Caleb Porter is a yes for me. Our team is very similar in terms of players and tactics to his old Portland team that did so well.
Sigi used Boateng regularly; he just didn't start him. I also don't agree about Feltscher. As for positives, Sigi did beat LAFC at home, which is one of my requirements for the season. And at the halfway point, we're still in playoff contention. Question is, could another coach have done better working under the same constraints as Schmid (and that includes the off-season acquisitions)? Klein and Gio aren't going anywhere anytime soon, so anyone we bring in still has to work with those circumstances.
Romney had a quote after the last game that I can't seem to find: he talked about how LA is a pretty direct team that is able to find the forwards and score, but doesn't have a plan for how to manage the game after grabbing the lead. I thought that was pretty insightful. We have mediocre individual defenders, but more than that, our game management plan is basically just to back off and invite wave after wave of pressure.
Sigi doesn't know how to manage a team, and we have ABSOLUTELY NO style from him. Although we beat Orlando we didn't not control the game like we should have for that score line. I still think the priority has to be to replace Klein and Sigi. I would love to see a more forward thinking manager come in like Atlanta did with Tato. Any chance we can snag a world class manager and let him take the full reigns like we offered with Bruce?
There are two main components to building a team - building a roster and then getting the most out of that roster by building a successful style of play. Roster Building Our roster was awful when Sigi came on board - the only question is what has he done to improve it? Well we added a couple of very good pieces - Kamara and Zlatan (although I doubt that Sigi was a big part of the latter's signing). Sigi has also brought in five defensive players - Ciani, Skjelvik, Kitchen, Bingham and the currently injured Feltscher. These new signings make up four of our six starting defensive players so it's pretty easy to evaluate them - I think it is fair to say that this group hasn't worked out. At all. Roster Build Grade: D Coaching After you have the roster you still have to instill an identity and get the players to play as a unit. Over time you hopefully develop a style of play that fits the personnel that you do have. This comes from structured training sessions, film review, in game coaching, etc. Coming in with a well defined philosophy of play probably helps - see Tata and Marsch for examples. Sigi's supposed philosophy was building around a solid defense first - not sure what happened to that. Unfortunately I think Sigi has failed on the coaching part of his job description as badly as he did with his defensive signings. We have no identity as a team, unless 'chaos' is an identity; we show little to no cohesion on the field. Playing time doesn't seem to be contingent on either success or effort. Players are played out of position for no apparent reason. As a team we aren't good at winning the ball nor holding on to it when we have it. Our midfield is a sieve and our defense is in a constant state of confusion. We can't hold a line and are embarrassingly easy to pull out of position. Worse the defense isn't improving after months of training and playing together. Overall our successes come more from moments of individual offensive brilliance than from anything the team is doing as a whole. Coaching Grade: F Overall Grade: D- Regardless of where we finish - the first year of Sigi's reign has been pretty much a disaster. From player selection to coaching the team Sigi has been poor. The only defense of keeping Sigi in place is his impressive resume and the hope that he will correct his mistakes next season. Personally I can't understand how Sigi has been unable to recognize and fix the mistakes that the team repeats week after week. So I think he should be replaced. On the other hand I don't trust our FO to pick a good replacement. What a mess.
I think Pontius, Carrasco and oLA were good pickups. Obviously Kitchen and Skaldfjlk were really bad pickups. Bingham and Fletcher have been sub-par pickups. The problem is that Pontius and Carrasco were really depth pickups, and the rest were starters, which means we only went 1 for 5 on starters.... That's bad.
Even though we have been in good form lately, I would still like to replace Sigi. Not sure if my complaints below are all coming from him, but I suspect so. First, holding Zlatan out of the All-star game so he had to miss the Colorado game. Were we trying to throw Colorado a lifeline? Second, it looked like we were taking a defensive posture in the last 20 minutes to try to preserve a point. Against lowly Colorado! Anything less than a win to them should be taken as a failure. None of this is earth-shattering, but it just makes me feel Sigi is not the guy that will make us an MLS Cup contender.
As a moderator, I find this poor form. I get that he's Scandinavian and their names aren't easy for an English-speaker to recall but this frequent deliberate misspelling of Skiddlybop's name is borderline offensive.
What did Carrasco do that Boateng couldn't do? Safe and simple passes? Boateng can do that all day long too. Only Boateng is much, much faster. You can't bench Boateng for most of the season and then suddenly start him (last week against Seattle) and expect him to be sharp. I feel really bad for him. Carrasco caused 2 goals in the Seattle game. Why started him again yesterday against LAFC? I know we didn't have some of our stars, but neither did the other teams. They don't have the Dos Santos brothers, Alessandrini and Ibra, but they still look pretty, don't they? If we miss the playoffs again this year, please fire Sigi.
1) Play defense effectively 2) Take the ball away from an opponent 3) Win or challenge opponents in the air
I think this is highly unlikely. IMO, if the Galaxy make the playoffs, its much more likely that Jovan and possibly Pete get shown the door. My rational is that Sigi can demonstrate that he has turned things around from where they were in 2017 and that a lot of money was wasted on bad signings before he was hired especially on the Dos Santos brothers.
I say out now. Let's try to salvage a season here. Sigi let us down last year by tanking down the stretch to miss the playoffs. Looks like he's heading in the same direction this season.
This might make sense depending on who is available to take the reins. However, I don't have faith that the current FO could ever find the equivalent of Tata Martinez. Rather they would grab the first retread failure they could think of. Better let the season go down the drain, bring in a whole new management team, and let them pick a coach. Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?
Guillermo Schelotto has expressed interest in coming back to MLS. He knows the league, has experience as a head coach (Boca Juniors) and would be able to recruit South American players.
He and Sigi have a relationship from CBus days. I wonder if Sigi could move to GM only and have GBS take over the reins as coach.
It's likely worth a shot tweeting the idea of Schelotto to the Gs account or posting on their FB page. Based on how lazy the FO are in doing work to look for personnel and players, the idea might just take!
Sigi prior to RSL game: "All the games are such that we need to get points,” head coach Sigi Schmid said. “For sure, we've got three games left at home. We need to maximize those points, and if we can get a win on the road, four wins -- 12 points -- should get us pretty close to where we want to be. “We've got to accomplish that, and to get them on the road, it's as good this week as any other.” So our goal is to win one of the final three road games (this week, next week, whenever) so that, assuming we also win all three of our home games, we can get close to where we want to be? Wow, way to set the bar high. Sorry but I'll take Zlatan's fiery "I think of every game as a must win game" over this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ message every time.