Agreed. If we're not going to award the COTY to the best coach of the year, maybe we should rename it to the "That Team Was Better Than I Expected Award."
Best record ≠ best coach. LAFC was 3rd in the West last year. They were already good. Bradley has them peaking nicely, but they still can't beat their main rival. Curtin has taken a team that was 6th in the East last year, has only made the playoffs 3 times in a decade, and has them atop the East with a win over the defending champs. If they beat LAFC in their next match, there's no reason not to have Curtin at the top of the list.
...and if that's the criteria... ...and I can't believe these words are escaping my fingers... ...them Heath gets a few votes. *looks up at the sky for signs of the impending Apocalypse*
That's completely bizarre. But It's got me thinking maybe I should become a professional soccer coach. My tactical approach is beyond reproach: Don't everybody cluster around the ball; pass to an open teammate; score goals. My man management technique is similarly enlightened: Support your teammates; try to get to as many practices as you can; everybody plays equal minutes. I think I'll start out in one of the lower level European leagues like Belgium or Switzerland and work my way up to one of the big 5 leagues in a couple of years. I'm assuming the head coach salaries are at least around 10 to 20 million $'s per year, but does anybody know what head coaches in Belgium and Switzerland get for a per diem? If it's too low, that's a deal breaker right there.
This is still more unbelievable to me than Preki being a 4-6 favorite for the Leicester City job the year they won the title after Preki quit at Sac Republic.
Anthony Hudson raves about Marcelo Biesla https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/sport/leeds-united/marcelo-bielsa-anthony-hudson-leeds-16862920
No one has mentioned Arena, and while there are a lot of guys who deserve credit, think of where the Revs were when he took over and where they are now. Mid-table mediocrity doesn't look all that impressive, but everyone literally would have laughed in your face if you mentioned "Revolution" and "playoffs" in the same sentence.
He is probably #4 on my list. He'd jump up into the top 3 if the Union falter in the last month. Any other year he is easily in the running though. Just that this year you have Almeyda running roughly the same players as last year way up the table, Bradley running for records, and Curtin taking a team to the top of the east whose big signing (Fabian) has only played 1100 minutes. Part of the Rev's turnaround has been that since July they have had a top level MLS striker in Bou. The Union have done it with a guy that was basically injured for 2 years. Arena does deserve some recognition though (as does Torrent). One thing that goes a bit against Arena is the question on whether or not the Revs roster was really as bad as their record was. They pulled a 1.21 PPG with a -6 GD last year so it wasn't like they were terrible, unlike SJ who was at 0.62 last year and had a -22 GD. The lingering question on that will be is if the team basically quit on Friedel this year (since he had some really dumb things to say in the press about his team) or if his tactics were bad (considering they couldn't score to save their life early on but were defensively ok and then gave up 18 goals in a 4 game stretch).
Arena is a positive, but I think anybody, even Red Foley would be such a massive improvement over Brad Friedel that the team would've done better.
I know everyone's impressed that San Jose have averaged 1.57 ppg under Almeyda this year but the Rapids have averaged 3.00 ppg under Robin Fraser.— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) September 8, 2019
It depends on which "Red" Foley you're talking about. Sure, there was some old country singer that no one ever heard of, but they guy I knew was called "Red" because that was the type of card he was most familiar with. The guy was larger than life, had a story for every occasion. He once was involved with Paula Cole, he was good friends with Cyrille Regis, and knew a bunch of other semi-famous people. He once got into it with a Boston Herald beat reporter and it almost cost us our press credentials--that we had literally just gotten that day after a year of convincing them we were "legit" media. Thomas Rongen was being introduced as the Revs' new coach after the 1996 season. Red was up front and said something to him in Dutch (he could speak like 5 languages). Rongen was surprised that there were Dutch reporters covering MLS, and then he explained that no, he wasn't Dutch, but yadda, yadda. It looked like they were having a conversation that no one else could understand (well, they were) and this guy from the Herald yelled out something like "Speak English, you're in A-MER-ica!" So Red turns to him and says in an exaggerated Chris Farley voice (like the "living in a van down by the river" character) "Listen here you fat f**k, if you were around when Bora Miliotinovic was the manager and if you couldn't speak Spanish or Serbo-Croatian, you were F****KED! So shut your f**ing gob!" Hilarity ensued.
Hudson - 33 points in 43 games in charge of the Rapids Casey+Fraser - 34 points in 21 games in charge of the Rapids
after his charged quotes i think its safe to say everyone is noticing the utter humiliation of anthony hudson. great agent / pr flack tho
I think he's a fantasist. Anthony Hudson has admitted to talkSPORT that Newcastle United did contact him about potentially replacing Rafa Benitez at St James' Park before they turned to Steve Bruce.
New article on Jesse Marsch at RB Salzburg. Continuing to breeze through the domestic schedule, but the Champions League will be a real challenge with Liverpool, Napoli, and Genk in their group: https://sports.yahoo.com/ahead-of-h...-already-eyeing-liverpool-test-154331273.html