Coaching or My God the Offseason is Long and Boring

By my calculations, there are five teams that can win MLS cup this year. The other seven? Not a chance.

Now, you may be asking yourself, is this strange man who doesn’t post that often on our boards having a slow day at work? And how can he come on here and make such an outlandish claim?

(The answers are yes and I’ll show you)

A few of us repeat it so often that we sound like broken records, but coaching makes all the difference in this league. But my thesis does not go into Rongen’s player management or Sarachan’s personnel choices or Nicol’s tactical decisions. Instead, I was waiting for a client to pass on some work to me and thinking about how much I look forward to the season starting again, and that repeating as champions is one of the hardest things to do in sports, owing to turnover and complacency and being due for bad karma. But then I looked at a little bit of MLS history, and I feel much better now. See, only five teams can win the title this year. KC, Metro, Real Salt Lake, Chivas, and DC. Look back at the coaches of each year’s MLS Cup-winning team. Arena, Arena, Bradley, Rongen, Gansler, Yallop, Schmid, Yallop, Nowak.

All have one of two things in common (with only one being a possible outlier, but we’ll get to him in a second). They were either in their first year coaching in MLS when they won their championship or were repeating with that same team they with whom they won a championship in their first year in MLS (Arena, Bradley, Gansler, Yallop, Nowak), or establishing themselves as top MLS coaches (Rongen, Schmid). The only possible outlier is Gansler – but 2000 was his first full season with KC, and he did have an excellent coaching pedigree, doing an admirable job coaching the US in the 1990 WC, and taking over for an awful KC team in 1999 and going 8-17 after a putrid 0-7 start.

Arena opened poorly in ’96, but rebounded well, winning the first two MLS championships.

Bradley in ’98 was in his first season as an MLS coach.

Rongen, for all his faults that were exposed after he won a championship, had coached Tampa Bay to a 20-12 record (and only one was a shootout win) before leading New England the next year to a 15-17 record. Oddly enough, that team was 15-7 once he brought in Zenga, 0-10 with other goalkeepers playing.

Gansler was in his first full season in MLS in 200, and had established himself, first coaching the US in the 1990 WC, then doing an admirable job taking over from Ron Newman with KC.

Yallop was in his first year coaching in 2001, then repeated in 2003.

Sigi, for all his faults, had LA above .500 in all his years there before the championship in 2002.

Nowak was in his first year coaching in 2004.

I think the implications of this are clear. As a coach in MLS, unless you bring in an excellent pedigree like Gansler did, you find out very, very quickly if you can cut it or not. Your team is either very good in your first season, or you’re not going to win at all. Rongen was 20-12 in his first year, Sigi was 20-12 in his first year (coming in five games into the season)

So of this year’s coaching ranks, who fits into the criteria of being in their first year as a professional coach, already having a championship under their belt, or having established themselves as an excellent coach outside of MLS?

Nowak? Yes, looking to repeat.

Bradley? Yes, looking to repeat.

Andrulis? No. His failures are legendary.

Nicol? No. While his teams do tend to close well, he has not proven himself to fall under the Sigi Rule (records of 10-10 coming in during the season in 2002, 12-9-9 in 2003, 8-13-9 in 2004). Is he an awful coach? No. Is he a coach who has proven he can take a team to the next level? No.

Gansler? Yes, looking to repeat.

Sarachan? No. In his first year as professional coach he could not make the playoffs.

Clavijo? No. He was awful with New England before being replaced by Nicol.

Clarke? No. He has failed to make the playoffs in both his seasons as an MLS coach.

Kinnear? No. Barely made the playoffs in his first season as an MLS coach, only getting in on the last day.

Ellinger? Yes, first year as an MLS coach.

Rongen? Yes, looking to repeat?

Sampson? Interesting case very similar to Gansler, but no. He did coach the US in the 1998 WC, but that was an awful, awful experience, as opposed to Gansler taking a team of college kids and not being the worst team in the tournament. Also, he took over an LA team that was in first place last year, let them slip into second and then bombed out of the playoffs last year, coaching them to a worse record in the time he was there than they had before he arrived.


To beat the dead horse again, coaching is what matters in MLS. MLS dictates that there will be rough parity among the players, but each team decides who they want to bring in to coach their players. Retreads who have not won before are an awful idea. Letting a coach who has had no success in his first season is not a great idea. Foreign coach with no MLS experience is a recipe for disaster (Bora, Stapleton, Houghton, Parreria).

Someone with MLS experience (assistant coach – Bradley, Yallop, or player – Noawk) but brand new as a head coach is a fantastic idea. Someone who has won before is a fantastic idea.

And that is what gives me hope for this year. We have at least a 20 percent chance of celebrating at Bailey’s again in November.