It's official... that it will be official on July 9th. https://www.sjearthquakes.com/post/2019/06/25/news-quakes-sign-mexican-winger-carlos-fierro
A bit underwhelming perhaps based on his recent playing record. But I have confidence that Almeyda knows he is a good fit for his system. So far, Almeyda's players have been good, expect maybe Lopez. And of course Lopez is still young.
Heh, we finally signed another Mexican player! Peter must be rolling in his grave... Sounds like a good signing. A little dip in his career the last couple of years, but hopefully, a change in scenery will help and being reunited with the coaching staff will be positive.
This is good: So he can play more than one position. We're going to need some flexibility. And Almeyda knows him. That's good too. BUT, we still need to sign another couple of players. Every other MLS club will be loading up. We need to improve just to keep pace. We need to improve a lot to gain any ground. Go Quakes!! - Mark
I'd say Almeyda more than knows him... he played 64 times for him. Scouting doesn't get better than that. In Almeyda I trust.
"The San Jose Earthquakes announced today that the club has signed Mexican winger Carlos Fierro using Targeted Allocation Money" So he is a TAM player, not a DP.
I agree with this in principle, but wouldn't it also have been Almeyda that shipped him away from Chivas?
I wonder how much we paid for him... I stand corrected: Fierro arrives on TAM, not a DP player. That said, per team’s spokesperson, #Quakes74 had to pay for the 24-year-old’s services, who was still under contract with Cruz Azul. https://t.co/r7pGDEzr8v— Joel Soria (@soriajoelfutbol) June 25, 2019
Seems unlikely that Almeyda would have been responsible for getting rid of a player. That's not typically how roster management works. At most, he failed to make a good enough argument for keeping him, but that's not the same thing. One thing that this signing does continue to suggest is that Fioranelli isn't able to identify player talent through either himself or his staff. Almeyda certainly gets the benefit of the doubt for the time being, but I'm not any more confident now than I was during the Stahre era that Fioranelli has any clue what he's doing as a GM. He really seems to push the responsibility of scouting on his coaches. That's not at all a good thing.
The Quakes have two persons in their scouting department, which places them at the bottom of the league for all teams reporting information for Grant Wahl's ambition rankings. (A couple teams did not complete the survey). Unsurprisingly, without a robust scouting department, the Quakes rely heavily on their network of personal contacts, including those of the coach, who will obviously have an outsized voice among the technical staff. Under these circumstances, it is a misguided notion that the Quakes' GM is to blame for a problem that obviously derives from inadequate funding from ownership.
🎙 NEW PODCAST 🎙@soriajoelfutbol joins the podcast to discuss the #Quakes74 newest signing, Carlos Fierro and other possible transfer moves the team is considering. ➡️ https://t.co/MMD7ptJIsQ— Earthquakes on NBCS (@NBCSQuakes) June 26, 2019
Am I the only one who thinks Shea Salinas (when healthy) might keep his left wing starting position? That doesn't bother me at all - Shea will retire sometime so it's good to have a backup ready.
If Fioranelli is unable to convince Fisher to get the scouting/analytics department to an adequate level, then that's a failure on his part. It's possible that no amount of persuasiveness would do the job, but given that they fired two coaches mid-contract and hired replacements that cost increasingly more money each, I'm not convinced it's strictly a monetary issue. It looks to me more like Fioranelli is simply comfortable relying on the "who you know" method, which if true, is unacceptable. Even with seemingly limited resources, there are practically no clear results of the front office doing much with regard to identifying talent post Kinnear. Granted, it does look a lot like they've shifted gears to focus much more heavily on talent development (which is very likely the right decision if this shifting trend in other sports is an indication), but my fear is that the success of the Quakes will rely almost exclusively on how good the coach is, and how much good players want to play for those specific coaches. It's precarious, since no coach stays with one team for all that long, and the Quakes have only managed to get exactly one good coach in the last decade.
How about the failure to secure a kit sponsor? Or a replacement stadium sponsor? The failure to build a training facility? The failure to place exterior cladding on the stadium? Or glass in the roof panels? The failure thus far to augment the size of the merchandise shop? The absence of merchandise in the airport or retail outlets around the Bay Area? The failure to hold more than intermittent viewing parties for away games? The failure to pay the league's best mascot a living wage? Or the failure to hire a permanent community affairs director to replace the one who quit to join tech at the end of last season, as well as her successor who quit after less than two weeks? Sure, blame Fioranelli for not coaxing more money out of ownership to rectify these numerous problems, among which I'm sure I'm forgetting several.
I don't think Fioranelli is directly responsible for anything you mentioned, outside of maybe (but not probably) the training facility. Those aren't soccer operations things. That's why I specifically mentioned the money spent on coaching changes, as that falls under the GM. As I said, it's not definitive that the lack in scouting is strictly monetary. There's most certainly a component of it, without question, but I doubt it's the only factor. I say this also because when money has been spent on the roster far above what was normally spent, that money has almost universally been squandered. Returns on DPs has been marginally better than those of the Doyle era, but if you're an owner of a team, what would your takeaway be when the highest earning player on the team goes from starting to sitting on the bench because a much older and cheaper player is outperforming him, only earning that spot back due to that older player's injury? Mine would be that my GM doesn't understand what players are actually worth in MLS, and thus, I'm not going to be extremely eager to hand over more money when it's very unclear whether or not that increased expense will yield a return. Again, on the other hand, the team has seemingly started taking the academy much more seriously, which is where MLS teams have the biggest gains to make. If it's a choice of a more robust scouting department or a more robust academy, I'm going to side on the academy for several reasons. But you still need your scouts and analysts to provide a reason for their existence within the team, and they aren't clearly demonstrating it from where I'm sitting. I'll say, too, that since I have no insight into how the team identifies and selects its players, I could very much be off base here, and if there is evidence that Fioranelli and staff are actually more responsible for the good signings than it appears, I'd love that. Given the types of players we've seen come and go based on who the head coach is, it just seems like they aren't actually doing much of anything other than asking the head coach who they want, and then trying to go after them. Some people actually prefer this method, I think. I'm just not one of them because I don't like the idea of the team always having to start over every time there's a coaching change.
Fisher obviously disagrees with you because Fioranelli is still here. If, for sake of argument, Fioranelli is manifestly incompetent and yet Fisher keeps him on, that's Fisher's fault, not Fioranelli's.
It is rather noticeable that Quakes staff at just about any level seems to change with the wind. "Who's my ticket rep this week?"
They made it fairly clear during their "Ambition" survey that they have a scout in the US, a scout in Europe, some informal local team partnerships and a coaching staff with Latin American connections. So far, this year the only MLS ready starters have come from Latin America so those are from the Coaching staff since we had no previous presence. All other avenues have not produced MLS ready players.