Union Presser 6/13: Nowak Out as Head Coach

Some of my fellow fans have taken a dislike to him, but I don't agree. If you fire a coach too soon, you end up like Toronto. And judging him by the number of DPs he does or does not sign is simplistic.

That would just be so nice for MLS to lose this douche.

He may be a douche, but he's a douche who spearheaded two MLS SSS getting built.

Maybe Chivas USA, DC United, New England Revolution, Seattle Sounders or Vancouver Whitecaps should hire him.

So is Hackworth the permanent guy or just as interim. I have a hard time imagining Philly can't do better as his stints as head coach at South Florida and the US U17s were underwhelming, to be polite.

Hackworth has a gift for being in the right place at the right time and falling upward as a result. He got hired as a U17 assistant coach because he happened to be a college head coach near Bradenton. Then John Ellinger leaves for MLS and Hackworth slides into the 17s for a couple cycles.

He gets fired from that and Bob Bradley bails him out with a job as a US assistant even though he had never coached professionally and never played above the lower division level. With the senior team, he serves alongside Peter Nowak, who brings him along when he gets hired at Philly and now he's Philly's head coach after Nowak gets canned.

It just seems like he gets promoted because he's there but never seems to have done much to warrant the promotion and once he gets it, he never does much to distinguish himself.

So, again, I'll be surprised - and disappointed -if the Union don't try and find someone a little more accomplished.

Nowak's coaching genius is as a short term fixer and turnaround artist.

That's what he did in DC. And that's what he did at first in Philly: he got a new team that was nothing up to something.

But he's a terrible long term coach. His teams disintegrate if he sticks around too long. He should come in for two years, build things up and then turn it over to someone else for the long haul.

You know who could use his short term services? Toronto.

At first blush, I would agree.

Digging into it though...a) hasn't Toronto already gone through enough short terms of service with their head coaches? and b) do you really want to put Toronto fans, who already went through Trader Mo, through Trader Pete? I think those guys have already had their souls trampled on enough by their soccer club; waiting for the inevitable "MLSE waits too long to pull the trigger on canning Nowak, meanwhile the good half of the team has already been sent packing to other MLS teams for peanuts" course of action seems beyond cruel.

He was also Technical Director of the Development Academy for a while. It's amazing that a rather ordinary college coach was able to parlay a geographic coincidence into all this.

Brought over from the Winter thread and updated. We now have 7 of 19 head coaches in their first season.

Current head coaches by tenure. I'll count partials as a season.

Houston Dynamo - Dominic Kinnear (hired by San Jose as head coach in January, 2004. Moved to Houston in January, 2006) - 9th season overall, 7th with Houston.
Real Salt Lake - Jason Kreis (May 2007) - 6th season
San Jose Earthquakes - Frank Yallop (current tenure, November 2007) - 5th season, (8th season overall with San Jose)
FC Dallas - Schellas Hyndman (June 2008) - 5th season
LA Galaxy - Bruce Arena (August, 2008) - 5th season
Seattle Sounders - Sigi Schmid (December 2008) - 4th season
Columbus Crew - Robert Warzycha (current tenure, December, 2008) - 4th season
Sporting Kansas City - Peter Vermes (August 2009) 4th season
New York Red Bulls - Hans Backe (January, 2010) - 3rd season
DC United - Ben Olsen (August, 2010) - 3rd season
Portland Timbers - John Spencer (August 2010) - 2nd season
Chivas USA - Robin Fraser (January 2011) - 2nd season
Montreal Impact - Jesse Marsch (August, 2011) - 1st season
New England Revolution - Jay Heaps (November, 2011) - 1st season
Chicago Fire - Frank Klopas (November, 2011) - 1st season
Vancouver Whitecaps - Martin Rennie (November 2011) - 1st season
Colorado Rapids - Oscar Pareja (January 2012) 1st season
Toronto FC - Paul Mariner (June 2012) - 1st season
Philadelphia Union - John Hackworth (June 2012) - 1st season

This is exactly correct. But at the same time, its totally exasperating how he could build up a talented, successful team and so quickly turn it dog crap fairy dust.

That's the thing, some people are great at building or creating but aren't any good at managing and maintaining.

Happens all the time to the managers in English football.

He'd probably drive a wedge between himself and the coach/manager then.........

If you're counting partials as a season then Klopas is in his second. He took over as head coach after Carlos de los Cobos was fired in May 2011.

why do some coaches have a self-destructive personality?? -- they start to get success in a team and then they develop ways to undermine that success by ruining the team chemistry by trading players who are seen as leaders and make strong connections to the supporters group-- peter nowak falls into this category! i suffer with the Union fans and hope for better results... except when playing vancouver

And it only took him 60-90 days to do it each time!

Are you Nick's friend? Or a worker of the Union?

Nicky boy has been known to "spy" on big soccer.

First my missed informed friend: The Owners of Philly had to produce a SSS in order to enter the league. Yes He had something to do with getting it done but He was hardly the visionary.

Second the MetroStars stadium deal was DEAD. Harrison killed the deal when the MetroStars owner did not want to pay a certain amount to get the deal going.

When Red Bull purcashed the team they put up the cash, And Nicky boy was long gone.... It's Red Bull Arena not MetroStars stadium, the MetroStars and all of their staff was shown the door a week after RB took over.

The Whitecaps are a expansion team
DC United has been Kevin Payne's baby for ever.
NE Revoultion. Don't need a stadium since they play for free their since its the same owner.
Seattle Sounders: Do you really think the Sounders should fire their GM? A team drawing 40000 fans per game? The Sounders have sold out their stadium by themselves.

Nick next time don't let the interns reply and prepare the resume....

Nowak had already in DC big problems with Adu.

Do you know that when in 2010 they were building new expansion team in Phil. there was a possibility of MLS players strike to the last moment before the sesson started. And no foreign player would sign with a league that may have a players strike. So in 2010 Union could not sign any foreign players and had only players who were rejected by other teams and a rookies from college plus Califf who had some remote experiance in Galaxy as a starter. Le Toux in Seattle scored only one goal in entire seasson bifore he came to Union. This was an extremely weak personel.

Nowak is now suing the Union over "wrongful termination and unpaid severance money."

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/thegoalkeeper/163507486.html

Long, hilarious article which details why Nowak feels he legally deserves more money from the Union -- he made around $950,000 while working for them -- and why Philadelphia fired him in the first place ("inappropriate hazing," "demonstrating gross negligence," etc.).