a small team

Yeah, I was thinking of recent signings, but yeah Jebo was good. Only real stinkers so far have been Gregus and Calvo. I think Rodrigues is going to be at least pretty good. Trauco and Akapo TBD.

 

why?

 

'Twas a joke.

 

Yeah, I’d give that a red with no thought. Liner put his foot out and caught the other guy, all of his studs out. He recklessly endangered another player. Also, it was dumb. Dude was at a pretty acute angle, and help was on the way. But yes, I’d hand out a red for that. Of course, I’d be quicker to hand out cards than most refs.

Go Quakesfans!!

 

Monteiro was a table scrap so you've contradicted yourself.

How can you even rate Rodrigues yet? He hasn't even played 10 fuc*ing games.

Right now Trauco, Rodrigues and Akapo are hot garbage until they prove themselves otherwise.

Montiero leaves Philly and all of a sudden they get to the Cup. He comes here and we're one of the worst in the league. He's not bad, but he's not good. He's not going to elevate this team by himself and we should aim for better?

And whats wrong with "MLS Scraps"? We built our culture around castoffs in the past when we found ourselves successful and we can do it again with the right moves. A lot of MLS teams get scraps and they become staples. We've found some pretty good 'scraps' over the years. Ching, Davis, Waibel, Mullan, Ale Moreno, Clark, Hernandez, Wondolowski, Busch, Goodson, Chavez, Gordon, Lenhart, Lagos, Eboboisse and Cronin are all 'scraps' by your logic.

 

Nice list! They all had something to prove and showed it on the field.

Will never forget driving on 10th Street one morning and seeing Manny Lagos jogging around the grass parking lot outside Spartan Stadium, no one else around. I honked my horn and yelled something out the window. He raised his fist and kept on jogging.

He raised the MLS Cup a few months later (2003)...

 

I think that would have been really hard to see in real-time. If I did see the foot go up like that, I probably would have called PK, not sure I could see force or judge intent from the position I would have been in to give a red.

 

Trying to judge intent is dangerous. Particularly when filling out the incident report. It’s usually better to stick with straight facts and not bother with interpretation, IMO.

 

That’s why I never red card anybody - I hate the paperwork! Sort of like why cops sometimes let folks off….

 

Usually smarts and ambition are positively correlated...

In any case, no team has to pick between the two, "should we be smart OR should we be ambitious?" False dichotomy. So yes let's be smart AND ambitious. Right now there's plenty of evidence that the Quakes are NEITHER.

But when people suggest the Quakes should be more ambitious, countering with "No they should be smart instead" makes no sense.

The market for front office executives, and the market for coaches, both work similarly to other markets like that for players, where you usually have to spend more money for higher quality.

 

I don't think they are positively correlated, and besides "ambition" is poorly defined or undefined. Is it money? Is it really really "wanting to do well"? And how do you quantify that? What the hell is it?

I never said that teams have to pick "amibitious" or "smart". I'm saying that "smart" dwarfs ambition, whatever that is. An owner may be more or less invested in the success of the team, but is going to hire a GM to run the technical side of the show. He / she may be really motivated to hire the best GM or not, but the key is to be smart enough to pick the right one. And a really good, smart GM gives the team the best chance for success.

 

am·bi·tion
/amˈbiSH(ə)n/
noun

1. a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work.
   
   • desire and determination to achieve success.
     

 

And yet the Argos won a championship with Beavis-the-backup-QB, while TFC finished back of the Quakes in the standings despite overpaid Italians.

Some Canadian chick wrote a hit song about this phenomenon.

 

there are always outliers and exceptions, I'm sure you're not suggesting that ambition isn't important, right?

 

I am suggesting “ambition” is ironic.

Butthead-the-back-up-goalie was MLS Cup MVP this year on the same roster with Gareth Bale and Carlos Vela.

 

Yes, it was a red card. However, the MLS referees were horrible the first 10-15 years of the league.

Any play that had Tim Martin was WTF material. Tim Martin = WTF.

 

Tim Martin would fit well with some of our current people... lmao

 

I spent a few minutes talking to Tutul Rahman this morning at the WC viewing party. His title is VP of marketing. He mentioned that the Quakes now have “the largest” analytics dept in MLS, i.e. 3 people, plus Bruno Costa in the scouting dept. They are going to use some software that will let them analyze players all over the world. I guess that was the job that Replikait applied for?

I can’t imagine that this approach is really going to work.

 

I'm glad Tutul is sticking around. Didn't want him to get too discouraged after that crappy year last year (his 1st I believe) and bail.

 

Yeah, Tutul seems like a really nice and smart guy. I didn’t want to grill him on why he likes his job, but I can’t help but think, what a waste of time to try and grow the Quakes around here.

 

Well if you want a challenge, this is it!

 

LOL. Did you just compare the Quakes to the Warriors? Since we are playing this game, what did safe the Warriors?