Sam Hinkie, ex-GM of the 76ers, and foremost figure in the poisoning of sports fans brains to believe that "sabermetrics" actually means that being bad is good and being worse is better, and that people who don't agree are just rubes. It's sophisticated now to think of any sports organization as engaging in a long-term rebuilding project, with a moral framework in which initial failure is a necessary and desirable precondition to eventual success. The implication from that being that initial success is in some sense a mistake. I'll argue against that until the cows come home in NBA terms, but in the NBA there's no doubt that top draft picks are very valuable and teams have improved long-term by securing top picks in some instances. There is nuance there. In MLS on the other hand, the route to a trophy winning team is clearly and unambiguously just going out and assembling one in the present tense, there is no counterargument. But "rebuilding" is just such a privileged framing that people convince themselves otherwise. To make this concrete, if the 2020 Fire are bad, the missing ingredient is not time. It might be players, it might be formation, it might be tactics, it's almost certainly some combination of those, and it's almost certainly more money, but it's not time.
Great interview with Frankowski in Poland's premier sports paper "Przegląd Sportowy" today. He wants to make the playoffs, score 8 goals and get 10 assists this year. https://www.przegladsportowy.pl/pil...ski-reprezentacja-polski-to-priorytet/gs26fpt
Apropos of absolutely nothing, it's fascinating to me that Google's AI is sophisticated enough to figure out context of where to put definite vs indefinite articles when translating from Polish to English.
So, I don’t know if it is optimistic or not, but I bought a flex pack for this year. The first money spent since the 5-game plan that included the All-Star game. I know others are different, but for me, Andy killed the original Fire with his editorial. It never felt the same for me. Back then, I said that someone would eventually buy the club, and it would then be like an expansion team to me. So, here we are. I like the front office moves and the player signings so far. Feels like they are working a plan, which I never felt in the last decade. They didn’t sign Chicharito which shows me they are serious about good soccer. I don’t like the logo, but given my position that this is a brand new club, I’m not as upset as most are about that. In fact, we Andy gone, I’ve been wearing my old stuff again, with pleasant memories of the first decade. Looking forward to a new season and a new club. Win me over Fire!
This is the Optimism Thread (TM) so I'm going to hold my tongue on all the snake oil that was pitched to potential supporters of that project.
Yep. It didn’t work, but it wasn’t snake oil. It was a very real thing and super innovative. A very sad end to the story.
Nobody bought anything* so no snake oil. It created some enthusiasm when the Fire were at their nadir. The couple of events I attended were energetic and fun. *I did buy a t-shirt. I still have it.
See I don't like talk of "expansion club". I think it kind of lets the new guys off the hook. We should absolutely be hiring former players around the club in different roles, even if it is something as minor as "club ambassador". It's nice to see old faces around. Klopas as assistant coach is a start, now let's get more guys on board in different roles.
I'm optimistic that no organization would seriously forgo building their future without taking advantage of a foundation that was laid by Peter Nowak, Magee, Pavel, McBride, Marsch, Kubick, Blanco, Schweinsteiger, .........., and Hristo Stoichkov !!!!!, for the love of all that is good and decent in this world. I mean, what kinda craziness would that be?
My personal position is not incompatible with this. In 1998, the Fire involved Lee Stern and has nights that honored former Sting players. “Fresh start” might be a better phrase, but my point was that I will be eagerly making myself available to be won over by Fire 2.0.
Seems like all the old Fire players are all working in everyone else's successful front office (then there's Chris Armas at Red Bull).