Allan Quatermain
22 Dec 2003, 11:56 AM
I've been reading these boards with great amusement. People are getting very passionate. And opinionated.
Let's see. We need someone who has experience. No question about that.
In fact, we need someone with PROFESSSIONAL coaching experience. That's a given.
And we need someone who's a proven winner.
So I've got it figured out. Let's go after -- drumroll, please -- Carlos Alberto Parreira.
Yes! Carlos Albert Parreira!
He won the World Cup! He won a championship in the Brazilian league! He'd be perfect!
Oh, wait a minute. He also flamed out of MLS, too.
Hmmm, I guess what it demonstrates is that none of us really has any sort of idea what attributes are necessary for a successful coach. Everyone talks about so-and-so lacking coaching experience, or so-and-so only having coached in college.
But then we see guys like Parreira and Queiroz -- with as much experience as you could possibly want -- come to MLS, and they don't do any better than Ivo Wortman or Walter Zenga...while a guy like Bruce Arena -- who'd never coached anywhere but college -- turns out to have a magic touch. Then look at Frankie Yallop. His only previous coaching experience appeared to be serving as the missing ingredient that turned DCU's fortunes around in the wrong direction. And then he wins two out of three championships as a head coach. Go figure. There's no rational explanation for it. (Well, there might be, and that explanation is Landon Donovan. But it is not an explanation that reflects on his coaching aptitude).
So who knows? I know I don't. And I am guessing most everybody else is the same. Yet they insist on wasting a lot of breath on this topic with way too much certainty about what does or does not make a good coach.
Admit it people. You have no idea whether Nowak would be any good or not, or Osorio. Or Ellinger. Or Parreira.
My suspicion is that in about 99 percent of cases, the coach is irrelevant to the success of the team. There are a miniscule number of instances where who the coach is somehow, inexplicably seems to have a correlating positive effect on whoever he coaches. Bruce Arena is one. Everywhere he has coached, his teams have excelled. It is particularly the case with regard to the MNT, which he clearly transformed and did much better that his imediate predecessor while using (roughly) the same pool of players. Another candidate might be Alex Ferguson. Sure, it's easy to win at ManU, but he also inexplicably won at Aberdeen.
For the most part, I am guessing, the coach is either irrelevant -- and that is so even for emininently successful teams. Now, it might go the other way too. Sometimes he may have a bad effect on the team. But the point is that in these cases, whether the coach has a discernible effect one way or the other likely has absolutely nothing to do with whether he has has any previous professional head coaching experience.
MLS has used several coaches with exactly that -- previous profesional head coaching experience. And it hasn't mattered a whit.
AQ
Let's see. We need someone who has experience. No question about that.
In fact, we need someone with PROFESSSIONAL coaching experience. That's a given.
And we need someone who's a proven winner.
So I've got it figured out. Let's go after -- drumroll, please -- Carlos Alberto Parreira.
Yes! Carlos Albert Parreira!
He won the World Cup! He won a championship in the Brazilian league! He'd be perfect!
Oh, wait a minute. He also flamed out of MLS, too.
Hmmm, I guess what it demonstrates is that none of us really has any sort of idea what attributes are necessary for a successful coach. Everyone talks about so-and-so lacking coaching experience, or so-and-so only having coached in college.
But then we see guys like Parreira and Queiroz -- with as much experience as you could possibly want -- come to MLS, and they don't do any better than Ivo Wortman or Walter Zenga...while a guy like Bruce Arena -- who'd never coached anywhere but college -- turns out to have a magic touch. Then look at Frankie Yallop. His only previous coaching experience appeared to be serving as the missing ingredient that turned DCU's fortunes around in the wrong direction. And then he wins two out of three championships as a head coach. Go figure. There's no rational explanation for it. (Well, there might be, and that explanation is Landon Donovan. But it is not an explanation that reflects on his coaching aptitude).
So who knows? I know I don't. And I am guessing most everybody else is the same. Yet they insist on wasting a lot of breath on this topic with way too much certainty about what does or does not make a good coach.
Admit it people. You have no idea whether Nowak would be any good or not, or Osorio. Or Ellinger. Or Parreira.
My suspicion is that in about 99 percent of cases, the coach is irrelevant to the success of the team. There are a miniscule number of instances where who the coach is somehow, inexplicably seems to have a correlating positive effect on whoever he coaches. Bruce Arena is one. Everywhere he has coached, his teams have excelled. It is particularly the case with regard to the MNT, which he clearly transformed and did much better that his imediate predecessor while using (roughly) the same pool of players. Another candidate might be Alex Ferguson. Sure, it's easy to win at ManU, but he also inexplicably won at Aberdeen.
For the most part, I am guessing, the coach is either irrelevant -- and that is so even for emininently successful teams. Now, it might go the other way too. Sometimes he may have a bad effect on the team. But the point is that in these cases, whether the coach has a discernible effect one way or the other likely has absolutely nothing to do with whether he has has any previous professional head coaching experience.
MLS has used several coaches with exactly that -- previous profesional head coaching experience. And it hasn't mattered a whit.
AQ