btw - did we ever find out why Leitch stepped down from coaching? I did a little search but couldn't find anything about it.
Some of those players may have improved but not enough to win a spot on the pitch. Also, not every player will improve enough - that's why players don't always make it even with the greatest coaches.
There’s no reason the Bay Area couldn’t be the home of a world class soccer team given enough time and investment.
So where's this rapid development you talk about? Almeyda sucks, our team stastics are horrible and we've had losing records 2 years in a row and in a normal season in 2020 no playoffs. We would be on the outside looking in.
I think we could improve on this year's performance if we make some smart acquisitions to replace some of the outgoing players, and w/o necessarily increasing the budget. I think it would be unrealistic to expect any significant increase in the budget in any area of the team given the pandemic. So to me, best case this year, is that Almeyda stays we make some good acquisitions, and we build on last year, hopefully avoiding, and having learned from experience, how to avoid those horribly bad stretches of form.
Agreed. The only semi big move I might expect is if they try to replace Vako. I wouldn’t be surprised either way if they replace him or not or even re-sign him.
I would be surprised Vako would even re-sign with the Quakes even if given that choice. He'd only do it if there were no other options and the money is good. Why would you want to sign with a team whose fans threaten on Instagram to assault you? What kind of ghetto ass fanbase does that? Why would you want to sign with a team whose fanbase hates you indiscriminately, hounds every single mistake you make, dismiss all your contributions, and seize every opportunities to ridicule you. I mean, why would you want to re-sign with a team who has fans talking shit about you in a thread about the coach? HAHHAHAHHAHA
You talking about the basketball owner who stole the team from Oakland and moved it to Frisco? We had that kind of owner before, you may remember 2006?
We had one and it went to Houston. Don't you remember that? We should have 4 stars instead of 2. We should have made MLS cup 4 more times but Houston raped us and took a championship team, and the most dominate MLS team ever. 2001-2012 Quakes-Dynamo. Enough time? It's been 12 years since 2008... Is that not enough time? We had the makings of one in 2012 but 2013 we were derailed by injuries. You can be world class without breaking the bank. This ain't LA or Barcelona. Get off that train.
Our fanbase sucks. I've seen our own quakes fans stalk players, threaten them, shit talk them every chance they get and Vako is no exception to that. He's been shit on since day one. He dies his job for the money we pay, if he didn't have the DP tag he wouldn't get as much shit. Seems most people want some Barcelona, LA Galaxy TFC bull shit.
We don't have connections to Ian. Everyone he suggests we turn down, and they go elsewhere in MLS or abroad. Do you know the soccer players no longer obtain orndevelop new skills after the age of 21. Players just become smarter. Espinoza, Salinas, Yuiell, Judson and Fierro have been the same player all along. They just figured out how to play together and got hot at the end of the season on our shitty field. thompson has regressed dramatically under Almeyda. He likes him, but he hasn't gotten better. He's stayed about the same as to what we can expect from Thompson. You must be a newish soccer fan or no actual experience in the game.
He was never the full time coach... He was the interim coach. I don't think HC was an option for him long term.
CL was only in as a stopgap. The youth teams if I remember were his assignment not coaching the main team.
I have to disagree a little. First of all, I think our fan base is awesome. Completely. The folks I’ve met in here, the old timers, fans at games, supporters groups, I’ve always felt Quakes fans were among the leagues best. We’ve been through so much bullshit with MLS, I know I don’t need to remind you, and yet there we were, packing little Buck Shaw, packing the new stadium, still here. Complaining mightily? Sure. That’s whats fans do, especially given what we’ve been through. After 2005, yes, but since 2008, all that crap soccer and fans are still here, wouldn’t take too much to get people fully re-engaged, one or two big signings (not this year, I realize, I fully expect Wondo and Espinoza to be touted as our DPs for 2021)...a few serious signals of intent from the FO, fan base is re-energized. I’ve never heard of threats to players until now and of course that would be bullshit under any circumstances but where is that coming from? And last, I don’t think folks want to be Barcelona or LAG at all, just a hard fighting squad with enough talent to give us at least a fair chance at a cup. We haven’t invested at the level we need to succeed, we haven’t spent the money Fisher has ponied up, wisely. And there’s no accountability, next to no communication with fans and it’s been going on for years! Fans have every right to be upset about that. And of course more is expected from Vako, he’s by far the highest paid player Quakes have ever brought in. He’s Quakes version of a big time DP and as everyone agrees he’s average at best and doesn’t fit MA’s system. We could do better for $1.6 million a season.
He didn't step down from coaching the Quakes I don't think. He was essentially fired from the job and Jesse hired Stahre. The reason I say fired is that I think that Jesse made a point of saying that he wasn't interim. Well if he wasn't interim and you hired a different coach for the following year, I would say that he was fired from the job. That said, it could be that, whether he was going to turn out to be good at it or not, and he had a promising start on balance, he didn't really want to be a coach, and is more comfortable with TD / GM types of positions.
Did he step down or was he just re-assigned? Let’s be honest, there is ZERO evidence that Jesse values American coaches. The three American coaches who coached games under him, Kinnear, Leitch and Ralston were already with the team and he replaced them in half a season or less. Who has he hired in the 4 years he’s been here? Alex Covelo Alex de Crook Jyri Nieminen Mikael Stahre Matias Almeyda Benjamin Galindo Omar Zarif Carlos Roa Guido Bonini Fabio Alvarez Not.one.American.coach Ian Russell had already been chosen to run Reno before Jesse got here. No chance that Russell coaches the Quakes under Jesse. This is why I’m saying Jesse goes the minute Almeyda announces he’s leaving. He’ll do something incredibly stupid like promote Alex Covelo to head coach. That would be every bit as bad as hiring Stahre was. Jesse rides or dies with Almeyda in San Jose.
Yes. They went out of their way to say CL was full time head coach and not an interim coach. I went back and verified that. At the end of the season there was a rumor that CL would remain head coach in 2018. Chris was asked about it and he denied it and seemed upset that someone would write a story about it. He of course said he was only focused on the final game of the season against MN. I couldn’t find any other information about why he was let go. I kinda got the feeling that maybe the plan was for him to remain coach but he might have wanted to be TD instead. Iirc he was pretty unpopular amongst fans at the time. I don’t think anyone can be so confident that they know what happened.
Jesse did make a mention, at some point in the offseason I think, pre-2018, that "no more blowout road losses". I can't be sure, but my guess is that Jesse was not convinced by Leitch's performance and thought he could improve on it by hiring a middling Swedish coach. Speaking of "not sure how anyone can be so confident", that was a pretty confident miss. Not sure that we got blown badly on the road regularly, but we almost never won. But you can tell that Jesse was quite enamored with Stahre and thought that he had a real gem. Witness his fawning, embarrassing 1 on 1 interview with Stahre in preseason.
Yes. Giant mistake. I did find a quote from Jesse in regards to Kinnear- he said he was fired due to bad road performances and not developing young players. I couldn’t find anything about Leitch. Is it possible you’re memory got mixed up? Later on I’ll try to find the conversations here on BS. There must have been some explanation given.
Is there any real evidence that American coaches are that much better? I mean other than Bruce Arena and the late Sigi? Sigi was born in Germany he grew up in LA and Dom born in Scotland but raised in Fremont. Brian Schmetzer won with the team that Sigi built. Same goes for Dom about with Frank’s team. Other than them and maybe Bob Bradley and Frank was Canadian -English... there was Jason Kreis at RSL who then stunk it up at his last two jobs... Ben Olsen lasted 10 years at DCU and only won an Open Cup..