GM, I agree that players win games. And coaches are important no matter what league. But in a league where there are so many restrictions on talent, there is so little tradition of the sport (and thus players don't grow up playing the style of ball their professional clubs play), there is no easy feeder system, teams lack the ability to solve problems by throwing money at them, and the ability to grow young Americans is critical, I think the coach is more important in MLS than it is in any other league. And I think the primary differentiator with every MLS champion (especially if you attribute the initial Chicago win in part to Nowak and the Rongen win to Arena's work) is there are only a few coaches who have won the MLS Cup. It's an extremely select company. And especially when I think that TB and maybe LA had better talent in the league's first year--yet DCU won the championship.
I think this is a little disenguous, as you cannot classify a coach as an "attacking" or "defending" coach. Good coaches are good coaches because their teams BOTH attack and defend as a team. For instance, Yallop's 2003 team gave up 35 goals, as did Hudson's team -- both "attacking" coaches. Gansler's gave up 44, yet he's a "defending" coach. This game is most definitely about the players -- one look at the Premiership standings, where a handful of teams have players who are miles beyond the players of the other teams, will attest to that. However, in MLS, parity is the name of the game. LA, a team that no one would ever confuse with looking like a dominant team this year, had Ruiz (a perennial top goalscorer), Kirovski (a guy can be both finisher and playmaker), and Herzog, who was a tremendous playmaker this season. Califf and Marshall made a decent pair in the back, and Kevin Hartman is one of the top goalkeepers in a league filled with competent goalkeeping. But they bombed out in the playoffs, barely knocking off a Colorado team that was built around the premise that Joe Cannon is a brick wall, and getting beat six ways from Sunday by KC. Why did they bomb out? Their coach stunk. For reasons known only to him and his God, Sampson benched Herzog (demonstrating that having the right players is useless if the coach won't use them correctly, or at all). Tactically, he had his team move from playing to their strengths (speed out wide, combination play between Herzog, Kirovski, and Ruiz), to a team that looked to play more directly and swing crosses in all day. He lost his team. The Metros are another example. Who wouldn't want to have Guevara, Gaven, Magee, and Fabien Taylor? But Bradley couldn't keep Guevara disciplined, couldn't get Gaven to link up with anyone and stop trying to do everything himself, and couldn't get his team, even with Pope and a surprisingly effective Parke playing in front of Johnny Walker (who was a fine, fine goalkeeper in Chile, which has a league on par with MLS) to defend with any coherence. Nowak, on the other hand, with no depth up front outside of his two starters, no attacking midfielder until he received an out-of-shape Argentine in August (or was it July?), and little attacking contribution from his top-paid midfielder, had his team clicking on all cylinders when it mattered. He maintained a general tactical framework throughout the season (high pressure in the midfield, moving the ball quickly on the floor, few crosses swung in from out wide), kept his volatile midfielder more or less under control (Dema had one stupid red card all year, in the first game -- his red against NE was by no means stupid), and had his team playing like a team at both ends of the field rather than a group of individuals in similar-colored shirts. The one argument one could make about it being the players was the inclusion and rebirth of Moreno. But other teams had similarly talented playmaking types (Guevara, Cancela, Donovan, Andy Williams, O'Brien, Herzog), but did not put them in the type of framework in which they could be most successful. Bradley let Guevara revert to his tendency to come far too deep to retrieve the ball, Kinnear often had Donovan playing up front rather than attacking midfield where he'd have more space, Sampson benched Herzog, etc. Nowak had Moreno at attacking midfield early on, but was intelligent enough to recognize that Moreno no longer has the burst in open field he once had, and was much better suited on this team to playing up front, allowing the five midfielders behind him to work hard to win the ball and then run well off the ball. In this way, Moreno was free to go where he could find space among defenders, play with his back to a defender when he preferred, and reward Esky's running. However, for example, Bradley never tried Guevara up front (where he could stay where he was most dangerous, not distributing the ball from in front of Eddie Pope), and Nicol (who I respect as a coach) was never able to get Cancela or Noonan (who still put up impressive numbers) comfortable in their respective roles. In a league hell-bent on maintaining personnel parity, coaches are the one area in which a club can truly control their own fate. I don't think anyone can argue that DC had demonstrably more talent than Columbus. Or San Jose. Or the Metros. So why did DC win the Cup while all three of those teams lost in the first round of the playoffs? Da Plane had it right. In MLS, it's the coach, stupid.
ET, that's a very well phrased, cogent (and even though it appears long, actually very concise) explanation of why MLS is more about coaching than any other league.