-2011 to Payne. YMMV. I have no doubt that Payne was fired. He's just saying the right words that you're supposed to say when upper management decides to make a change.
"DC United" is so much better than "Washington Diplomats," "Washington Whips," and "Washington Darts" (the three teams that preceded DCU). I also can't remember other names that were considered for the MLS side. I probably made my argument wrong. Rather than present that blog post as a balanced view of Payne (it's clearly all pro-Payne) I should have simply said there are also positive views from the DCU supporters and here's an example of that. Your views and Knave's would have been balanced by theirs. You make some good points, but in the end I believe that Payne will be energized by a new challenge and do some good things for TFC.
And everyone's mileage and set of opinions/analysis will vary, a lot. The down years for United (when the DC franchised "sucked," or was perhaps more realistically just primarily dealing with losing players like John Harkes & Eddie Pope and Ryan Nelsen & Brian Carroll to the cycles of MLS's single-entitiness and salary structure limitations), can be attributed more to "MLS's structure (that basically) guarantees up and down cycles" than it can to the the failings (or strengths) of any individual team president or FO executive, imo.