As always, I read each and every post from all y'all. This off season's recent posts from yesterday and today, y'alls takes keep showing through that each of us Dynamo junkies can verify what ills our roster has. We also can easily read between the lines of what our club is looking to sales pitch fans. This occurring all while our FO is sticking to a retread script. Their plans for the future which is forcing us old guard to question said repeated script, thus challenging our desire to purchase tickets for next year. Do we go long on their rhetoric? Do we gloss over the firings at home office to cut costs, needs verification tbt, and of course de we all once again get excited about our last place team landing a new coach. This Coach Olsen hire one year on of them asking us to get excited of the Coach Nagamura hire.
Onstad in an interview sort of adjusted the “nasty” comments, saying that the team didn’t have enough “fight” or “desire to get a result”. I’ll post the link in a little bit for full context
Is it too late to get Rob and Ryan to take over the team? They seem to put their money where their mouth is and we'd get a fun documentary. What little excitement I had during last season has evaporated and I'm left with frustration. This coaching hire is crap. Is Ben really any better than Nagamura? If so, what has led you to think that? According to Wikipedia, he coached for 10 years at DC United, ended with a losing record, and -49 Goal Diff, and NO MLS cup appearances
The Olsen interview with Glenn was excellent. Much better than the press conference IMO. More relaxed, less guarded, some good insights. Every Dynamo fan should listen to the 20 minutes with Glenn. that said, we definitely are going to be in some 0-0 rock fights this upcoming season.
he did make the playoffs 6 times. East usually was weaker than the West but still that’s 5 more times than the Dynamo in the last 10 years
6 of 10 seasons in the playoffs, that’s really all I need. Dynamo are allergic to the playoffs so who cares what Olsen’s trophy cabinet says, we need playoff appearances and regular season points. From 2014-2019 Olsen had 4 50+ point seasons. In that same span the dynamo broke *40* points 3 times. We can’t judge this hire on where we want to be, we have to judge it on where we are now.
Nagamura was a mistake. I think it seemed questionable as a hire, and not inspiring either. Olsen is a seasoned coach (yeah, I know, Owen Coyle was too) who probably fell more into the category of a known quantity who can coach us up into the playoffs in one season. I do understand it. One thing I don’t understand is this slavish devotion to “game model” stuff. Seems like we are force fitting things
the problem with the DC = houston argument is we appear to have a running GM competence problem combined with an overempowered GM problem. in plain english, we can't identify and acquire talent right. but the guys given that power also gets big picture tactical control and to wield their egos around like they own the place. it sounds like one issue with nagamura is he took one look at the roster and decided to be less proactive. as i droned in detail earlier, i don't see where we currently have the people to do it. didn't last year. don't now. whether nagamura should have chosen some other tactics than he did, i think he was right to reject his orders. but if it's this dictatorial and hierarchical, that plus losing is terminal. you last less than a year. so i got the vibe that he went to olsen with the same orders, "proective," etc. benny, despite being known as a catenaccio guy, said aye aye. but we still don't have the people for it. you can talk all you want about we intend to implement _____, we have 10 slots, right now it's not there. not sure why you pick something not there as your goal. most teams pick tactics closer to the pool on hand. having accepted the GM's orders, HC then has to await GM to hand him the roster. notice how much of this scenario is a HC depending on a GM on everything but who starts, who dresses, and when we sub. problem being, when i was listing yesterday the reasons we aren't ready to high press in bulk, part of that is, say, making coco permanent, and signing HH. GM wants to press. GM can't find good defensive players to press. kind of like HC wants wings and wingbacks, GM can't find them with a telescope and pickaxe. this is bad. you have a GM empowered to order the coach around, and to shorten HC careers if they buck his directives, even if they are a fair response to the roster at hand. you then have a poor GM in practice, who can't bat high enough a batting average to staff up a competitive team to play how either he or the HC want to play. 5 year communist plans. bucked by local leaders. local leaders cause famines trying to follow both party directives and yet implement policies they think respond to local issues. party official uses local leader as scapeegoat, tells the new local leader to do the same thing with the same lack of central resources provided. one big loop. i think, while not erupting into public spats in the press, we have a definite destructive interference problem -- in physics terms -- between the HC and GM. i don't see how you play defensive soccer with HH and coco, neither of whom defend well at this point. with present personnel i don't see why we are doing pat's thing over ben's usual approach. big picture if we keep the DPs plus hadebe, and reiterate that we ARE PLAYING PROACTIVE SOCCER to the next coach, that kind of sounds like the GM perseverating about tactics and personnel. GM ordered something to happen last year with a poor team. didn't work. GM thinks we should have enough. GM thinks we should play a certain way. GM is not a coach and never has been one. GM has generally f*cked up on personnel. but guess who's boss. GM orders another try and only churns about 10 guys. anyhow i think you have to detonate both the roster and. the org chart. get down to it i don't buy onstad can staff up a team to play the very tactics he dictates. i think we have been stuck in some version of this since jordan, who wanted entertainment. the GMs are not good enough and definitely not good enough to be this powerful. this needs to be either reunified as a single HC/GM or the GM needs to report to the HC. i realize this is a little irregular but the HC needs to decide direction and the GM then needs to competently or excellently feed his wishes. this is turning into not just a mess but one where the leadership isn't even rowing the same direction. even olsen i can just feel a vibe where it's like dude you know i play a way, if you order me to i will try your way, and come down to it, if you don't give me what i need, i will try and outlast you and go back to doing what i really want. and i think one aspect of this hire is that while a dubious choice, losing record and all, he does have some resume heft and history to push back. i already thought i saw some stuff in that call transcript where it's like, i am now going to trust pat to get me what i need. he is neither so green nor weak as to say "i think i have enougb here." this needs to get where it's 1 or 2 dudes rowing in a winning direction and no more scheming, setting up, dictating, etc. for a bunch of machiavellis this is a sh*t soccer team.
But he made the playoffs a few times without big investment -- that seems to define Dynamo ambition. On the Rob and Ryan idea -- exactly what we need. Monied owners who don't get involved in the decision like Segal, I'm guessing under Garber's advice, is doing.
let's be real, when you're saying they're trying to squeak in -- they don't know how much it takes -- don't have the first clue based on hearing pat. the only team we've had make the playoffs was loaded and it got 4 seed and out in the semis. they need to update their idea what it takes. cabrera got the front end of 3 excellent forwards' careers -- CF with team record in goals, one of the most dominant forwards in the region in elis, and then quioto who has had a long starting career productively in this league. plus cubo off the bench. plus an older alex to feed them. he then had a pretty good defense which a couple years earlier would have been championship caliber. if he'd had the 2013 version of those players and not 2017 and then 2018-19 and them falling apart, our GA would have been down in the 30s and we'd have competed for the title. but they were 30 and best years behind them. so one decent year then several bad. which then weighed down the offense 2018 and beyond, that and selling alex. but as is it was a 4 seed. 4. that's a bunch of quality forwards and 10, and then a good backline a couple years too old. the only F near the right caliber is sebas and that's kind of like cubo without any help. and the defense would not confuse anyone with beasley and AJ. if i really wanted to get punchy it's a 433 with a crap midfield and then wingbacks who can't mark. beasley and AJ could occasionally get forward but were there primarily to stay back and defend home. that became passe and this started plummeting. the old mids could either create stuff or stop someone all night. this midfield is like a parody of a midfield. people talking up attackers who might score a goal and assist a year when more than that used to get martinez run out of town. people acting like coco and HH can defend when they're swiss cheese. someone mentioned the card count and pretended that means we're nasty. no, that meant we took ramos' eredivisie swiss cheese and told it to yank down anyone about to get past them. so, more professional fouls. coco in particular, since people ignore it. that does not mean we're already nasty. we play frustrated -- "woah there before you run off i am pulling your shirt" -- not mean. mean is go watch italy a year ago, atleti, teams like that. you get the ball and 5 guys are swarming you and stripping the ball off you. and they pick up cards but also win the ball over and over and you can't build past the halfline without earning it. outside of a handful of elite teams, to me, pressing is what ivy league teams do to dumb athlete state schools who got in march madness finishing 5th in ACC or SEC with a record like 18-12. this is not march madness and a naively hyperaggressive defense will get abused over a league schedule like if princeton had to play duke or NC or UCLA every week in a conference. you know, the teams with better and smarter ballplayers. read LAFC and the union into that.
surely you all grew up playing with technical players -- juggle kings -- who could not handle the speed of play or physicality above about U14, ended up stalled at JV and making their senior varsity bench even if they used to be on the best club teams. i say this because IMO you select for nasty. you cannot teach "effective nasty." someone either has the physical tools, defending knack, and motor, or not. you cannot coach soft players to be much more than slightly less soft. i say this because read that protected list FW Corey Baird MF Adalberto Carrasquilla GK Steve Clark DF Griffin Dorsey FW Sebas Ferreira DF Teenage Hadebe MF Héctor Herrera DF Adam Lundkvist FW Nelson Quinones DF Daniel Steres FW Thor Ulfarsson MF Matias Vera Juan Castilla, Brooklyn Raines, Daniel Rios Xavier Valdez Defender Ethan Bartlow and tell me if that sounds nasty. even potentially, if the coach took the whip hand. or, more pointedly, if you could do much of anything. but my point here is if this is to be the detroit pistons, you don't do that signing steve kerr and telling him to be more nasty. you start assembling rodman, salley, laimbeer, and then a head coach who licenses them to be them and teaches some dark arts. that's how actual nasty works. sorry but effective nasty IMO is first personnel and only then coaching. you sign and trade for hard dudes and cut choir boys. you don't spend too much time badgering choir boys to get stuck in. they either do or don't.
I understand this view. I don't want to disrespect it. But I do want to add this thought: The league has more teams with more ambition now. Look at the teams spending big and aiming to win it all: LAFC, LAG, ATX, MINN, NASH, POT, SEA. That is seven right there. Teams that are happy to make the playoffs every now and then are not going to find much room to do so and really have no chance at all to be champions if they do eek into the playoffs. BTW ... STL has sold 60,000 season tickets and they are going to be big spending and ambitious.
ben's trend line is down since roughly around when kinnear was coaching here. and at that time kinnear was better for us than ben was for DC. people understand that, right? when ben had DC in the semis our coach had us in the final. so if that matters...... it then deteriorated slowly from there. sounds familiar. only difference is they stayed in the east and kept squeaking out the odd first round exit every 2-3 years. by the end ben couldn't make it with DC. not sure how that helps us. like i was arguing when this first got theorized, not sure how a coach who seems to rise and fall on the talent that year's roster has, can help a team digging from a hole. what you want is a mastro type where he arrives and the switch flips and they are a playpff team. kind of like i was saying the tactics need to fit the roster, well, the coach needs to be suited to the actual task he will begin being handed -- this is going to at least start out, looking like sh*t still. can you stabilize that or do you get 3 wins. his history says he's not a miracle worker. we need to quit hiring coaches for the team we wish we were. hire for the team we have. if you want to hire aspirationally we should have torn the team down this winter. then you can make it whatever. he wants nasty, sign nasty. he wants tidy, sign tidy.
wait, we actually eliminated DC in 2012, i forget this. so his calling card, peak DC, is losing to kinnear. abandoned the coach, the tactics, and ironically having circled the drain, when we get hostalgic, we bring back a coach the legacy team beat. this is like a xerox of a xerox and not even of our own team. and then runnerup year 2 DC implodes and we make the final and olsen finishes last with 3 wins and 16 pts. which this never got that bad. that's how he handled going on a budget.
the new heirs to the dynamo are teams like nashville, RSL, minnesota. not sure why we're picking around the DC and SKC remainder bins. i feel like this team is a dated nostalgia act. like berhalter gets hired in 2019 because the minority votes in USSF wanted him on his 2015 season. times move on, how about finding present successes? nashville quietly tied with seattle for the most USMNT world cup players from a MLS team. (and with leeds and FFC overall) fwiw moore made the roster. $2m fee. $700k salary. steres, coco, clark, quinones, thiago, HH, sebas, etc.
New podcast episode up on @HoustonDynamo presentation of Ben Olsen and the direction of the club. #InsideTheHexagon available on @ApplePodcasts @spotifypodcasts #HoldItDown #DejaloTodohttps://t.co/PHCazUZyU8— Victor Araiza (@victoraraiza) November 11, 2022 Another critical look at the he Olsen hiring
You have a point. Even still teams can go up and down pretty easily when you’re only allowed to spend multiple millions on salary for 3 positions. SKC is a better organization than 4 of the teams (ATX, MINN, POT and STL imo) but lose 2 DPs in the preseason and free fall. Teams that lose DPs through less tragic methods never bat 1.000 in replacing them. Atlanta was supposed to dominate MLS for years to come yet they falter often in the recent years. I think you’re very right in the short term but you can’t figure out what’s going on 3 years from now. as an aside for STL. They may have a lot of support but I don’t trust them to make good roster decisions. They’re spending $1.5million in salary on a goalkeeper. That’s insane for MLS. Not only do you not have to use an international slot on a GK (hello Marko Maric) but you certainly don’t have to make them a DP! So yea I don’t trust STL to be all that good out of the gate at the very least.
i posted the other day how our most recent finalist history dates back to our brief eastern period. that was the last point we were consistently competitive. DC at that time was literally second fiddle to us in 2012, before gutting their payroll at which point they became a team that would barely make it then lose, or not at all and have some awful years like 3 wins. in the east. which is point 2. DC was a marginal playoff team in the east those years you're pointing at. they are not the NY teams constantly in for it. they are not TFC or atlanta that were elite but fell off. they aren't even columbus that bounces between good and mediocre. DC's good years are literally a decade ago. DC since then has been something closer to vancouver or RSL. like teetering between a first round exit and not in at all. at which point, the east is simply easier. you see from our history way back when. you see it lately. we beat NER, miami, and chicago. we could have had a result on montreal but blew it at the end, and lost a couple more 2-1 games to east teams. the only one we were uncompetitive in was philly. i don't see the west this way. you have seattle and 2 LA teams. you have portland. you have the 2 other texas teams in the ascendant. you have the scrappy trio of RSL minnesota nashville that all know how to punch over their weight. the only team keeping us consistent company at the bottom is SJ. what concerns me is the mix of big budget teams and scrappy units that churn out playoff appearances. and that's not a "quitter" line, that's a cut the crap line. you either spend the budget. or it probably takes a degree of organization that is superior to three teams that have their crap together on a budget. i don't see the short cut where you half cook the tactics and slap together enough of a team. that's not enough to compete with healthy well assembled budget teams. and you are not going to just half cook your way past teams whose whole success is their discipline and a couple stars. the last time we got it done we tripped over one of the best regional forwards and as such got him cheap, tripped over a colombian who set the scoring record, and then got one of elis' buddies for the other side. we had a guy who scored 15 who could come off the bench and take kicks. we had a 10 in double figures to set them up -- and we now resist that idea like a virus. we then had the retirement years of some league defensive player of the year or USMNT types, in the back. it was a "checkbook quality" team that just happened to be gotten on the cheap. the years since suggest most years our GM hirees can't repeat that. it was not a disciplined team like the scrappy trio. it was a go end to end and beat people 3-2 team. once the defense weakened we started tying and losing as the GA ballooned -- despite scoring as many as 58 goals (and then having zero GD because the defense was so awful). so, realistically, we need a tactical mousetrap better than the scrappy 3, with all the players to execute it, or we need to trip over another generation of elis/quioto/manotas/cubo. which, we did trade fafa, and DQ is in limbo, but baird and dorsey and co. make me question if we quite understand what we face. this needs to either be drilled -- and not a gimmick, but something that works every week -- or this needs to turn out like we spent money whether we did or not. there is no try hard. i don't buy there is we play a gimmick and try to squeeze past teams that play honest hard soccer. we are in the wrong conference to slap something together. i am skeptical because we just appear to simply not "get it." if you think sebas is manotas or cubo then you need to go get that same level support around him. i am skeptical that happens if you protect the current DPs and try to get it done on $400k contracts around the core spending. it most certainly didn't happen on $200-300k loan players, that was a f*cking joke. and they can't just be baird-decent, like i was saying, a 4 seed is having the next elis around. elis had some seasons at olimpia which hinted at reality. searching transfermarkt for U20s who never played a first team game isn't going to do it, not unless you hit the lottery. and with our degraded team you'd need to hit the lottery 2-3 times. to be fair, they did find raines, but that's kind of the slow pace of recent talent ID, is about one good player a year. at that rate, 2030, if no one leaves. pat even kinda says something similar with his little "6 point improvement" crack, except, dude, that's your problem and not ours. those 6 points aren't for lack of the players trying. it's the team you assembled. he often seems to try to float above it like he's glenn davis or something. this is "your" team. when you're like, "they only got 6 points better," you ID'd the people and signed the deals. you don't get to act like you're up in space floating in a station looking down on us like ants. you're one of the lead ants.......
Listening to Glenn’s full show, Eddie Robinson said it was his understanding that Olsen was told he had to win now. The job was a tough sell to many coaches due to no DP slots and limited allocation money to work with.
Listened to that too. Definitely adamant on that. Also said that 3-4 starter upgrades needed, which is fair imo. Interestingly he said the the priority for signings needed to be on the offense (this is obviously before the Parker trade).
My guess is we probably end up with 2 upgrades and try to coach up another 2 or take a cheap lottery ticket on some guys with upsides. Just doesn't seem like we have the cap space to do too much. Every non-official message and even some from Onstad has been 2023 is a must make the playoffs season. So don't be surprised if we see a lot of meh-type solid guys that they think can get us to 50 points in 2023 with limited upside. I'd also note that Glenn and Eddie especially seem a lot more open and critical this year as compared to others. Its very fair criticism. Maybe since they may or may not have jobs thru the team due to the Apple TV deal it may be easier to be critical. ERob I think a few weeks back on Glenn's show even expressed disappointment that no one from the FO higher levels came up to them at the final ATT Sportsnet game to thank them for the years of local work.
The club has lost . . . . something relating to culture. Think it is trying to bring it back but stumbles in execution. Who is left in the Dynamo organization that worked here before 2013?