I think you guys just like reading what you've typed. We sucked for a lot of years and there were changes to try and be better. Nothing more or less.
It is absolutely not unsubstantiated because Kaval said it, clear as day. What he said in 2013 is not relevant. One can certainly change their mind / perspective / plan after the passage of 3 years time. And it is hardly surprising that Kaval would say / think this anyway. He undoubtedly heard the feedback from the fans. FWIW, Dom's response is that, well, it's about winning - winning is exciting. And that is a fair perspective. I would not be the least surprised if the Quakes had won consistently under Dom / Doyle, Kaval would not have fired Doyle. I don't think he is all that much of a soccer style connoisseur. But at that time the Quakes were not winning much, and the style of play left much to be desired. Kaval is simply stating what he wants to see out of the product he is trying to sell. I don't know. He has not really articulated anything clear about style of play or the notion that his "preferred style is winning". I get the "just win" mentality, but for me, style matters. I have been on record with that perspective multiple times. To me there is no right or wrong in that, just personal choice. And in any case, I don't think the two things, winning, and style of play are necessarily orthogonal. And I think there are some out there who would agree. ------------------------------- There you go again. I recognize this type of psychology: "Everybody but you". Mob mentality. Single out and ridicule the "oddball". As I said before, go ahead. I can take it. I try to be as honest and thoughtful with my opinions as I can be. I don't worry about going against the grain nor do I worry about the encroaching mob.
The "mob" appears indifferent to this discussion. I appear to be the only one actually engaging your deconstruction of events, Mr. Maverick.
I have no friggin clue what Stahre will do in terms of style of play or anything else, but instead of vehemently arguing one side or the other based on limited information I'm just gonna wait a month and see for myself.
There is a lot of discussion in this thread that is not about "arguing vehemently" over what style of play Stahre will employ. Some of the questions debated: Does style of play even matter, or is it "just win baby"? Did Doyle lose his job in part due to the Quakes style of play being deemed "boring"? What style of play does Jesse want the team to play, and should he define the style of play? How much influence does Jesse have over the style of play the coaches employ? What did Johnny Moore say about style of play in the context of his definition of "Earthquakes soccer"? (Hint: see my new sig ).
I agree that we need to develop a Quakes style of futbol, but, I also think that's going to take time. We might start to see it by the end of 2018, maybe. Mikael is going to need to helm this ship for at least three seasons to get everyone moving in the same direction. I think style of play matters, and I think it's helps put butts in the seats. (And get business partners, sponsors, and such.) Doyle, and Frank, and Wat(TF), and Dom all lost their jobs in part because they were both boring and unsuccessful. Kaval watched the Copa America and wanted us to play stylish attacking soccer. He and I discussed this at some length. He was pissed at both Doyle and Dom for playing boring soccer. "If you're going to play boring, you have to win, and we aren't winning." That's a direct quote. I don't know what style Jesse wants. I imagine that Jesse has a lot of influence over his coaches, but I think he's also going to give them plenty of rope. This is unsubstantiated guess work on my part. But we do know that Jesse can fire Mikael. Wee Man wants us to play possession oriented attacking soccer. So do I! GO Quakes!! - Mark
Yet Kaval only fired Doyle, not Dom. And his direct quote suggests that if the team was winning, boring soccer would be acceptable. I think that is indeed, and always was, the baseline. Doyle was not fired for boring soccer, at least not solely for boring soccer. And not solely for boring soccer while simultaneously not winning. Otherwise, Dom would have been fired by Kaval, as well.
I think that Kaval wanted to fire Dom, but thought that the new GM should make that decision. It might also be that Mikael was not available until this season, and therefore the decision was made to keep Dom on for the short term. OR, they could have thought that too much change too rapidly could upset the players even more and wreck our season completely. Look at all of the changes we've had since the middle of the 2016 season. Doyle out. ChrisL to Acting GM. Kaval to the A's. Jared Shawlee as acting President. Jesse in as GM. ChrisL back to Technical Director. Ian to Head Coach at Reno. ChrisL overseeing the creation of the Reno team. Lots of new players brought in. Bruno brought on as head of scouting. Alex Covelo new Head of Methodology. Tom Fox in as President. (This might be out of order.) Dom fired. ChrisL to Temp Head Coach. ChrisL back to Technical Director. Mikael in as Head Coach. Jyri in as GK Coach. Tim out as GK Coach. Alex de Crook in as Assistant Coach. More new players and dudes brought up from Reno. That's a whole boatload of change (and I'm probably missing some). We've turned over a lot of the director and executive level folks running the club. We've brought in people to run organizational parts of the club that we never had before. (I take this as a good sign.) We've brought in a bunch of new players, starting with the new overseas signings from last season. A bunch of our dudes have retired or been traded. It's a very different team now than it was the day before we sacked Doyle. So it might be that they wanted to limit the amount and speed of change, because they knew that there were a ton of changes in the works. Or I could be wrong about that. Go Quakes!! - Mark
I think that's right. It think it makes sense to hire the right GM and let the GM make that call. If you get the right guy at the top the rest of it will fall into place. In comparing the Doyle regime to the Jesse regime I think it's only fair though to consider how much more money we are spending. We've got a head of scouting, "director of methodology", using all this TAM / GAM, spending a lot more on DP's, etc. It could be 2x or more. But OTOH, Doyle may not have ever really pushed for that kinda budget. He may have just said, "aw, shucks, small club, this is how we roll".
I think this is true. In my conversations with Kaval, he said that Doyle could have asked for more money, but didn't. Perhaps Doyle was trying to be careful with the company coin? In the belief that they were going to spend a boatload of cash on a new stadium and he should go light on the spending until they did? The academy got started on Doyle's watch, so there's more money. And the practice field (possibly paid for by Amway?). But I also think that Doyle just thought of us as small market, and he probably didn't want to put in the necessary effort to compete on a budget, or maybe he was just dumb. Hard to say. Go Quakes!! - Mark
Possibly what it was is that Doyle was just unable to think bigger, and by keeping it "small club" it was in a comfort zone for him, and also he had kind of an "out" with management for tepid performance. "Well we haven't been doing so hot, but we're doing it on a budget, so.....".
So, why wasn't Doyle dismissed earlier? Kaval was hired in late 2010 and he sacked Doyle in late 2016, six years later and almost nine years into his tenure. Two playoff berths in six seasons under Kaval and zero in the final four of them. If Doyle had an open wallet, why didn't Kaval insist he spend sufficiently to produce a winner? And if Kaval had an open wallet, why is the stadium open on one end and still missing its "skin"?
We were running a skeletal operation until Avaya opened. I dont think pressure ever really hit the FO until they ran out of valid excuses.
The wallet wasn't completely open, it just wasn't as tight as Doyle thought. Does that make sense? He could have spent more, but didn't. Kaval dramatically increased the amount of money they originally planned to spend on the Epicenter. So Dave did well to get more money out of the owners. Whereas Doyle didn't. As to why Dave didn't fire JD sooner, I don't know. Maybe he couldn't? Maybe his bosses wouldn't let him do it sooner? Maybe Dave needed some time to get up to speed on soccer? Perhaps it took him too long to realize that we sucked? I'm not sure about that part. We appear to be in better hands now. Go Quakes!! - Mark
Agreed, I will put aside my poison pen for the period of one month's worth of play before I excoriate him.
I hope not to excoriate him, because I hope we are doing well and I can be happy. Even if we aren't doing great one month in, I'm inclined to be patient. It may take us a while to hit our stride. Also, we have only three games in March. Our first six are: 03Mar18 - MiniSoda 17Mar18 - @ Sporks 31Mar18 - NyckF*ck 07Apr18 - @ Filly 14Apr18 - DynamoeHumms 21Apr18 - @ Disney That's three at home, three on the road. Only the Sprks and NyckF*ck look like the might be top tier teams. We should crush the Loons and Fillies. So that might give us a clue about how we're going to do this season. Go Quakes!! - Mark
I have to say, trying to figure out which teams you're talking about anymore through the belittling nicknames is becoming increasingly difficult.
Oh snap! I thought most of those were pretty clear. Dang! Do you need a decoder ring? Go Quakes!! - Mark