Official introduction of Vlatko as coach will come Monday at 4 pm in NYC— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) October 25, 2019 Weird, with the stuff going around off the field with USWNT you would think next coach would be Female
And more from Zlatan: Could Zlatan Ibrahimovic's last action in #MLS be... grabbing his junk and mouthing off to an #LAFC fan? Possibly. Kind of perfect in the worst possible way, I'd say. #LAGalaxy pic.twitter.com/shKTVeqm8g— Pablo Iglesias Maurer (@MLSist) October 25, 2019
Anyone know much about him? Everything I know about him I learned two minutes ago from Wiki peida. Coached a bunch of years in the NWSL, last two with the Reign. I know nothing about the league. Looks like he won a couple championships.
As a Chelsea fan since age 8 (lived in West Hempstead) I just have to share this: 2️⃣1️⃣ years, 3️⃣8️⃣ days❗️ The youngest player to score a @premierleague hat trick for @ChelseaFC is from the 🇺🇸.RT if you're proud of @cpulisic_10! pic.twitter.com/gZ04QUCpey— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) October 26, 2019
Conference final Seattle at LAFC about to start. I have no one to root for. Can they both be eliminated?
Seattle beats LAFC 3-1. Immediately after the game, Brian Schmetzer, when asked by the on field reporter how he’s feeling: “I tell you, I feel a lot better than Bob right now” Savage Brian. Savage. Tonight Seattle did exactly what the Rapids did earlier this year. Sit back and defend well, shut down Vela, and strike hard and fast on the counter break. So basically you can say we laid the blueprint for the western conference champs eh?
I don't think we watched the same game. We didn't sit back and park the bus. Thats not what a Schmetzer team does and our team isn't built for that, it was built to attack. We clogged the middle, put a body on Vela and attacked relentlessly even when we had gone a goal up. It could have been 5-1. Games like these are won or lost in the midfield and our plan was executed to perfection.
I didn’t say you parked the bus, just that you sat back and defended well. Having a slightly lower defensive line of confrontation and parking the bus are two different things. Parking the bus implies not moving forward on attack....You guys won the ball on the defensive shifts very well and then struck hard and fast on the counter. Ruidiaz, Lodeiro, and Morris did an extremely good job on the break, and those three are a lethal combo. Fun game to watch. I don’t think LAFC was ready for the intensity that Seattle brought to the game
Ok, that makes sense, thanks for clarification. Good luck in the offseason, may your transfer window be full of nice additions.
To be honest, I think we're unfortunately seeing the continuing stratification of organizations MLS. Towards the end of last year I started saying there is a growing "underclass" in MLS; of which the Rapids are firmly in. The gap between the top clubs and bottom clubs keeps getting bigger, and the playoffs this year makes that look all the more obvious. Here is what all the semifinalists this year have in common. They're big flashy spenders on players. They play in front of huge crowds that are well above the league average. They're all expansion teams from the late 2000's or the 2010's. The organizations that are unable, or unwilling, to make the investments necessary to be competitive are getting left behind. Unless MLS either curbs the clubs at the top through more parity, or forces bottom feeders to either get their shit together or sell, it's only going to get worse.
And yet, the Rapids were only a few games late in firing Hudson from making the playoffs and played the last 2/3rds of the season as the 3rd best team in the league.
Yeah, but we are talking the Rapids here. Would it shock anyone to see it go all to heck again next spring? Either they continue improving the talent level or that decent finish (when they caught teams by surprise) will be a fleeting memory.
You really think that form was/is sustainable? When has this club ever shown that it's actually capable of sustaining success? I guarantee it's not sustainable unless we make some serious additions to the roster this off-season, which includes signing at least two DPs. Regardless of how anyone spins it, the fact is we still, yet again, failed to make the playoffs. It's exhausting to keep hearing "if only X would have been different, things would've ended up better," because it implies the failure was outside of the FO's control because the circumstances weren't ideal. That's the attitude of a perennial loser. Conditions are never ideal for anybody. The difference is successful and motivated organizations are able to push through that. Yeah, we finished this season strong, but it isn't going to amount to anything unless Padraig really hits some home runs during this off-season.
Which, of course, wasn't the argument I made. Which is pretty much true for 20+ teams in this league. The Rapids are no different.
The statistics this season point to one and only one reason why the Rapids failed to make the playoffs. The Hudson era was one of the worst coaching performances in MLS history. What followed Hudson was something resembling actual MLS-level soccer. Remember, Hudson coached most of the worst first third of a season in MLS history, and the Rapids still knocked on the door of the playoffs.
I think the other thing we need to keep in mind is that we asked, and have continued to ask, whether or not 2016 was either sustainable or repeatable. While the defensive side of the ball was certainly not sustainable, 2019 proved that the results were repeatable. What's the common denominator between our success and our failures? A lot of it lies on coaching.... In 2010 when we won the cup, Gary Smith was the head coach. He's the only full Head Coach the Rapids have had that actually finished each year of his time with us that had a +.500 win percentage. In 2016, the team was extremely organized on defense. I'm not saying Pablo was the best coach in the world, but he certainly got a lot more out of the players than anyone would have expected that year. In 2017, Pablo traded Cronin and Burch - which he described as "one of the worst mistakes of his coaching career" (his words, not mine, paraphrased slightly as I can't remember exactly what he said on the MLS Extratime Radio interview). The team lost the center of its defensive spine, and didn't get any offensive trade offs for it. In 2018, we hired one of the worst coaches in MLS history. No one knew that Hudson would go on to be as bad as he was, but sure enough, we took a long shot on him, and he took the talent we had and made it look like lipstick on a pig. In 2019, we canned Hudson, and in stepped the Casey/Fraser combo. Together, two coaches took the talent we had and made it look like an actually competitive team....one that stood toe to toe with the best in the league - and not only held their ground, but also actually looked good. And as said above, we actually could have made it into the playoffs this year. Oh...did I mention that our only DP - and highest paid (by far) on field talent - was a goalkeeper?? My hopes were crushed in 2017. They continued to be wrecked in 2018. 2019 started to look like more of the same. Then something happened. A spark of life in this team showed. Am I saying that Robin Fraser is going to make us look like LAFC this year? No. No I'm not. What I'm saying is there's no reason to say 2020 is going to be 2017 again. We're not losing any major "important" pieces on the field. Sure Abubakar is talented, but if he leaves, we're not losing our team captain/leader, exposing our left flanks, or losing a piece of our goal scoring capabilities. The coaching staff showed in the last 3rd of the season that it can lead the team to get results. We have nothing but a wide open Salary Cap, and open DP slots. There's no reason to not look at 2020 and say "You know what. We might actually do something good next year."
For those with Athletic subs: Inside the confidential 2016 study that provided the blueprint for MLS’s modern era Very interesting article on a study by the Boston Consulting Group that MLS commissioned to help guide its strategies. There's stuff in here that appears already to have implemented, such as the use of TAM to strengthen roster spots 4-11 and compressing the regular season to help avoid having to play during international breaks. It's also linked in the N&A forum, where the fellow posting there says you can get a few free articles via the mobile app? https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/inside-the-confidential-2016-study-that-provided-the-blueprint-for-mls’s-modern-era.2107310/
One team had 0 for player costs. What does that mean, they covered everyone with the salary budget (salary cap, GAM, TAM, allocation, and whatnot)? No DP's? There are two teams below K and M in revenue. Who do you suppose those are?