Uh...I leave for a few days and all hell breaks loose. It was coming after the tire fire of the RSL game, but wow. Can't wait to see what happens from here, and I wouldn't mind Berhalter either. But the FO problems as everyone says, BLEGH. When does management realize the buck stops with them? Well, it'll be an interesting post season.
“I think if you remember Dom’s teams with Houston, I think the effort was non-negotiable,” said Servando Carrasco, who played for Kinnear in Houston in 2013 and 2014. “It was a hard-nosed team, a blue-collar style. Guys never gave up. Especially during this time of the season when every point matters. “Looking back to the teams he coached with Houston I think that we’re trying to kind of adopt that same mentality, if you want to call it that.” So is he saying that effort has been negotiable up to now? That would explain a lot...
I was distracted by Ashely Cole becoming football's Roger Murtaugh. I'm just waiting for his exhausted frame panting in front of a post-match interviewer, to gasping "I'm too old for this sh**..."
I'll take a dreadful season of "just missing the playoffs because you are in a MLS Championship haze" any day over "just missing the playoffs after a season of guiding the team to dead last" any day.
Wait, you mean the reason they were leaking goals is they hadn't decided to go defensive yet? http://www.espn.com/soccer/la-galax...g-la-galaxy-it-was-probably-the-best-decision
Sigi giving up the game plan for this weekend. Not sure how anyone can like it considering our personnel. Do we have 9 players you could put behind the ball and trust to still not give up goals? That got left on the cutting room floor. Here's what Schmid said about that: "I think probably this weekend you’re going to see nine guys behind the ball and one center forward." https://t.co/e9lAbYgj9P— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) September 13, 2018
When your CF is Zlatan, that's probably not a bad gameplan. If Dom has any kind of success with it, it'll make Sigi look pretty foolish for not trying it earlier when it's been the fairly obvious thing to do. Soccer's a low scoring game. A group of talentless, but organized and hard-working individuals can usually keep a much better team from scoring and the gaps in squads in MLS is not that great. This needed to happen 3 months ago.
On the most recent Corner of The Galaxy podcast, Josh said Sigi's contract runs through next year... @~7:55
Yep, I heard that, too. And while I'm not giving the FO a pass, I think firing Onalfo and Sigi were the right moves. Hiring Onalfo (and arguably Sigi) to begin with may have been a misstep, but I don't see the point of doubling down on that and giving them a chance as they argued on the podcast. If Sigi's 2018 was a probationary period to see if he should get a 2019, then I think he failed, IMO.
I agree that firing Sigi was a step in the right direction. Now the FO needs to take the next (and most important) step: fire themselves.
I agree with the firing of Sigi, but just to play Devil's advocate....If Zlatan doesn't get signed (and it sounds like Sigi was against it - he was building around a different group of players), that $1.5 million goes on a defence in the summer. We would probably be a better team, because we would have had a D, but how can you pass up Zlatan?
I believe we have the highest paid defense in MLS. $$ wasn’t the issue as much as Sigi’s poor player evaluation skills, imo.
Exactly. It's likely that 1.5 that went to Zlatan is wasted anyway on another Scandinavian loser. My gut says that if Zlatan didn't land here, Geoff Cameron would be here. I think that would have been Sigi's big summer signing.
I gave the FO the benefit of the doubt firing Curt, but with the benefit of an additional year and the same results I’m reframing that. If you create a disastrous situation then resolve it you shouldn’t really get credit for that. You can’t turn on the gas, drag your family to safety then light a match and expect to be called a hero. The fact is the FO appointed Onalfo, they created that problem. They hired Sigi, they created this problem. Having tried two polar opposite strategies and failed similarly both times it seems likely they’ll continue to light fires in dumpsters then claim some sort of moral victory when they put out the fire they started.
After the TFC fiasco today, I think it's clear that the Galaxy's problem was not just Sigi's game day coaching or lack thereof.
Galaxy's dysfunction goes way beyond the head coach http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-sigi-schmid-baxter-20180915-story.html
None of that is the least bit surprising. The Galaxy dragged the rest of the league in to the future and then gave up. I didn’t think we’d miss Leiweke. He was hit and miss with his big name signings, but he sure did love the Galaxy and ran it like a professional organization, not a halfway house for the unqualified and unprofessional.
Lieweke was the one who selected and promoted Chris Klein, IIRC. It's like the Galaxy graphic design/marketing department's flaws were a window to the whole organization.
Yes and no. IIRC, Tim hired Chris to run the business. Bruce was already on board as the coach & GM in charge of all football operations. It was under Dan and with the signing of Steve (possibly) and Gio against Bruce's wishes when things started going south.
It was. He also hired Lalas and Sampson and capitulated to 19E in hiring Gullit. His decisions were all over the place and he had more missed than hits which is partly why I didn’t think we’d miss him. People put too much emphasis on the times he knocked it out of the park and too little on the failures. That said he was constantly pushing the Galaxy and the league to be bigger and better and to move the league from its semi-pro state back in the mid-2000s to a legitimately professional league. I thought Klein was a good choice for GM. He ran(runs?) an investment service for MLS players designed to ensure their ability to have income after their playing days are over. In hindsight it seems the Galaxy front office were the beneficiaries of a decade’s worth of success they had very little to do with and have mistakenly assumed they did.
I’m in favor of relocating the FO to Austin and replacing them with competent personnel. But keep the Crew in Columbus. Basically, just send PSV and the current Galaxy FO somewhere they can buy a clown car without an engine, paint “SC Bigtime FC” on the side, and all sit inside making really loud vroom-vroom sounds while six paid fans wave silly scarves.