DC United vs Philly Cheesesteaks

Kinda off subject but will Brexit suddenly unleash all that non-Brit talent that makes the English leagues "better"? If they have to play without all but 3 foreigners per team there should be some fine pickins coming up both on the field and managers too.. Of course coming to America may be a bit more difficult for people who aren't Chinese real estate investors but $ talks

 

blame should be shared all around...

While the roster is certainly subpar, let's not forget it was Olsen who started off the year with Franklin playing CB. He also won't give up on DeLeon, trying him practically every position except goalie.

Let's also remember how Olsen "coached" Boskovic and Salihi when he did have some talent on the team.

He had had his chances...

 

Olsen has been given way too many chances. Unfortunately since the word accountability doesn't mean anything to our club, Ben will be here for the unforeseen future. He's shown through the years that he values hustle and grit over anything resembling technical skills.

I don't understand how the fans are fine with mediocrity. If changes aren't made, DC United will continue to be the joke of the league.

 

I was thinking about the Lucho send off this morning. My comments were along two lines: (1) DCU has a tradition of hothead #10's in Etch, Gomez (the spit) and now Lucho. I think some of that comes with the mindset of a 10. Hell, Etch was tossed early in his first World Cup match. Gomez lost his shit in a playoff game. I think you have to expect blow-ups from a "10" that gets hacked to slow down/destroy his game. My second point, which focuses more on fan reaction to the "malignant dwarf" comment, is that it is class-based. Most of us are used to dealing with middle class youth soccer, high school and college players. Given how soccer playing is compensated in the US and the relatively high costs to entry into competitive soccer, you have a game played by many kids who expect to get a college degree and move on in life at the end of a playing career with some type of alternative marketable skill set. I don't think Lucho comes from such a background, certainly other foreign players don't as well. Soccer is their ticket out and how they will make a living. The constant fouling, and in this case hacking at knees and ankles of Acosta is a direct threat to his livelihood both today and in the future for his family. He is more likely to view such hacking as a existential threat to his career and future economic well being. In such a case, if the referee won't protect him, he'll have to fight back and send a message that if a team threatens his physical well being, one of their players may well run the same risk. I don't condone it, but I understand it. In many ways, hockey deals with this better in that every team (except the Caps) has an enforcer who is there to make sure the star is protected like Gretzky had his Marty McSorley. Sometimes a team is lucky and has a Mark Messier who is both supremely talented and someone nobody else will ******** with.

 

Portland, Orlando, Atlanta and even Minnesota (and others) were able to find better coaches and yet you still pull this nonsense. As if the entire footballing world, Central America, South America, lower divisions elsewhere etc. have no coaches that could outperform Olsen for a couple hundred thousand a year. People brag about and fall all over players like Acosta or Valeri or others who were throw away player from clubs no one here in the US follows but finding coaching talent from that same pool is just impossibl (as one example).

 

After a nice meal in good company, I have come to the conclusion that anything is OK just as long as they don't bring Freddy Adu back

 

Hold on now! Maybe he can coach ...

 

He told me once, in so many words, that he failed to see Boskovic's quality until he was gone. He showed real remorse for that error.

 

Re: Acosta's red card: I don't think the ref shrugged off Gooch's push of Acosta - he simply didn't see it. In the replay the ref is looking the opposite way and doesn't have Acosta in his sight.

 

Sorry to be so prolix, but to get back to scouting, or lack thereof: The player who scored Philly's first goal on that laser strike from downtown. Haris Medunjanin, is from Bosnia-Herzegovina and has played all over Europe and the Near East: the Netherlands; Spain; Turkey; Israel. I wonder if he ended up in Philly due solely to his agent, or was there a scout involved who was willing to go the extra airline miles to find a good player.

 

Right but Valeri, Acosta, and many other internationals were dirt cheap relative to what big clubs in established leagues pay. Similarly, the 2010s have been seen as a golden era for managerial/assistant talent in Central and South America and I find it hard to believe that we couldn't attract someone from Venezuela (topical) or Central America that wouldn't coach for us for Olsen's salary + a little more, just like the league finds cheap player talent from the region.

 

Earnie Stewart may have been familiar with him. He was a technical director for two different Dutch teams while Medunjanin played in the country.

 

That would explain it. But someone, maybe Earnie, had to have kept up with him after he left the Netherlands and began his peregrination around Europe and Israel.

 

Barrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrfffffffffffffffffff!

 

I've already said several teams with better coaches since Olsen was hired but he rates so poorly that literally a faceless Ecuadorian would be better. His record is that bad. No other team in the league would have kept Olsen as long as we have with the same results, none. We are a completely special entity, unusual in the league. Someone should quite literally just google "recently sacked manager South America" and offer whatever pops up in Google first a contract and it would likely end up OK.

 

The only current coach in the league with a longer tenure than Olsen is Vermes.

 

And with well different results...