I also have positive views of Payne. They stopped around the second year of the Rongen era, came back for a little while between MLS Cup '04 and Supporters' Shield '07. but faded back to non existence between '08 and today. The time is right for him to go.
True enough. But other teams have weathered salary caps cuts, and MLS single entity. And with the advent of the designated player, there's not a lot of excuses for teams to be terrible year in and year out. We haven't really done a good job at all with DPs, this year being no exception.
Yes they have, and with cycles of up-downness themselves. DC United's cycles (and the highs and lows) just "appear" so much more extreme (especially to the fans who were with the club since day 1 or before) given the club's incredible success that was attained in the 90s. agreed. and United still made the 2012 post-season and the EC finals. but it is also very fair to note that many teams in MLS "haven't really done a good job at all with DPs" -- that's a loaded metric to think that DPs should/must equate to "on-field success" or will somehow give teams the upper hand in working to ride an "up" period of success while other teams in the league (also with access to DP slots) will somehow be within their own "down" portions of a cycle. but overall, the DP discussion (and analysis) is a bit of a different (and time-limited) point, as it does complicate the simple "up-down-up-down..." analysis that could be (best) applied to United (or any team) within MLS. The DP initiative wasn't even launched by MLS until United had pretty much gone through the initial ('96-'06) "up-down-up" portion of their natural/likely cycles and was well on their way through the 2007-2011 doldrums as well (even if they had an ownership structure that could have allowed them to sign "the best" DPs available in the early portion of the last 5 years).
Completely agreed. Especially with that last line. and it is not at all shocking that fans like their owners and FO executives when their team is winning, and are less fond of those same people who control/run the team when that team is not winning. Again, it will be interesting to see what is next for United (and who steps into a very big empty seat in the FO right now), and what is next for TFC with Payne as their President/GM. http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2012/11/28/new-tfc-boss-payne-only-job-i-wouldve-left-dc
I will agree that as a club name, "DC United" is so much better than "Washington Whips" and "Washington Darts". But, and as great a name as "DC United" is, it is only slightly better than "Washington Diplomats" -- which was also a very solid name for a soccer club (and perhaps should be again at some point). Does NoVa's upcoming new NASL team have a brand/name yet?
I'm not going to defend Payne. I'm not close to the team anymore to know how he is doing. But there is only one team in the league that has not had a losing season so DC's experience is not unique. (And until Seattle has a couple of losing seasons in a row, they should not be used as the model for anything - stadium size, supporter organization, salary cap, DP rules - in the league).
If you're (this is a rhetorical you, not you personally) going to credit him for the up cycles you have to charge him with responsibility for the down cycles. After the 2007 season they made major personnel changes to what had been one of the top teams in the league and they didn't recover for five years; surely Payne deserves some responsibility for that. If you're not going to give him credit or blame for the up or down cycles and say it's pretty much all on autopilot and all teams are going to have those cycles, then why is TFC even bringing him in? They could have just kept doing what they were doing and eventually they'd hit an up cycle. The teams seem to feel that the guy running the team has an effect on the team's on-field performance. I'd argue that in a salary-capped league, the success or failure of the team is in fact highly dependent on the shrewdness of the front office staff (and coach). Most teams have up and down cycles because most of the guys running teams are roughly average relative to the league, and the guys who prove themselves to be below average get fired. Payne, too, proved himself to be roughly average over the long run, but he'd already been branded a genius due to the team's early success.
In a league where it is harder to miss the playoffs than make them, DC United has missed the playoffs 8 of the last 13 years. During that time, the common denominator was Kevin Payne. In fairness, during that 13 year span the team won MLS Cup and the US Open Cup once each and the Supporters' Shield twice. So even in a bad stretch they still bagged more trophies than most MLS teams have ever won. That's part of the Payne Enigma.
For an additional (or another kind of) fairness, one would not limit an analysis of "the common denominator ... Kevin Payne" to just the most-recent 13-year span of DCU's history. Overall, DCU is closer to 50% as a playoff-participant (if that is one's metric for "success"), and the full DC United history encompasses the full up-down-up-down cycles. The 13-year analysis (ignoring the first 4 years, the big "up") just looks at the "down-up-down" portions of Payne's final years with DC.
While Payne deserves credit for a lot of United's early success, most of it was due to Bruce Arena and geographic demographics. First off, Bruce was right down the road in Charlottesville. Hiring someone who was seen as local and at the time was the best amateur coach available was pretty obvious. I mean, if Arena's dynasty was someplace much further away and there wasn't a top local coach available, would Payne have looked to hire him? (And would Arena have left?) I somehow doubt it. Now, to Payne's credit, Arena made it hard to hire him. He said he put up, in his words "a lot of hurdles" for him to take the job and Payne cleared all of them. These included having a top class training facility - something few other MLS teams had in the early days, paying Bob Bradley enough to leave Princeton to be an assistant coach - at the time he was the highest paid assistant in MLS - and making sure his former players, Harkes and Agoos, were assigned to DC United. (The MetroStars and Dallas wanted them because they were hometown boys.) So, Payne deserves credit for making sure Arena's demands were met but the it was the demands themselves that helped the team have their success and those demands were Arena's. Then there's the demographics. The DC area has huge Bolivian and Salvadorean populations and at the time, as we all remember, MLS based a lot of its marketing around catering to ethnic populations with players from those areas. It's not like Kevin Payne went out and discovered Marco Etcheverry and wanted him because he was a great playmaker. He's a great playmaker who happened to be from a country that had a lot of its ex-pats living in this area. If DC doesn't have a large Bolivian and Salvadorean population, odds are Marco Etcheverry and Raul Diaz Arce don't begin their MLS careers in DC and without them, odds are DCU doesn't win the first two MLS Cups. So, circumstance worked well in Payne's favor. Again, he did things needed to take advantage of said circumstance and for that he deserves full credit. Having the stones to hire a college coach - an outspoken, unpopular one (in the coaching community) - is not something to sneeze at, nor is Payne sticking with Arena early in the first season when United staggered out of the gate. He was willing to let things unfold and that's something that TFC fans should take to heart. With the exception of Ray Hudson (2 years) and Curt Onalfo (half a year), Payne has given his head coaches at least 3 years to sink or swim. For TFC, which has gone thru about a coach a year, having that kind of patience in charge of hiring and firing the coach will likely be one of the best things that ever happened to it.
17 goals in 26 appearances is bad value in what world? 0.65 goals per game. It's better than Wondolowski's strike rate (0.62)...
It's not necessarily Koevermans's performance. It's the number of games he's played. 26 games in 1.5 seasons is a bit low. You'd like a DP to be closer to 40 games in that time or more. Of course it's not Danny's fault he got hurt. That's just the drawback of the DP rule. You put all your eggs in 2-3 baskets and if they get hurt, there's not enough depth to make up for it. In a way it's just a matter of rolling the dice. It can backfire no matter how good that player is
The GTA and TFC Academy has no problem developing a lot of good players, moreso TFC management has simply been idiotic beyond that, including HGP integration.
You poor bastard. Well the good news for you is in his first year wRongen will lead the team to it's best record ever. Subsequent campaigns will not have similar returns.
One of Kevin's biggest failings is his undying loyalty to Dave Kasper, a man who I once said should drink a bottle of Clorox for his f*ckups, and it was said in earnest.
According to Goff's tweet, Stephen Zack has been fired too. Can't say that I'm surprised, but I was hoping Zack would have gotten Payne's former job. D.C. United shake-up continues: executive VP Stephen Zack, with the club since start, has been let go. #dcu #mls
DC follows that with a sweeping housekeeping on the business side. Steven Goff @SoccerInsider CFO Michael Williamson, VP Doug Hicks will run business side of D.C. United. New investors made changes b/c team "hemorrhaging $$" #dcu #mls Expand Reply Retweet Favorite 2hSteven Goff @SoccerInsider "Major restructuring" at D.C. United. VP Stephen Zack, ticket boss Fred Matthes (original employees) out. Marketing-media hit. #dcu#mls Expand
I thought Payne needed to go. I didn't think the entire front office needed to go. I certainly am NOT happy about this. A lot of the guys who were fired have been around since 1995. Not a good way to treat loyal employees who have dedicated their careers to this team.
As short as this offseason is, and with as active as it looks early, I'd sure want to have someone in place ASAP to oversee everything from DC's perspective.
... bump ... I think this should have a wider audience. We've discussed it a bit on the DCU board. We know Payne too well. And even we're taken aback by the accusations. (That discussion starts here.) The most notable rumors beyond all the old DCU matters concerns Payne's hiring at TFC. The big charge is that somebody somewhere (in MLS maybe) "engineered" his placement at TFC. Payne's sudden hiring actually took place well before all the candidates had even been interviewed. Peter Wilt, for instance, was schedule to be interviewed the day after Payne was hired. But then somebody somewhere intervened and "thrust" Payne upon TFC. It's all really crazy stuff. Go listen to it. It's just nuts. http://nasn.tv/2013/the-big-question-episode-14/