People may have missed it - I didn't see it mentioned here: Angking just had knee surgery, expected to be out something like 4-6 weeks. Sounds like meniscus to me. This early season hasn't been kind to our young players: Angking and Buchanan out with injuries, possibly Rennicks too.
Town soccer night. The Revs have been pushing hard to get the town soccer associations to commit large numbers to this game.
LOL - “paralyzed by a lack of confidence “ that has to be the lamest excuse for the Kraft’s mismanagement of the team I’ve heard yet. I thought Kraft was a savvy business man? Savvy businessmen aren’t paralyzed by lack of competence. They know that hiring the right people is a key to success. If their management teams are incompetent, they replace them. It’s clear to me that Kraft is satisfied with the status quo or else he would change it.
Why do you have to go into the excuse thing? No one ever said it was an excuse. It's just my uninformed speculation as to what I think, based on my own observations.
By all appearances so far this season it look to be that Penilla is (or at least is at high risk of being) Nemethed/Rowed/Nguyened/Kamara-ed, possibly even Dielna-ed or Somi-ed by Friedel.#NERevs— A Casual Fan (@A_Casual_Fan) March 31, 2019
It is strange that player after player, of proven success in the past, suddenly "do it to themselves" under Boss Brad. As if their very life is sucked out of them. Even stranger that when Boss Brad royally Nguyenizes them, and they end up at Team X, or Y, or Z they suddenly stop doing it to themselves and instead do it to the other team on the field. Boss Brad is a mighty Dementor.
I honestly felt like this happened under Heaps, too. It's a system issue. The apathy has decayed from the top and reached down to the locker room.
21 goals and 17 assists between the two of them last year. Their play has not been on par with last year but I am not sure its all on them. with the exception of the win, the entire team has looks like Ka Ka doo doo
Just a reminder that Nguyen put in his transfer request and stated he wasn't going to play for us even before Friedel was hired. Maybe if the Revs had hired Pep Guardiola, Nguyen would have reconsidered, but really Friedel had very little to do with Nguyen wanting out.
Friedel came in as their new coach last year - it's up to the players to get with the program. Diego has had plenty of chances, this year and last. Based on what he did against Cincinnati (nothing), he didn't deserve to start the next week. And, same thing with Penilla - who looked strangely disinterested in his last start. Now, lets see if these players have the fight in them to get themselves back in the lineup. It's their responsibility, not Friedel's.
Good stats! Lets break down when those goals occured: Diego 5g 5a before 7/1, 4g 3a after (with 2g 2a in october) Penilla 8g 4a before 7/1, 4g 2a after. Both banked a lot of last year's stats during the Revs' early season surge when teams were still figuring out how to play against them. Once teams started bunkering and daring the revs to get forward and break down a set defense the goals mostly dried up. Sports only cares about "what have you done for me lately" and for both guys they're coming up on a year of being below average performers
So lets take that 1 step further. After 7/1 the revs as a team scored a total of 15 goals in 17 games. These guys scored 8 of them. if teams figured out the Revs tactics then it was on Brad to change them up. He did not and the Revs were predictable and their traditional summer swoon turned into a California drought lasting into Sept. By July the entire team was in a funk, not just two players yet these two still accounted for over 50 percent of the scoring
Interesting debate here... How much is on Friedel and how much on the players? I realize that Football/Soccer is more of a team sport than some but your statement seems a bit over the top. I can't imagine many people agreeing that a new coach's "program" is a valid reason to drop a franchise player from the squad. Opening up the historical lens, I can't imagine the outcry if Bird, Magic Johnson, Jordan or Lebron were dropped by their coach. Similarly for Gretzky or Lemieux. Or back to football, Messi, Ronaldo. There was the recent Pogba/Mourinho thing but I'd say advantage went to the playing star in the end. Fagundez is a journeyman MLS squad player after so many years of coaching-neglect. But Penilla, sadly, was more or less the REV franchise player last year. I'm no more impressed than you by Penilla's play this season but I'm still awfully curious why the coach has to resort to dropping him from the squad. If it is for inability to "get with the program," then I am distressed. I put some responsibility on the coach to design a program that his top players can "get with." Further, I would say nearly the entire team has "looked strangely disinterested" at points this year. Why single out these two. Hopefully it is just for one game...
This is the big question. Much was made this offseason of how this is Brad's team now, he has "his" players. If "his" players can't find motivation to play, isn't that on the coach? If one or two players have an attitude/effort problem, you can bench them until they get out of the funk. But if half the team has tuned out because they don't have faith in the coaches system? You can't get rid of half the team, so the only option is to get rid of the coach. I don't think the Revs have reached that point yet, but I know they won't get very far on nothing but hustle.
good coaches will play to the teams strengths and develop a game plan based on the talent that he has not on how he wants to play
I used to say this back in the Heaps era. A good coach will look around at the players he has, determine based on the relative strengths and weaknesses of those players what the best style of play would be, and then implements it. Heaps wasn't particularly good at this, but Friedel seems to be even more inclined to dictate they system first and then try to make the players conform to it. Unlike Nicol, who realized that Dempsey was a player and had to be on the field somewhere, so he switched to a 3-5-2, even though we had 4 competent defenders, so one of them would have to sit. Somehow that seemed to work pretty well for us.
Good coaches (not that Brad is necessarily a good coach) also recognize that the most talented lineup isnt always the most likely to produce wins. And get that Pogba comparison out of here, Gil has played every available minute so far. Sitting Diego and Penilla is more comparable to whats happened with Ozil at Arsenal. Ozil is a good player but the rest of the team's strengths are maximized by playing in a way that doesn't use what he does best. Now maybe there is a workable 4-2-3-1 style formation where Gil plays as an 8, Diego plays as a 10, and Penilla plays up high as an IW. But so far Penilla has been ineffective this season at both attacking and defending on the wing, and adding another player centrally may end up making it easier to crowd out Gil (80% of our goals this season). That said, the team has 1 win so far, and it got it by playing a standard flat 4-4-2, a formation that doesnt have room for wingers who stay high or CM who dont defend.
If we're going to play the 4-4-2, for me the best forward pairing is likely going to be Agudelo as a holdup forward with Penilla running in behind.
Your player comparisons are over the top - those guys are/were not only legends on their teams, but legends in the history of their sports. Fagundez and Penilla are nowhere near that category. The reason for that is open to debate. I have seen many smaller players have enormous success up to a point where they start encountering bigger, talented players. I'm sure the wording was chosen for effect, but the more common and appropriate way to put is it that he didn't make the bench for this game. Let's not get too dramatic, it is one game. Now, if Penilla doesn't respond by convincing his coach that he belongs on the game-day, not to mention, in the starting lineup - that's on him. If Penilla worked his butt off in training and Friedel left him off the lineup, then that would be on him - but it's hard to imagine why he would. One would think that's exactly what Friedel wants to see and wants to reward and take advantage of. No, the entire team has not looked disinterested. Even in their worst showing (first half against Cincinnati), some players were working hard (though not necessarily well). When you throw in "the entire team", I think that's lazy analysis, i.e., they all stunk. Clearly there's a lot of frustration with the way the team has started. Some players react to that by ramping up their efforts even more, others let the frustration affect their game. Clearly the latter reaction isn't going to help the team get better and it seems to me that's the message that Friedel was sending (and should have IMO). A great example in the last game was Caldwell, who should have reason to be as frustrated as anyone - being in/out of the lineup, moved around to different positions, playing less than he used to, ... And, he responded by playing a terrific game, making the whole team better and making the formation succeed by holding down dmid on his own. And, you could add Cropper as another example. And, Anibaba.
I was glad to see Cropper get the start, and I thought he played pretty well overall. Deserving of another start. We've said this before, but how he could go from the #1 in 2017 to getting zero MLS minutes for the entire 2018 season seems like more than just a matter of "the other guys worked hard too an deserve a chance." If it was that, you'd think he'd at least get a few games....
I think the answer to that is that the Revs don't have a reserve team/league, so it is really hard for a bench player to outshine a starter in practice or scrimmages. And, it's even harder for goalkeepers, since no two practices/games/scrimmages have the same situations that test keeper's abilities.
No they aren't. Relativity does apply. Penilla was our Messi relative to the other players on the team, like it or not. In fact, since the REVs, even relatively, have much thinner rosters than the teams those legends play/played on, players like Penilla become almost too important to the team. As someone said in another post, SN found a way to get Clint Dempsey on the field. BF seems to find ways to push his best talent off the available roster. I think my original post put Fagundez in a lower category. Still, among the meager pickings on this Roster he is a relative standout. I think the original post admitted this could be for only one game. But the Dielna and Somi treatment of last year comes immediately to mind. As a team they have looked (would you prefer "appeared") disinterested. Friedel's public messages seem to be about effort. You are talking about "ramping up effort." I don't think the problem is effort. Overall, the problem is talent - we don't have enough. Secondarily, we probably suffer from a deficit of good coaching. May he "grow into it" soon.