It's Monday Night Futebol in Coimbra as 15th place Academica host 8th place Belenenses (everyone else played over the weekend, so these two have a game in hand). O Jogo does not list Kenny Cooper as a likely starter, but has him on the subs' bench: http://www.ojogo.pt/20-275/artigo424278.htm Game should start at about 330 ET in the US.
I cannot disagree...but the lads attitude is great...just that he is stuck with a team and a coach who are unwilling to do a "Klinsmann" and get rid of a bunch of under performing, older players...Academica has some young players ( Cooper included) who can play and do the business....the amateurs who run the club won't allow this....
Oh come on. None of you know if Cooper should be starting or not. It's not like the coach has not played him -- he has. The coach just thinks -- at this moment and maybe it will change -- that his other options are better. Maybe he is right, maybe he is wrong, time will tell. But the purpose of the loan was to expose Cooper to another soccer culture and let him compete for a job -- which is happening. There is no guarantee of playing time in a year-long loan, it has to be earned.
Yeah, but the idea that simply earning it, as you say, is the only thing that ä given coach or club considers in putting a guy out there is naive. Often, there are other reasons and you know this, too. This is not to say that Cooper has earned it but is being unfairly shut out for some other reason. But it is to say that that is a distinct possibility.
At this age, he needs to be playing. If this is not happening here, he needs to switch clubs pronto. One year is too long to only get mop-up minutes on the field (I doubt Portuguese league has a reserve set-up (matches) as organized as Premiership....nor as good a quality. The cultural stuff is nice, but these are critical development years....in the case of Spector, at least he is getting solid reserve time as he waits...and Cooper is a couple years older too (so not as much 'time' left to 'develop'). What's most frustrating: Academica really seems to suck in attack. How can he be much worse (production-wise) to what they have? A couple starts would seem more than legit, unless he crotch-grabbed his coach in practice... You are certainly right that none of us know the real story, but it ain't adding up well here...
Really? If I were to guess, and that's really all any of us are doing given how we don't see enough of the players involved to have an informed opinion, is that this coach is like 80% of his brethren and is scared -- scared that if he goes down playing young guys, he will be fried, so if he is going to lose, he will do it with "names." Nothing sinister or complicated, just basic human nature. But it could be that Cooper is not as good as the other guys and that he simply is not going to be able to earn playing time at any level higher than EPL Reserve league. I don't know and I am not sure that anyone here does.
You're right that few if any of us have ever seen the team play. However, that can be true and have the loan still be "pointless," as superdave called it. That's all most people here are saying. There's no reason to be loaned out to another side just to get no minutes. Playing time for the Man U Reserves might be better for him than warming up hoping to get in to these matches. Of course, he can certainly learn some things from the experience anyway, and it sounds like he's taking that approach (from the people who know him), so ultimately, I don't think he's hurting himself.
Well you make my point in the first graf. The second, yeah, that is a guess, just like in your first graf. Could also be that Cooper, rather than not being good enough, is not the type of forward the coach wants to play. That would make sense in the Portuguese league, which doesn't usually use target/post-up type forwards like Cooper.
He already had all those bases covered in Manchester. The kid's from Texas; he not's English. Manchester is a new culture. The point of a loan is to get PT. Not to practice with a new senior team.
Maybe so. But it may be that he benefits from moving to a team where he has a chance at playing time, even if it is spot appearances off the subs bench. Whether or not that is better than playing Man U reserves is debatable and can be argued either way. But at Man U there was virtually no chance of KC ever seeing meaningful first team action in the foreseeable future. Cooper is suiting up for the games and has played in several. So he's still at least under consideration for 1st team playing time. It's more difficult for most of us to access info about Portuguese teams than it is to find out stuff about teams in the British leagues. Outside of trying to read a Portuguese matchtracker, or read posts from England66 or the Portugal boards I have little ability to follow his progress. But lack of info does not necessarily equate with lack of progress. The loan may well turn out to be a failure. But I think 11 games into a season is too early to make that judgment.
Well, I think Portuguese soccer is different from English soccer and exposure to it can only help his game. But the main point is that nothing is guaranteed and getting the chance to fight for time in competitive games is a world above playing meaningless reserve games with kids or seriously undermotivated veterans. The loan will be valuable for ManU and Cooper if only to evaluate his future.