MLS coaches (current and potential) and coaching thread

U-22 is a very odd age to choose for that analysis, given that players under that age are largely in college.

There are, rough count, 68 U-22 Americans in MLS, including players who have been signed this offseason. If you look through the list, there's a relative dearth of Americans aged 20 and 21 - about 25 of the players are 22, and about 25 are teenagers. The 22-year-old group features a lot of players that play significant roles in their teams - Roldan, Acosta, etc., while the teenagers are all too young to play a big role.

I'm not excusing anyone here, just saying that MLS is in a weird place because of the college system. The mid-level players who might have rotational roles if they signed with their parent team out of the academy will get more time in college, so they go there for a couple of years, meaning older players take the minutes they would have otherwise gotten.

 

Does MLS do a bad job of playing them, or are the players not good enough?

 

It's also a bit of cherry-picking. How many U.S. U-22s are playing in Germany, England, Mexico?

If you were to take the top 10 or 20 leagues (however many you want to include MLS in) and see how many minutes U-22s from each country were getting in any of those leagues, I think the U.S. would look better.

I think this chart falls in the statistics column of "lies, damned lies, and statistics"

 

No. I'm saying that MLS is different than other leagues because of the player pool it draws from, so it isn't a straight comparison.

 

MLS All Star/Best XI or USMNT players isn't what is being measured. All Americans are being measured, so you have to include the journeyman MLS players as well.. While you're likely correct that the top American players aren't getting their first professional minutes after they are 21, MLS's draft is for Seniors except for GAs, so there are going to be a lot of players coming into MLS that are 22 or above and getting their first professional minutes. As an example, the number 7 draft in last year's MLS draft (Jake Nerwinski) was 22 when he was drafted. He got 1900 minutes of playing time last year and 0 minutes counted in the metric.

The other issue is that, as you noted, the college game isn't particularly good at developing players, so the Americans that are coming out of the system just aren't very good, so even if they are 21 when they are drafted, they are likely spending significant amount of their first season riding the bench, or, lately, loaned out to the MLS2 team. So if/when they do start getting MLS minutes, they are likely going to be 22 or higher.

We're also talking about a 1% difference in playing time between MLS and La Liga (which is the top of the big 4 leagues). That's the difference between playing 4.4 U21 players per game day out of 242 total players (22 teams * 11 players) and 6.8 players per game day. I'm not sure that is a significant amount to be having as big a freak out as it is having on the twittersphere.

 

It's actually 4.4 vs 6.16 as La Liga has 20 teams.

The one question I have is why there is not a large disparity with U-21 percentages and U-22 players percentages in MLS as compared to other leagues?

The possible reason is that the people playing in MLS prior to being 21 are the only ones playing prior to being 22 as that is before college kids come.

*** As a side note, the two people who contributed the charts via twitter reportedly work in some fashion with data analytics with soccer teams and US Soccer. Their interpretation of data seems weird unless their job is to just compile it. The sample sizes are relatively small for less than 1% changes to be significant.

 

Apparently Tata was running late and Sigi was sick wit the flu and conducted his part of the draft from his hotel room

 

Schmetzer looks absolutely giddy...

Or he just farted and everyone else has to smell it...

 

Remi Garde looks absolutely thrilled............

 

Hmm, that photo looks familiar.

They did not take them before 2012. The last three years, I've taken the official photo. I've shot every SuperDraft at the NSCAA/USC Convention (16 straight from 2003 to 2018). I've worked for the league in 2005, and I think since 2011 or 2012 - always with another photographer. Tony Quinn took the first few of these. I honestly can't remember when I started taking the primary shot.

My galleries (but oddly not 2012, hmm) are here:
http://andymead.photoshelter.com/gallery-collection/2012-Mens-Club-Soccer/C0000jwSed9Xh7G0

 

There's somebody missing (and I'm not talking about Sigi - who was sick). They other 22 coaches had sat there for at least 10 minutes while the draft was getting closer. We finally took the scarf shots because we couldn't wait anymore. If you look at the non-scarf photo, the missing coach had shown up.

 

And the third thing would be to play hardball and piss off your best player. Zero tolerance, rule with an iron fist! It worked well with Pepe Moreno, who went on to a long, illustrious career with the Revs.

 

This is all Mike Burns, not Friedel. The Revs have acted this way for years, before Heaps, before zfriedel, and after Friedel. Until Burns is gone, this won’t change.

 

It is not Burns, it is Kraft - the worst owner in MLS.

 

Woah, Woah, Woah.. Have you seen the Union's owner? The Revolution, at least, periodically bring in a good player or two and have a good season.

 

Hey, can the Rapids get in on this debate?

 

Auugh! What a mess! The Meram situation is a good example of how things might have played out, had they not been so tone-deaf in every way imaginable.

I know most teams in sports will have "exit interviews" where the coach will sit down with each player and talk about his performance over the past year, expectations for the upcoming year and off-season fitness plans designed to help the player come back ready to go. I don't know if the Revs do this, but if they did, it would have been the perfect time to air it all out, hear what Lee has to say (even if it hurts to hear it) and reassure him that it will all be better with the new coach and new direction of the team.

I don't know if they did this, but Nguyen, being a key player, should have been contacted by Friedel when he was hired, and had that kind of conversation with him. Meanwhile, never say never. Especially not publicly. See what kind of a market there is for Nguyen out there, and if the offers are not to your liking, say no. But this way, the Revs have painted themselves in a corner and are surely not going to get as much as they might have if they had traded him in December.

It's all about the culture of the organization, top-down. The Patriots can do things this way because guys will come here for less money as a trade-off for a very good chance at winning a championship. It does not work that way with the Revs. And that is on the Krafts for not understanding that the one-size-fits all approach won't work. They need a different model for their soccer team.

I get the impression that Jonathan "Uday" Kraft is more of a numbers/finance kind of guy, but short on vision, imagination and strategy. I wonder how he'd answer about where he wants to see the Revs in 5 years. I don't think he has a clue. And that brings us to Burns, the ultimate Smithers-like yes-man. The guy is powerless to do anything other than toe the party line, and he's fine with that. Friedel is passionate, gung-ho right now and trying to put his stamp on things. It may take him a while, but at least he's saying the right things. We'll see how his enthusiasm for the job is in two years...