What exactly does Brian Ching do in the Dynamo FO now? I'm just curious since he seems off the Dash now
I was surprised from the beginning he wasn't working with the strikers, even if just on a part time basis. Like when the Rockets were trying to make Howard work they apparently had Olajuwon and other franchise centers come in and work with him. I mean if you're looking to coach up your next generation of strikers would you have Ching or Arnaud? 52 goals/13 years is not actually a lot. I think Ching had more Dynamo goals (leaving out Seattle USL, LA, SJ) than Arnaud had in a career. Just like I'd have Davis come in and work with mids, Eddie coach up backs, Onstad work with keepers.
http://sbisoccer.com/2017/08/mls-ti...-assistant-fires-dean-out-for-season-and-more Not a player but Kinnear gets back into MLS as Galaxy assistant to Schmid.
Miami FC, Hunter Freeman and Lovell, eh? Boy, Farfan has bounced around. Nother one of those expeditionary soccer players who I wonder if he now thinks he should have ever left MLS. Ditto Jonny Steele, Lahoud. And Poku who was briefly a flavor of the month and then had the stupidity to get sold to a lower division. Now 25 and playing in NASL.
Sometimes I wonder wtf some of these players are thinking with there career decisions. It's like when players go to Barca or Madrid when they already have a wildly stacked team. Or City that has about 15 attackers on there books. When they don't pan out and get sold a year or so later to team in the bottom part or the german or french league, then never recover. I'm not one to play is safe in a lot of things in my life, but some people get cross eyed and make bone head choices.
The worst to me would be someone like Ibeagha. His family had its tiff with MLS contracts and so he stubbornly bounced around the unfancy parts of Europe to avoid signing here. Ibeagha would have probably been about a $150k signing, de facto draft pick money, coming off U20, even if I think he was overrated even then. He thinks he's smarter than us, eventually ends up back here for $92k, only part of which he ever receives before being released, and is probably playing for $30k in the minors now. Oh, they don't tie you down for 4 years, do they? They also don't pay you much either. That's not smart for the career or the pocketbook. Sarkodie is similar age and even similarly flawed IMO and he's career MLS always making $100k plus. Second goofy to me is the ones like Dempsey where they actually do find a pretty good niche and the fans would build a 50 foot statue of you if you just finished your career there, and you're dumb enough to leave. I always figured he'd go back to MLS at the end, but to Spurs first? Gooch was a fixture in Belgium before he got the ACM itch. Jozy, until he got to TFC, he had that insane year for AZ but he has to trade up. Compare to Dolo where they may very well build that statue and he slid right upstairs into coaching positions at the same club. I don't blame the tourists per se, who wouldn't want to try ManU, Monaco, Dortmund, Benfica, etc. But to me that's ideally done young when like Landon you can come back and become a fixture here and people might not even remember you tried it. Landon is the face of MLS even though he actually started in Germany and got loaned back here. But he started at 17 and was back here by 19. I think a firm grasp on reality is important, and an understanding there's more to it than money. I don't know if Freddy Adu has ever made a humble, career-promoting move yet. There is also an element in here where if they go abroad as kids, kids don't always work out. I think part of the thing there is do they wake up fast enough to save their work ethic and career. Zizzo and some others are career MLS and other players aren't. Zizzo works hard and was back here by age 22. The ones who work hard generally have the stuff to be at least lunchpail contributors. The ones who think the world still revolves around them sometimes get the Szetela or Adu fate. Talent can extend your career but work rate is a big decider in whether you have one in MLS on up to retirement age.
Gooch likely wouldve been a valuable part of Milan but an injury during a national team game changed that. He never recovered. Iirc Milan went after FIFA hard to pay for the whole thing.
And I feel like players like Adu and Gooch are often signed over their head by Big Clubs who see an opportunity to sell summer tour tickets and jerseys in a new market, but who on the merits see the player as a second tier talent to throw into the mix and see what happens. We are generally not Mbappe. We are cheap talent to take a risk on. You buy us for 5 million and not 50. If it doesn't work you didn't spend Neymar money. At the time I think ACM had Nesta. I think there was talk he was getting older but it took years more for him to come here. To me I think a kid can go sign someplace like ManU and we'll see what happens. Worst case the player comes back well drilled, Kenny Cooper, at a relatively young age. If you go over mid-career I'd do what Dempsey did and go niche, Fulham. Less money but not as big a jump, if you play well right into the lineup and the fans love you. You can then make a career of it, or take a risk for a big club having banked a few successful sporting and monetary seasons in the market or nearby.
Adu was ********ed from a very young age. He had more pressure placed upon his shoulders than 14 yr old needed and it crushed him. The moment he started getting good he left for Europe.... failed, came back to MLS, showed what we thought he could be in the U-20something World Cup, left again and failed. I agree with you and would have loved to see Adu go to the Dutch League and grow there before trying his luck with better teams that don't nurture talent well.
Maybe, but Adu's real problem was he was lazy. All the talent in the world will only get you so far if you have no work ethic whatsoever.
Nobody wants Adu. He's obviously quite talented, but massively underachieving and like Dynamomaniac says, lazy.
Two minds on it. I think with his skills ability and demonstrated productivity he should have worked out as a useful player to someone in some role. Like a certain player who takes a knee, objective analysis would have to be he is better than people riding benches in MLS right now. In a rational world where history and personality aren't considered, he should be solidly in MLS as a supersub or role playing technical guy. But in the leading man role he thinks he deserves? at the salary demands he walked around with for a decade? without at least developing a team defense ethic? I agree he had some pressure on him, but I also think he had some limitations. His domestic league is a scrappy, fast, physical, team-oriented league. He is an eredivisie type slow technical player (I think you have the perfect choice for what we would call a Coca-Cola Player -- hits his home run pass attempts and then watches the rest of the action drinking a Coke not lifting a finger). I think he was destined to be one of those technical wunderkinds who struggles across the senior threshold because he isn't athletic or physical and he doesn't really play defense. Valderrama is basically the only player I know who took that attitude here successfully and he got away with it by sheer technique. And he never won a MLS Cup here. He needed to find a niche like at DC when he started, a team with tons of pieces already that could use his upside and hide his failings. But at this point you get into whether his career choices and salary demands and big aspirations ran counter to finding his perfect home. Some of this is being willing to say, I would rather take less money and a weaker team where I am a perfect fit.
I agree on lazy and the point to me is you can't play 10-on-11 defense in a league this physical and fast. He's like Alex Lopez in the sense of being technically gifted in moments but a 90 minute liability.
I don't disagree with you on him being lazy. I feel like that he always felt because he was so "gifted" that he didn't need to do that. Compounded by all the hype and never actually earning a starting role with DC when he joined the league.... he felt it should be given. I would have loved to see him go through the steps to being brought into big boy soccer and I think establishing a work ethic he would be one of our greatest players in US History... possibly
Giles Barnes and Alex Morgan bar shenanigans - I thought Giles loved The Vault the mks http://m.tmz.com/#2017/10/03/alex-morgan-giles-barnes-trespassing-disney-world/
This is great: http://m.chron.com/news/article/ale...-world-soccer-police-12249828.php?ipid=mobctp Giles Barnes cutting lines at Disney is tremendous, he probably showed more effort there than he ever did on defense for the Dynamo
Lightweights. I've been around the world and didn't even stumble. I got high fives. You have to nibble between the beers.
This is interesting...Dominic is the assistant coach at LA Galaxy ....never thought Sigi Schmid would be interested on Dominic Kinnear .....could it be LA Galaxy management taking an insurance policy just in case Sigi did not work out.....interesting !!
https://www.lagalaxy.com/post/2017/...chmids-top-assistant-im-here-help-him-insider Who knows if this is just coach-speak but Sigi says he went looking for Dom. And Dom says that they talked in the past about working together:
one train of thought is Sigi goes to the GM office and Dom takes the head coach as part of an fo shakeup.
Dom returns to the boss/owners he thrived under. AEG -- that leaves you alone to win and supports you with $$$. Makes sense to me. Don't we wish we had AEG back as owners now rather than the current disaster.