The man to man marking is a Serie A thing. I believe Almeyda was a pivotal force as a defensive midfielder when Lazio won their scudetto 20 years ago. The game in the league hasn’t changed all that much in the last decade really other than fewer domestic players. Starting 3 American born players, I think MLS is now also in the same boat. As far as man marking , you need to have players that can cover and move quickly as well as mids who can run up and back. In Italy they use the mixed zone and man to man and keep switching back and forth. The formations may change a little bit but the philosophy is that defense is supposed to open and close like an accordion. Clearly, neither the Quakes or any other MLS club for that matter , play like this. At least I don’t remember seeing many defenses like this and I can't think of any players across the league who played like Almeyda....
we had different players, a slightly better roster, Leitch came in late, mixed things up a little, we were better at home but getting blown out on the road, culminating in getting blown out in our one and only playoff game...in years. the Leitch coaching legacy was barely a blip on the radar. having said that, I'm sure Leitch, like all the coaches before him (since 2008) and all the coaches since, could've done a better job if he'd been given a deeper roster to work with. it's not about the coaches. never was, its about an inability to scout talent and an unwillingness to pay for it. That is the Fisher legacy in a nutshell.
One of the difficulties in constantly swapping out coaches is that very often the new coach requires new players to fit the new preferred scheme. It takes awhile to churn the roster sufficiently for the new scheme to be successful, and in the meantime the coach is jettisoned, and the process starts anew. Leitch had a scheme very different from Kinnear but inherited Kinnear's (itself only half-built) roster before he could fully implement. Not clear that Stahre had a scheme but he was not around long enough for us to find out. Plainly Almeyda has his own scheme, but the roster is utterly incapable of implementing it (or Leitch's plan, or Kinnear's at this point) and will need to be fully turned over. Hard to see Almeyda lasting long enough for that. The good news is that it would likely not be a bad back-stop to hand over control entirely to Chris Leitch, with unlimited authority and a blank checkbook. Doing so would likely result in a dynasty.
My biggest fear (which seems to be realized so far) is that Almeyda will continue to insist that the team conform to his philosophy, which seems to be based around a different set of competencies than our current roster represents, and possibly only effective against different competition. So far, Almeyda has shown little, if any, interest in modifying his tactical mindset to reflect the realities of the 2019 Quakes roster and the MLS of 2019. I find this concerning.
It would be concerning if the current roster was capable of playing playoff quality in some other coach's system. But if Magnus Eriksson is truly one of your best 11, it's absolutely not.
I'm not going to a priori disagree, but I am concerned that whereas Leitch was able to use a sub-par cast of players to advantage by being flexible in a tactical sense, so far Almeyda seems to show no interest in doing so. To me, that seems to perhaps point to a certain lack of flexibility. I guess we'll see over the next month or so!!!
I wonder whether the 2017 squad was really subpar relative to the rest of the league. Kinnear was fired in the wake of a win and with a .500 season record.
It has to have dawned on Almeyda and the coaching staff that they don’t have the horses to compete. If the plan is to be here for 4 years they need to start looking at the academy U-19 and U-17 players and perhaps replace kids with ones that can execute their style of play. They need to have coaches in place that use the same marking scheme and pressure and they need to groom at least 3-4 really good players that can be signed as homegrown to supplement the roster. That is the easiest and cheapest way to improve under the roster cap rules. Best part is they can start that right now if they have the time and energy. Of course it takes a while to incubate but it’s at least a step in the right direction and it would make fans like me comfortable that they will have a sustained commitment to the team.
Not that I really cared for Kinnear but I never really understood why Jesse fired him when he did. He had won the game the night before and they were doing ok. I mean a lot better than either Stahre or Almeyda (so far) have done. I'm not saying he will have been the answer in the long run but looking back, the timing of Kinnear's firing was perplexing to say the least.
To me it’s about hiring incompetent people to run the team. During the Johnny Moore era there is no way he had a higher budget than most of the teams he competed against, yet he built a winning team.
At this point, we were better off with Doyle and Kinnear. They must be laughing their heads off now. It doesn’t look like anything will change anytime soon.
And Tom Neale will forever be a favorite GM in my mind because he refused to give in to the AEG pressure and trade Landon Donovan to the Galaxy for Luis Hernandez. He listened to the fanbase and made decisions in their best interest. So did Johnny Moore after him. Johnny was passionate about making sure the fans were represented to the point of blowing up his career to bring light to the shady Club America negotiations that were leading to the team relocating. Chris Leitch joined that group in my mind by playing the group of players and playing style that most of us wanted to see when Kinnear was fired. I still wish he would have played Kip Colvey more and Kofi Sarkodie less, but I have to give him credit for playing to win even when that resulted in some ugly losses.
It certainly helped that SVS&E had Tom Neale's back on the matter and that AEG fortunately had no hand in running the Earthquakes then (they'd come aboard to co-run the team a year later). Not just relocating, but rebranded as well to Club América USA or somesuch. In fact, even in the small chance that the team wouldn't have been relocated, there were still plans to rebrand the team as such anyway. Thanks also goes to Dylan Hernandez (then with the San Jose Mercury News) who uncovered the whole thing in the first place. I read somewhere that Chris Leitch didn't really want to stay on as head coach and simply wanted to return to his role as Technical Director. Is that true? Also, how would the team have fared to this day if Leitch had stayed on as head coach, particularly the defense? GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
You won’t get much argument from me on that, we have hired incompetent people, and we’ve saddled them with tiny budget and expected them to perform miracles, or, in the case of Matias, hired a competent person, saddled him with a last place roster that is among the least expensive in the league, denied him the players he wants because they’re “too expensive”, failed to do anything on the DP side despite finishing last and decided to spend less money on players this year, and expected him to perform miracles...if you can’t see that pervasive cheapness is the root cause of what ails us by now, nothing I can say is likely to change your mind.
I have not heard the story where Leitch didn't want to stay on. I also recall that Jesse was intentionally not using the term "interm head coach". I do remember thinking at the time that it was unusual that Jesse decided to name Leitch coach instead of Ralston. In 99% of the cases where a coach is fired mid-season the replacement is an assistant coach. Ralston's experince was deemed value enough that while the rest of the staff was let go, he was retained to be a mentor to Leitch for the season. I wasn't happy about that at the time and looking back I think it was the fatal mistake of the Chris Leitch era. He should have had a guy like Troy Dayak come in to assist and run the restart program. The Quakes gave up WAY too many soft restart goals and hardly scored any themselves. If that one thing had been improved the Quakes would have finished higher up the table and been more competive on the road. The team also lacked fitness to finish out the games and I'm not sure there was much Leitch could have done about that with all the schedule congestion he inherited. I'm not pining for the old days, but I like what Chris Leitch did with his player selection and his attitude towards the importance of the Open Cup. He's the one guy I've seen that saw the importance of getting 3 points for a win and using an attacking mindset in the gameplan. He played the kids and the home games were so much fun to watch.
Look I totally get the idea that it would be so great if the Quakes would spend more money, but I think spending it the wrong way is every bit as bad as not spending it at all. The New England Patriots are the gold standard in the NFL but I bet there are teams spending more money that can't beat them. It's all about making the smart buys and coaching them to play better as a unit then as a bunch of disjointed individuals. How many times over the years have you watched the Quakes play and asked yourself "do these guys even practice together?".
I've said all along that Chris Leitch is the smartest guy in the room. But this board, by and large, wanted him gone as coach following a playoff loss. Kind of like the board wanted Ike Opara gone after his forgettable playoff against the Galaxy.
I would agree with that assessment. I also have a hunch that he talks more often with the owner than does Fox or Fioranelli.
My mind is changing on this. Looking at it as if it were your own finances, then yes, figuring out exactly what you need to spend in order to be successful is the best way to go. Naturally you don't want to incur expenses you don't have to. I've been arguing that for years. But we are talking about a multi-billionaire here. He can afford to spend more, and if more of that money gets "wasted" by going in the pockets of some guys trying to make a career in a very short-lived and difficult job, even if they aren't successful, then I'm not going to get upset about it. I didn't begrudge Emeghara for being paid his salary despite almost never playing. I don't begrudge Eriksson for making as much as he does. I get upset about how poorly he performs because I want the team to win, but I'm not concerned about his or the team's finances. The reality is that Fisher is only going to spend so much, so the GM will have to be creative and good and identifying affordable talent, which they should do even if they had an unlimited budget. And Almeyda is going to have to figure out how to coach the players he's given, no matter how bad they are. His person-marking scheme hasn't worked out very well so far, probably because a lack of ability in the players, so it's going to be interesting to see if he's uncompromising in his playing philosophies or if he's going to adjust to find a way to win in this particular circumstance. There are admirable qualities in both approaches, I think.
Really nice post. I'm with you on this. I tend to think the issue is exactly what Don G. has said. The Quakes have done an extremely poor job on the scouting front. It's hard to blame Bruno Costa much because he's only been on the job less than two years. I think he is likely overwhelmed. My bet is he has to scout for the Quakes, Reno and all the academy teams. Think about how big that job would be. I can't imagine the stress that comes with the expectation that all your recommendations pan out.
Yes, the scouting element is interesting because we obviously see so little of that. It's hard to imagine the Quakes have the largest or most sophisticated scouting department. Fioranelli talked a big game about this when he came on board and we're not seeing much payoff. If Fisher is going to increase spending anywhere, it should probably be there first. Almeyda has talked about players he wants (ambiguously, but still), and I get the impression that Fioranelli relied pretty heavily on the team's head coaches for ideas about which players to get. I don't care for that approach because it's inherently inconsistent. Different coaches have different ideas about what kinds of players are good, and they can't all be right. Maybe that's not true and Fioranelli and the scouting department have worked on models that they've used to acquire talent. If so, they need to improve on that front a lot. Almeyda can suggest players all day long, but those players ultimately need to fit the model that the FO puts together, otherwise Almeyda should just become the GM, too.