My first thought was this is a bold move for a guy who's trying to rise up, given all the frustrations with the Rapids over the years. OTOH, Pareja had an up year and the MLS press lapped it up and he got his desired promotion. I hope Hudson can stay a little longer and build a base.
NZ fan here, I really hope for your teams sake I'm wrong. But Hudson didn't impress everyone while coaching New Zealand. He is a person who came across more wanting to pad his CV (or Wikipedia page) than on coaching. When Hudson came in he claimed “Our team will have a real emphasis on being positive going forward and makes the most of the qualities of the players available for selection”. But after watching New Zealand play, you could argue we were more defensive than our previous coach (Ricki Herbert) who was known as being very defensive against top opposition and he was publicly panned for that at times. At least under Herbert’s team we create one or two shots a game. Arguably our attacking stocks under Hudson cycle are better than the 2010 cycle under Herbert (where we went to the World Cup). Yet we look far worse. Even looking back at Hudson’s record pre-New Zealand, there is a pretty similar pattern. Defensively strongly, but poor attacking. Real Maryland 2008 – 24 goals in 23 games Real Maryland 2009 – 19 goals in 22 games Newport 2010/11 – 18 goals in 6 games Newport 2011/12 – 13 goals in 12 games Bahrain U23s – 14 goals in 10 games Bahrain – 6 goals in 12 games NZ U23s – 8 goals in 4 games NZ – 32 goals in 27 games And off those 32 goals for New Zealand, 20 of them were scored against OFC nations either at home or at a neutral ground. We only scored 4 goals against OFC at their home ground (and only one once in those 4 games). We never scored more than one goal against a non-OFC nation, and while sure we played some good sides, we should have been doing better against teams like Uzbekistan, China, Thailand, Myanmar, Oman and Belarus. We probably should have lost our only away win against a non-OFC. So while on the face of it, he got us within 90 minutes from the World Cup, that really is considered a par mark for us. 2-0 loss looks ok on the books (and wiki), but once you look at the entire circle, it’s all be pretty average. The real question is did he get more than you’d expect from the players at hand with the resources at hand. I don’t think he did considering he was better resourced and had better players than any New Zealand coach has had in the past. He is very good at talking the talk, and watch which media he chooses to talk to and what ones he doesn't. He is all power points and not much else.
Thanks for the feedback, some of us after watching the Peru games were wondering if we weren't getting Pablo 2.0
I'm wondering what that post would have looked like if that 'defensive style' had gotten them a 0 - 0 and KFTM win or a 1 - 1 'win' in Peru? Our best season ever (other than the year we won MLS Cup -- so it depends on what you measure) was our 'defensive style' 2016. Pablo 2.0 > Pablo 1.0?
I don't want to rain on your parade and as I say, I hope I'm wrong and he works out for you, but he does talk a good talk. There is a really good podcast done by local Wellington Phoenix and New Zealand Football fans, and they did a discussion on their last pod about Hudson leaving. You can listen to it here (starts 14mins in) https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/thekidsareallwhite/episodes/2017-11-23T18_09_41-08_00
Our Parade has been getting rained on for years now, still we have hope that he will do better than our last few years. Would be hard to do worse.
Welcome Hudson and good luck coach. Positives... Based on the very limited information I have, Smith got the guy he wanted. A little slow but also disciplined. It's not early November, but it's not December or 2018 either. They could have announced early but - judging by the website - it appears that they were actually busy getting their Rah Rah's on. Negatives... I'll leave that to others, We've usually got this pretty well covered. Hopes... I hope they go easy on the promises and style talk. Honest assessment of where the team is would be welcome. A little present pragmatism and steady discipline towards building the future wouldn't hurt this team. Leave the style talk to be expressed on the field. I agree with Quinn that the Rapids could do with some discipline. Not necessary the hard-ass shit, but that the team should appear well drilled.
Hey guys, another Kiwi here. Again, I hate to rain on your parade, but Hudson was generally more disliked than liked in New Zealand, and for good reason. It's general consensus that Hudson underachieved like hell with us; reaching the playoffs was the absolute bottom line for us, and all we had to do was beat Oceania teams - something we've actually struggled before with Hudson. Let me point you in the direction of the OFC Nations Cup, sort of the Gold Cup or the Euros for Oceania. We won, as expected, but our last three results were: 1-0 vs. Solomon Islands (scoring a lucky late winner) 1-0 vs. New Caledonia 0-0 vs. Papua New Guinea (in the final, winning on penalties) He brings an incredibly defensive game to many of his clubs, like the Kiwi above me said. Negative gameplans lead to lacklustre results; we won two games in his entire four years against non-Oceania sides. One against Oman (a defensive 1-0), and one against a second tier Irish club side; considering some of the teams we played, for a World Cup hopeful side we really should have done better. Chances are sporadic to say the least (against Peru we didn't produce a shot on target), but I can certainly commend defensive performances as we shut down teams much better than us a lot (not least due to our highest quality player being a centreback). Doesn't fit with Hudson's initial comments about making us an attacking team, though. Not to mention the whole Wikipedia debacle - in short, it was discovered that someone from the New Zealand Football federation (IP traced) was continually making edits to Hudson's Wikipedia page, embellishing everything he does, and even fitting in some lies (such as combining his NZ U23 record with his NZ record to gain a perceived higher winning percentage - now been amended). Any edits trying to remove this bias were almost immediately reversed. If you don't believe me, check out some of the paragraphs and see how rosy and positive the writing is, even about very negative events - we like to think it was Hudson editing it himself, and evidence may actually point towards it. Also a very shady man. Always keeps his cards close to his chest, and never comments on some glaring issues with our squad - why is Tyler Boyd, a young, talented winger playing regularly in the Portuguese top division and who is infinitely better than the other players Hudson chooses, never called up? Same situation with Jake Gleeson, who's been completely ignored for the past few years like Boyd has. Media is, suspiciously, nothing but rainbows when it comes to Hudson (not surprising as the majority of our football reporters are affiliated with NZF - don't believe anything from the media you read about him). Judging from media comments and his Wiki page, his focus seems to be on furthering his career and using NZ as a stepping stone - if he does well with you guys, he'll likely jump ship. Player selection is exceedingly iffy as well. Ask any New Zealander about legendary Hudson selections such as Moses Dyer or Luka Prelevic and they'll laugh in your face. He's picked about 60 different players in total since joining, most of them laughable and gaining only one cap, though some have been quality such as Tzimopoulos and Marinovic. This may seem okay, but when the players called up are playing in the NZ regional leagues for an amateur club, it starts to get old real fast, and most players he called up completely flopped. Not all negativity! I'm not sure how much of a shambles Colorado is behind the scenes, but Hudson is brilliant at instilling professional attitudes into his players. Squad cohesion is pretty amazing under him. He's a very smart tactical man too - just picks the wrong tactics a lot. Quite a nice guy too, players like him. Overall - he talks the talk but can't exactly walk the walk. His incredibly poor professional record as a manager speaks for itself, underachieving at every single team outside of the USA (did okay with Real Maryland, hopefully a good sign for you guys!). Hope he proves me and most of New Zealand wrong, and gets a good career under his belt, I'm not focused on bringing negativity but all I'm seeing is complete positivity about Hudson's career so I just wanted to bring an organic, NZ-grown angle to the situation
Thanks for the input. I believe many Rapids fans are currently looking ahead with guarded optimism regarding Hudson as the new coach. We did just come off of three years having to deal with Pablo Mastroeni as coach, not to mention Tim Hinchey as prez. National team fans always brings a certain sense of reality to such situations. It's interesting to hear about his Wikipedia page, not sure what to make of that. Regarding Hudson "jumping ship", I think it's to be expected that any coach who is as young as he is will be looking to improve/change his coaching jobs fairly consistently over the years. Staying with New Zealand for four years is not a bad run. If he stays with the Rapids for 2+ years he'll probably reach MLS average. I'm not much worried about that. Given who we are and what we have been I'd expect any fairly decent coach (or otherwise) to see us as a stop along the way. So you and other NZ fans have taken issue with his national team selection? You don't say. Let me direct you to the USMNT forum here on BigSoccer. But as you say, his W/L record speaks for itself. We will just have to see if he's figured out how to win games more consistently over the past few years.
I certainly appreciate the insights into our new coach. For me the bar is set so low that I think he can still do ok given what you shared. Consider this...if he can learn to use his first sub before the 85’ in less than 3 years he will have been an improvement. If he can sub in an attacker late in a game we are down in he might as well be Pep Guardiola. Like I said the bar is looooow. Edit: If he can have the team not make 20 sideways and backpasses ending with our fullback hitting a 50 yard 50-50 ball for Badji to chase I might even cry tears of happiness.
The other part that peaked my interest is professionalism. I would live to not be embarrassed by what happens with our team. Maybe he is what we have been told (twice), but the bar is so low with our team since 2010 that I will take it as a step in the right direction. How sad is that?
I was really excited that he's be able to prove himself at a club without expectations... until I read your edit. This guy is a long ball FIEND. He can't get enough of it. Every single team we've faced (yes, even the Pacific islands) we have used long ball tactics against in some way or another (not surprisingly they haven't worked). I just hope he doesn't fall into that with you guys. As an aside, he likes to make subs early Anyway, no problem, happy to provide insight!
No worries! He was a complete unknown outside of Bahrain when he joined us so I can see why he's trying his best to raise his profile. Even though he stayed with us for four years, he did things such as conducting interviews with British tabloids to raise his profile in the UK, giving false positive outlooks to foreign media, and making a big ruckus every time a club approached him. Also made it very clear that he trained with Mourinho and Bielsa, that got him a few brownie points. If anyone's interested, here's an absolutely brilliant article published by a respected neutral sports site in NZ: http://theniche-cache.com/football/...flecting-on-the-anthony-hudson-all-whites-era
A coach doing well with the Rapids? I don't need to go that far to be satisfied. My expectations for the Rapids are so low that I'd be satisfied if the top moment of the 2018 season isn't a 30-yard Jared Watts game losing own goal. The rest is icing on the cake.
Well our last coach used to make his subs 10 minutes late and rarely used all 3, so that will be a nice change.
So did Pablo? "How can you think about food when we're down a goal at home with only 15 minutes to play?"
Please, no. Don't need the gushing (although it'd be nice to see some play worth gushing over) and the nonsensical vocabulary.