Jay Heaps to coach the Revs. Revs fans simultaneously laugh and cry as they brace themselves selves for more glorious route 1 soccer http://www.boston.com/sports/soccer/blog/2011/11/revolution_to_n.html[/QUOTE]
Wow... what has he been doing since retiring, just the announcing? He is the first former Duke Basketball player to coach an MLS team however.
If they replace Heaps in the booth with Ray Hudson, then this will all be worth it, regardless of their performance on the field.
Correlation is not causation. Kreis' success seems like it's been used to justify throwing anyone on the sideline regardless of their experience. In time I'd suspect Kreis will be the exception, not the rule.
Kreis had a long standing reputation as a player with a real soccer brain who coached from the field. I don't think Heaps had the reputation. (Neither did Olsen, but the jury is still out on Olsen's coaching prospects.)
Was Heaps an on the field leader who people thought had a good soccer mind, regardless of his questionable ability on the field?
We don't know that yet. Kreis' first year was horrible, but Salt Lake let him grow into the the job and into that team. Time will tell if Olsen and Fraser will do the same. My point was, just because he doesn't have coaching experience doesn't mean he'll fail. Doesn't mean he will be the next Kreis either. I'm not suggesting just throwing anyone on the sideline because Kreis did it, but the New England FO seem like they have the same mentality as DC. Give back to a player that was valuable to that club and knows the team and league inside and out. It's good to see some of the veterans from MLS get something in return. A European coach won't always correlate to success in MLS either.
I wish Heaps luck. The players are gonna find their way into the coaching ranks and the state of the game suggests that right now a few rungs are gonna be skipped. Probably with plenty of failures. As non-DCU fan it always seemed like Olsen was the clear leader on the field for DC. I guess he wasn't?
Heaps may very well be a decent coach. But I don't see any evidence that suggests he is a lock. Why then not start him as an assistant? Also, I think part of the issue is of how insular the Revs have been this off-season. After finishing with the worst record in the league, they've promoted their two front office employees and hired their announcer as the coach. Their organization is in shambles, so why just hire from within?
He was the energy or the spark, especially before all his ankle troubles. But energy is very different from organizing and coaching a team. Olsen has said himself that in many respects he really never understood soccer tactically until he was sidelined with his ankle and spent tons of time watching the game -- something he had until then not done. In other words, by his own account Olsen really didn't originally have the sort of soccer brain that Kreis had a reputation for even long before he was coaching. Has he developed that sort of soccer brain since then? As a DCU fan, I have both hopes and doubts about that.
Seems we've got quite a few ex-MLS players in the head job right now. Probably a ton of Assistants too. Just glad to see the players get more involved with the league as they retire. Can only make the league better and better over time.
The Heaps hire from within to save money, the lack of ambition at teams owned by billionaires--we've entered a new stage in MLS where the Refuseniks are flexing their muscles. These are not "have nots"--their owners are billionaires--but rather, "will nots". Outvoted on the DP rules, outnumbered by owners wanting to spend money to grow the league, it's now an interesting chess match between these rogue owners and their own fans as to just how much the fans will put up with and how well the owners can disguise their lack of ambition.
Going by his "astute" color announcing on their broadcasts, this has unmitigated disaster written all over it. But I realize there is more to Jay Heaps than his color announcing, so I'm hoping for the best, both for him and for the recently suffering (it seems "long suffering", but it's really only been recently) Revs fans.
Having watched several Revs games on direct kick, my observation was that Heaps knew what was happening--good and bad on the field --if you could listen through his homer schtick. His head is not empty, which I can say about alot of MLS color guys. That being said, I am surprised. I hope he does not fail because he seems like a decent enough guy. The team is not bereft of talent. It is bereft by lack of ambition from the top which has resulted in mediocre signing and a really thin bench. As a fan of the league I hope the new coach is transformative--top to bottom, lack of evidence aside.