I don't know what the opinion on the recently announced hiring of Clavijo is, but it seems that the general opinion on bigsoccer is that it's a bad idea to hire coaches that have been through the league once already. Based on the coaching moves this offseason, what with two of three open positions going to guys who have been in the league before, it seems that the league disagrees. However, there seems to be a good reason for bigsoccer's disapproval of rehires - no repeat coach has ever done better with his second team than he did with his first - six coaches have coached at more than one team in the league, and every one has a worse record (shootout-adjusted) with his second team compared to his first. Below is a summary: Code: [u]Win %[/u] [u]GP[/u] [u]W[/u] [u]L[/u] [u]T[/u] Bradley Chicago 0.60 151 77 48 26 Metrostars 0.50 60 22 22 16 Hankinson Tampa Bay 0.53 81 33 28 20 Colorado 0.47 114 39 45 30 Hudson Miami 0.60 50 27 17 6 D.C. United 0.45 58 19 25 14 Osiander Los Angeles 0.53 44 17 14 13 San Jose 0.39 35 9 17 9 Rongen Tampa Bay 0.66 32 19 9 4 New England 0.50 90 34 34 22 D.C. United 0.46 90 33 40 17 Zambrano Los Angeles 0.68 57 34 14 9 Metrostars 0.52 86 41 37 8 Overall First team 0.58 505 241 164 100 Second team 0.48 533 197 220 116
Interesting stats. I hope for the Rapids' sake Clavijo is the first one to break the mold. Remember, history does not actually determine the future.
note that the Bradley move and the 1st Rongen move were not firings and required draft pick compensation. the 2nd time around Rongen's contract wasn't renewed. Hudson's 1st team was contracted. Osiander, Zambrano, and Hanki - I don't know.
I think the biggest retard in MLS has got to be Dema, especially when.....oh wait, it says retreads. Nevermind...
I don't personally have an issue with hiring someone who's been previously fired in MLS (say...Myernick). I think the issue is that since MLS is so different and such a leap from the A-league/USL or College or foreign leagues, that's it's easier for GM's and Presidents who don't know a lot about soccer to just hire someone who used to coach in MLS. Hire a guy b/c he's a good fit--b/c he's the right guy for that situation. For instance, with Ellinger, we don't know at this point if he's got what it takes to be a successful pro coach. But we do know he's a successful youth coach and knows American talent very well. You can say the same things about Rongen. Is Rongen a retread in the sense that he was hired b/c he has pro experience? Or maybe he was hired b/c of his record working with youth players? Or b/c he connected with the TD for Chivas (who is Dutch)? Difficult to say.
Wait, Thomas Rongen is Dutch? I thought he was Mexican or at least of Hispanic heritage. Why else would Chivas de LA sign him to coach?
In light of Rongen's recent resignation, I thought I should bump this thread, and add this year's performance. The two retread hires have currently led their teams to the two worse records in the league, and while Rongen may have something of an excuse, Clavijo really doesn't. So the lesson, basically, is don't hire these guys. Code: Win % G W L T Rongen Tampa Bay 0.66 32 19 9 4 New England 0.50 90 34 34 22 D.C. United 0.46 90 33 40 17 Chivas 0.15 10 1 8 1 Clavijo New England 0.43 66 22 31 13 Colorado 0.27 11 2 7 2 Overall First Team 0.55 661 296 235 130 Second Team 0.47 554 200 235 119
Your post makes absolutely no sense. Do you honestly think that other coaches could have done better with these particular two teams? As for Chivas USA, it's an expansion team. Granted, the selection of players wasn't very good, but there were restrictions put on Rongen that were out of his control. I seriously doubt he was the idiot who thought has-been and never-were Mexicans would be able to win in MLS. Most team owners hire a team's first coach to build the team over several seasons. Expansion teams are supposed to suck. As for the Rapids, take a good look at the roaster and tell me if you think this team is capable of making the playoffs without divine intervention. The defense is decent but the midfield is useless and the forwards are pretty weak. Cunningham is the best and he's made a habit his entire career of following a good game with at least 3 invisble ones. Clavijo's doing what he was hired to do, build for the future.
With 2 expansion teams and an injury-decimated San Jose team in the Western Conference, Colorado absolutely should be a playoff contender. Some heads need to roll if the team is already giving up on the idea of making the playoffs.
Again, look at the roster. Sure, there's a possibility that the Rapids might reel in SLC, especially if there's more injuries to their veterans, but what good would that do? For 2005, the Rapids are simply not a MLS-level team in terms of talent. I doubt the team's going to give up this season. They certainly seem to trying harder and they're moving forward instead of bunkering like they did last year. But I think Clavijo knows what he has to do. Trading Hendo and Chung might not help this season but the allocation he got will help bring in a midfielder. Being realistic is not quite the same thing as giving up.
Could another coach have taken Chivas USA to the playoffs? Maybe, but probably not. Could another coach have done better than 1-8-1? Yeah, I definitely think so. I doubt there's a single silver bullet that explains why Chivas is so bad - it's not entirely their roster restrictions, it's not entirely their coach. But I think there are a lot of guys who could have done better than Rongen and, fortunately, I guess we'll get to test that out once Westerhoff takes the helm. As for the Rapids, yeah, that roster is not that bad, and would be significantly better if Clavijo hadn't Eric Denton, Wolde Harris, et al. The Rapids were 10-9-11 last year; regardless or whether they say they're rebuilding or not, there's no reason that this team should have gone from respectable, if extremely unattractive, under Tim Hankinson to terrible and unattractive under Clavijo.
1. Chivas should have done better on several fronts. --their talent selection was bad. If Rongen had no say in who was chosen (draft and expansion), that has something to do with his personality as coach--you know that there are a lot of other coaches in this league who would have insisted upon having say in who got drafted/brought-in. --Rongen should be a good enough judge of talent to have been able to tell before camp started that they didn't have the talent. I'm not arguing a coach should know exactly what kind of team you have before the season starts. But someone coming in to coach the Northern Virginia Royals shouldn't look at their talent the first day and go "you know--we can play with DC United no problem at all!" That they were bringing in guys from the git-go shows that the talent evaluation was way off. --the team has bounced around in terms of styles of play and approach (from trying to attack, play a more Mexican approach to possession, to more bunkering). Rongen never started out the season saying "we're an expansion team, we'll need to defend at first until we get our legs." Instead, he talked about attacking formations, the need to play entertaining football. Thomas Rongen is a nice guy and knows a lot of soccer. But I don't think he's a good coach, either tactically, man-management or team evaluation. 2. Colorado--you can look at this roster and say "how could they be expected to win?" Yep, their team right now looks like crap. And that's b/c Fernando Clavijo can't assemble a team. With NE his last year, he had the benefit of a ton of draft picks and allocations and expansion selections, got gifted Adin Brown and still had the wrong guys starting and a unit that looked incoherent. It's more accurate to look at the team the Rapids ended with last season: an outstanding defense, a real talent in Mastroeni, the leagues best GK in Cannon, lots of cap space and allocations available. The team from last year had some promising young mids like Cila and Beckerman, a good cornerstone to build around (Mastroeni), a great GK, a bunch of solid defenders, and cap room and allocations. They needed to add a good goal scorer and a talented creator in midfield. Not easy but also not too difficult given that the tools were there to do it with. Instead, Clavijo goes after Cunningham and a hodgepodge of foreign talent and a bunch of MLS also-rans (Harris-Denton). If you're building for the future, do you add Cunningham? The problem is that Rongen's resume looks attractive and Westerhoff was probably seduced by another dutchman. And Clavijo interviews well and was Bora's best buddy (and Bora's opinion probably carries some weight with Balboa). Rongen might have made sense for Colorado IF they intended to trade for a bunch of draft picks and really spend a few years drafting talent and let it develop. Rongen has a decent rep in that regard. And Clavijo--well, at least he speaks Spanish and his record with Haiti might have won him a little credibility with Mexican fans. But neither hire was wise. And yes, there are many other coaches (some in MLS, some with USL or assistants or in college) who'd have done better than both of those guys. In part b/c they'd have made smarter selections in the talent acquisition stage and followed it up with coherent direction for the team.
In all honesty there are very few coaches in MLS history that we should consider good. The only one that is on that list would be Bradley, but I have to admit that I think it was Nowak and not Bradley that coached Chicago. So here goes my list of strong coaches: Bruce, Sigi, Bradley, Yallop, and maybe Gansler. Nowak I'll add if he shows consistency (unlike Hudson, etc) and Zambrano may be a very strong coach (over .500 with two teams). I'm open for disagreement on that, but I do think that the evidense points to those being the best coaches in MLS history. Of those only 4 coaches have had 2 jobs (Arena, Bradley, Zambrano, and Yallop). Of those Arena was successful, Yallop unsuccessful, Bradley and Zambrano were average. So I think that you can say that coaches that succeed in MLS will continue to be average or better. So if we are going to have retreads in MLS I might suggest that Sigi is the only former MLS coach that should be rehired. However, I do not that the majority of this list are bad coaches. Rongen and Hudson come to mind here. They both had some pretty mediocre squads at DCU and for Rongen at Chivas. I think the biggest issue is that teams that only 3 coaching changes have ever happened on good teams: Galaxy (Sigi/Sampson), DCU (Arena/Rongen), San Jose (Yallop/Kinnear). When you look at the rest of these transitions they are typically going to clubs that are making a change because the team was bad to begin with. Hudson at DC is a great example. They did do better after he was there than the year before, but they were not good enough. Still, MLS has seen some strong coaches come through and MLS needs to be looking for more Peter Nowaks. Can anybody argue that the best coaching change in MLS history was Hudson out and Nowak in? Well, Nichols replading Clavijo worked out well for the Revs and Gansler replacing whoever worked out well for KC too I guess.
When Clavijo took over the team, there was very little cap space and no (as in absolutely none) allocations. And there was one 1st round draft choice and two 4th round choices. Also, one of the four supplemental choices was gone. FC was able to free up cap space through cutting deadwood like Darryl Powell and Zizi Roberts. Spencer retiring also helped a bit. The other errors in your post are almost too numerous to mention: (1) Cila was a forward, not a midfielder. (2) Anybody who has seen Beckerman play for more than a few games would have trouble with you calling him "promising". (3) There were no proven forwards on the roster. Cunningham was a steal in return for a lower draft pick in 2006. What you totally disregard is the problems of finding midfield talent (or any other talent for that matter) during a year when the rosters have expanded and there's two expansion teams. Especially when you have no (as in none)allocations . Clavijo did exactly the right things--he cleared out the players who weren't producing, tried to find some young talent, and set up the team for a couple of rebuilding years. JoeW, it's obvious you have an attitude about Clavijo but you need to get your facts right before posting. He's done the best with what he had and we're grateful that, unlike Hanki, he hasn't sacrificed the future for some limited respectability for now.
I agree with Denver, Colorado has been built to succeed in a few years, probably looking at 06'-07'. Some of the players picked up are, and I assume are cap friendly, with exceptions to Petke and Cunningham, not sure though. But Nkong, Luchi, and others seem promising, and are currently cap friendly, which is not a bad move. In reality Clavijo has done nearly the same job as Bradley with the Metros, although Bradley has built his team with really young talent.