News: Cobi Jones has left the LA Galaxy and joined the NY Cosmos as their Associate Director of Soccer

So he can prepare for Beckham's arrival in 12 months time....?

 

Yep

 

Bruce is bringing in his own guys as coaches. First Klein, then Berhalter. Cobi can see the writing on the wall.

 

Our season is unraveling as we speak ...

 

As a referee and someone around youth soccer. I cannot stand what the Cosmos organization is bringing to youth soccer. Take everything that is bad about youth club soccer (focus on winning over enjoyment, over involved screaming parents, focus on money over kids) and multiply it by 10.

Seriously, eveytime I have come across one of their teams the parents are screaming and yelling at the ref, the coaches are hollering at the kids and none of the kids seem to be enjoying themselves.

The sad part is they have some of the best players on their teams. So now our best talent will be burnt out by 16, awesome.

For all the flak that AYSO gets. the more I am around club soccer the more I realize that AYSO is getting it right and club is headed in the wrong direction. Good idea POOR execution. We need to remember their still kids.

 

The one upside though is that eventually Cobi will be a head coach in this league on a full-time basis.

 

The Plan

Wow.. now the Galaxy feel a little less Galaxy-ey without Cobi Jones. Bruce will always be DC Bruce to me. I mean he's good in all, but he's not Phil Jackson... I don't see BA having a (6) MLS cup run here - albeit one would be nice outta the guy, but that boat is sailing even farther away with each passing day.

I thought Cobi was being prepped for the big job in a few seasons anyway and something tells me he got wind of some bad fish in the LAG office and decided 15 years was plenty with this organization.

Good Luck Cobi Jones.

 

Associate Director of Soccer isn't exactly a move towards that goal...I think this is just NYC adding another recognized figure to their collection on the operations side to gain support.

They're not even in MLS yet, and I'm already sick of them.

 

Very sorry to see Cobi go - he belongs with our team. Life goes on, though, and I wish him well. Maybe he'll be back someday - he won't get the chance to head coach or other higher-profile job here first.

 

Watching Cobi "coach" during pre-game the last couple of years has been kind of painful. It pretty much looked like Bruce had him standing around and picking up the cones. At the meet & greet, I asked him very directly what his specific duties were, and he hemmed and hawed and came up with something about being a go-between between the players and the coaches. Didn't sound much like coaching to me.

It was pretty clear that Cobi was thrust upon Bruce by LAG and they both tried to make the best of it. But, I can also understand Bruce wanting to name his own staff - every head coach wants that. For better or worse, Bruce is our guy right now and he deserves the chance to succeed or fail on his own terms.

Cobi is now and always will be an LAG icon and part of our history. I wish him all the good luck in the world and success in what he wishes to do. Unless he joins Robin at Chivas, but that's a whole different story...

 

This has been an absolutely horrid offseason.

 

Fare thee well Cobi Jones

http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylt=Ar9vZD.../sports.yahoo.com/mls/news?slug=txcosmosjones

You will be missed. You were the class and face of the Galaxy for so long. Good luck in New York (except, of course, you know when).



EDIT: Oops. mods please merge.

 

This has always been my suspicion about Jones's role with the team. When Cobi became an assistant coach, it appeared to me that the Galaxy wanted to do right by him and give him a career achievement gift of giving him a shot at coaching. Bruce wasn't long on him - once he brought in Sarachan, any assistant who didn't have a specific role (like goalkeeper coach, youth coach, etc.) was always going to be pretty marginalized. But Bruce didn't want to burn a guy who had done so much for the Galaxy and who Bruce probably recalls with great fondness from their time together on the national team. So I think it would probably understood that Cobi should eventually find something else.

Cobi's a legend; he may be back here some day for all we know. But going somewhere to do some actual work and get some real experience will only help him.

 

When they sign Pele as Director of Player Development then it'll be time to take a swig with ol' Jim Beam

 

i don't think i'm being overly dramatic to say this is the end of an era. paging mr. donovan - the galaxy is now your team; make it happen.

 

Hmm, I always thought Cobi would be to LA what Pat Rice is and has been for Arsenal. 'Job for life' type scenario. Definitely the end of an era.


All the best to him with his future endeavors, would love to see him back with the Galaxy someday.

 

im all for change but this one is going to be hard to processes. sigh good luck cobi thanks for the memories.

 

But is he going somewhere where he can do "actual work" and get "some real experience"? I mean he's going to an organization which doesn't even have a real team yet. What exactly is he going to be doing I wonder?

Big loss for the Galaxy as an organization. I thought he'd be there "for life" too, but I guess the more things stay the same, the more they change.

 

Honestly, though I'm really new to this club, don't know Cobi much apart from what I saw for the past 3/4 years..I felt gutted when I first saw the news. I mean..he's been a Galaxian forever and I think the only one left..and now even HE moved on. It's bad enough when Gordon moved last summer, and now Cobi - the longest ever Gs - I don't know whether I'm feeling sad or worried with Galaxy's future or not, but I'm definitely feel dissapointed. *sighs*

Good luck to him though. And good luck to the Gs. Really.

 

Gordon and Cobi don't belong in the same sentence. We'll miss ya, Cobi.

 

Grant Wahl article

A 44-year-old Englishman, Byrne has gone on a remarkable life journey from London taxi driver to massage therapist for Chelsea and England to David Beckham's best friend and personal manager to a sports business career of his own.

Byrne's latest gig, however, may be his most fascinating of all. He has moved his family from London to the Big Apple to help relaunch the New York Cosmos. That's right: The Cosmos, the most famous soccer team in American history, the unforgettable outfit of Pelé and Giorgio Chinaglia and Carlos Alberto that made fútbol cool in the days of Studio 54 and spawned a gripping documentary film called Once in a Lifetime.​

will Beckham have a role in the Cosmos at some point? After all, Beckham has the option to buy into MLS as a team owner at a below-market price once he's done playing. And Beckham happens to be Byrne's best friend.

I was fired up to interview Byrne for a few reasons. During the reporting of my book, The Beckham Experiment, about Beckham's first two years in MLS, I tried repeatedly to arrange an interview with Byrne, who served as a paid consultant to the Galaxy and recommended the hiring of coach Ruud Gullit in 2007. In the end, Byrne never agreed to be interviewed on the record.


Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20...2/terry.byrne.cosmos/index.html#ixzz1AtrwZZst

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