It's crazy to think Troy Lesesne has placed his entire career on the shoulders of Gabriel Pirani. At some point, he has to realize that DCU is starting every single game 10x11. This team has a lot of issues all over the field but that's the easiest one to fix. Lesesne may not get another chance at top-level coaching if/when this fails and his insistence on starting a player who's been so obviously inadequate for well over a year will be the main reason.
I hate to be the voice of reason, but there is no "rebuild" here. The guys that Mackay/Lesesne brought in here are here through at least 2026 with the exception of Benteke and Herrera. Whoever might replace Lesesne essentially will have the "ability" to advocate for one DP in the summer window and maybe 2 (depending on the Benteke situation) next spring. Other than that, it's simply a matter of rearranging deck chairs with this personnel. The one thing that might help is -- god forbid -- a return to Bennyball because this current group can't exercise a pressing style without getting shredded on the counter.
I wouldn't want any new coach to have their career ruined by an ownership group that doesn't care enough to pay transfer fees and TAM to build a roster that can compete. I like Coach Lesense and thought he did a solid job with an incoherent roster last year. This year, he just has almost nothing as far as talent and it's going to hurt his career. Coach Olsen was lucky that Pat Onstad is the GM at Houston and Pat had been inside DCU as a goalkeeper coach so knew that Coach Olsen overachieved given the lack of resources he was dealing with except in 2018 and 2019 when he built contenders. (2018 was knocked out by a coach who had two weeks to prepare for that one game and the 2019 team just ran out of gas and had off-field drama that wasn't Olsen's fault down the stretch) I hope that Coach Lesense gets a second chance somewhere else like Coach Olsen. I'm not as worried about Wayne Rooney. He'll be fine in life as he made more than enough from his playing career to not need to work again. I thought he had some good ideas about possession but was still too close to playing to have biases towards guys like Ravel.
Does Coach Lesense have an choice in starting Pirani? Ownership payed the meager transfer fee for him and they probably said they aren't paying another transfer fee for another #10. Pirani is below average but still has flashes of quality with a solid defensive center mid behind him. Except they shipped out a TAM level defensive central mid in Klich and waived a MLS standard level defensive center mid in Canouse. The replacement has been well below the standard. This whole roster is for want of a nail. That's ultimately on ownership.
I do think Lesesne has choices with regard to Pirani. For example, my choice would be to start literally any other player on the team. If that means changing the tactics, then do it. Lesesne has nearly thrown away his best chance as a top-level coach by insisting on starting a player who everybody else gave up on a full calendar year ago. I hadn't thought about Canouse. If he was on the roster right now, it's hard to imagine him not starting. I suppose they thought Enow would be his replacement. That seems laughable now. Maybe the Israeli League isn't all it's cracked up to be?
Teams that lack talent can still be organized with and without the ball. They can still show intentional patterns of play. They can still fight like hell. They can be set up with tactical game plans that don’t expose them, especially on the road. These things come from the coach. Are we seeing any of them? I’m willing to give TL just a bit more benefit of the doubt. I think he’s earned this by the way the team came together for most of the end of last season, how they controlled the majority of the game at home against Columbus, and how he admitted going for broke against SJ when it was 1-3 late. (Sidebar - I do believe the SJ game was largely a byproduct of 3 unfortunate quick goals - CK that Benteke nods out of reach, poor Kim starting position on the 2nd, and just a dumb decision by Peltola for the PK). That said, the ice is thin and it’s getting thinner. The team needs a result on Saturday. Not a good performance or moral victory, but a result. Then comes two critical away matches against FTRB and Philly. TL needs to set the team up for success in these. The tactics against Orlando were all wrong and we had no chance. Too many mental errors against SJ put the game out of reach. These both must be addressed if we’re going to start picking up points away from home. Troy is a young coach and seems like a good guy. We knew there’d be growing pains with him. We’ve had the pain, now it’s time to grow.
I think there are a number of issues here. First, Klich is not a defensive midfielder. He is a ball mover who occasionally plays defense. He also may have hit his sell by date because he's pulling splinters out of his ass on the bench in Atlanta right now. Second, Canouse's absence is irrelevant. If Canouse had anything left in the tank, some team would have taken a flyer on him. I think Russ is now into his real estate career and soccer is something past tense for him. As for tactics --- Lesesne was moderately successful as an interim coach at RBNY. That is a team that has been playing "energy drink" soccer since Marsch was there, so there was a culture and a selection of players (both senior and academy) that "knew" that game plan. Last year was a mulligan for Lesesne and Mackay because the roster wasn't theirs. This year, they have built a roster for a pressing style essentially from scratch. It is now apparent that this roster can't do that successfully. (Personally, I think trying to play a pressing style in MLS is foolish because (1) the rosters aren't deep enough and (2) most games are played in hot weather, which makes issue #1 even more of a problem.) The real measure of Lesesne's coaching chops is if he can put in a different approach that maximizes what he's got in this roster. If I were him, to save my job I would go back to Bennyball. Pack them in tight, don't let them get stretched and, if it's there, hit them on the counter.
The roster is weak, no doubt, but I can look at San Diego’s roster and say the same. Yet they play beautifully. Maybe San Diego has a little more talent, but Varas maxes it out. Lesesne has failed in this regard.
Oh, I agree with you. I just think that when they cut Canouse they thought Enow would be the natural replacement. With the benefit of hindsight, that was a terrible call.
Canouse is done, they had to replace him, they just got the wrong guy. Two of them, really, Peltola isn’t the answer either.
This exactly. I actually think this group would be pretty good playing defensive but direct counterattacking soccer. Benteke is a great holdup target striker and I think it would be a great counter system to the possession soccer being in vogue right now in MLS. Too many teams across the league know how to counter pressing teams. If you dont press well enough, it can be easily exploited. Plus players tend to get more frustrated if results don’t come considering they have to work twice as hard as the other team.
Also every new manager talks about playing attractive soccer. Well there is nothing more attractive than winning.
Yeah...no. Xaviball, Choloball would disagree with you. Essentially every match is a one goal snoozer. Yeah, Barca won the league but it wasn't attractive.
Oh, I didn't know about him possibly retiring. He's still so good. Just wasted on us. Well, not me. I love watching him. You know what I mean.
We need to start using more appropriate language with this club. The roster is shit. The roster is straight trash. The players don’t fit together, have no pedigree, we have no depth and no creativity. San Diego has a better roster than us pure and simple.
Whomever we/you think is our 3rd best player would be the worst 3rd best player in the league. And that includes San Diego.
Peltola runs funny. First time I saw him I noticed it. His ceiling is low because he doesn't move well, a pretty essential quality for a soccer player.
I don't have any info that he's thinking about it, except his date of birth. I'm just saying he's of the age where athletes in all sports are on the back stretch, but still want to play the game. They'll stay in a place where the wife and kids are happy.
Our roster and Montreal’s roster are the worst in the league. And I really don’t know how things can get better with this ownership group in place. Clearly they don’t care, and will not spend money on quality DPs, etc., to turn this around. Can you picture a day when we spend over $10 million on a player? I certainly can’t. But, that’s how other teams operate in this league. Im about checked out and it’s only the beginning of April.
Kansas City has a worst roster than United. So does NE. LAG is completely set up around one very special player, who will probably miss the entire season. It's hard to say where Montreal really is, since they haven't played any home games yet. Nobody is under any illusions that DC's roster is anything near top tier. It has some obvious flaws. But it's also up to the coach to build a system that works around those flaws. Starting Gabriel Pirani, for example, is setting the team up for failure every single week. That's a choice. This roster should be fighting for the last playoff spot, not the Spoon.